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#i don’t know if i got the vibe i wanted to capture?? i feel like watching jonas race this year has ultimately been about hope
rogloptimist · 2 months
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LAKE MISSOULA x JONAS VINGEGAARD
credits under cut!
lake missoula - richy mitch and the coal miners // jonas vingegaard - team presentation, tour de france 2024 // jonas vingegaard, tadej pogacar, and remco evenepoel - podium ceremony, tour de france 2024 (belga images) // tadej pogacar and jonas vingegaard - tour de france 2024 // wayward son - rainbow rowell // jonas vingegaard - stage 21, tour de france 2024 // it's down to legs - caley fretz // jonas vingegaard - stage 20, tour de france 2024 // jonas vingegaard - tour de france 2024 // jonas vingegaard - stage 11, tour de france 2024 // a poem on hope - wendell berry // jonas vingegaard and remco evenepoel - stage 19, tour de france 2024 // quora user shulamit widawsky // jonas vingegaard - stage 21, tour de france 2024 (getty images) // jonas vingegaard - stage 21, tour de france 2024 post-race interview (flobikes) // 'now the fight is over': jonas vingegaard concedes tour de france battle for yellow, but still aims for second - adam becket // jonas vingegaard - stage 19, tour de france 2024 post-race interview (flobikes) // video: jonas vingegaard and matteo jorgenson consoled after heart-breaking end to stage 19 of 2024 tour de france for team visma | lease a bike - kieran wood // jonas vingegaard - tour de france 2024 // jonas vingegaard - tour de france 2024 // 'probably the hardest moment of my career'-- jonas vingegaard on his crash and fight to be ready for the tour de france - stephen farrand // jonas vingegaard's tour de france was a venn diagram - iain treloar // rise up and salute the sun: the writings of suzy kassem - suzy kassem // jonas vingegaard - tour de france 2023 // jonas vingegaard - stage 21, tour de france 2024 // jonas vingegaard - stage 11, tour de france 2024 // vingegaard exhausted after tour de france: may cut season short - sjoerd valkering // jonas vingegaard and tadej pogacar - stage 20, tour de france 2024 (belga images) // the thing is - ellen bass // "if you had told me four months ago that i would be second, i wouldn't have believed you" - jonas vingegaard disappointed but proud of his tour de france - ondrej zhasil // jonas vingegaard and tadej pogacar - stage 11, tour de france 2024 // jonas vingegaard - stage 11, tour de france 2024 post-race interview (nbc sports) // alfred lord tennyson // jonas vingegaard and tadej pogacar - stage 11, tour de france 2024 // remco evenepoel and jonas vingegaard - stage 21, tour de france 2024 // jonas vingegaard and tadej pogacar - tour de france 2024 // matteo jorgenson and jonas vingegaard - stage 19, tour de france 2024 // matteo jorgenson and jonas vingegaard - tour de france 2024 // jonas vingegaard and tadej pogacar - podium ceremony, tour de france 2024 // jonas vingegaard and wout van aert - tour de france 2024 (team visma | lease a bike)
#obligatory jonasposting#i don’t know if i got the vibe i wanted to capture?? i feel like watching jonas race this year has ultimately been about hope#like the entire thing at its core feels like a leap of faith- of course visma was obsessively running numbers behind the scenes and#trying to prepare him as well as possible#but in the end he still hadn’t raced since april. he still had less than half the preparation and a massive question mark was following#them to the startline#but he still came. and he still believed. and everyone around him believed beyond everything else-#staff. commentators. fans. everyone was holding their breath because they don’t know where to place their bets#so it all comes down to crossing your fingers every time he gets a mechanical. saying a prayer under your breath when he loses 30 seconds.#and then stage 11 comes along! the tension is suddenly resolved and it’s like seeing the sun again!#but then things start to go downhill- but everyone still keeps hoping. the commentators i was watching were still saying “if” instead of#“when” about his podium in stage 21 because despite everything people still had hope! they don’t want to lay down the hammer#and even when he still finished second#the grief still mingled with the wonderful and beautiful fact that he still did it!#you take a step back and against all odds jonas vingegaard came back from the brink of death and podiumed the fucking tour de france!#and that heartbreak and wonder can coexist. you didn’t hope for nothing. the sky is still blue. the sun still shines. he made it.#sorry long tag rant i’m a yapper at heart y’all#me reading or listening to anything ever rn: omg this is so jonas coded!!!#jonas vingegaard#jv#tadej pogacar#remco evenepoel#wout van aert#wva#matteo jorgenson#tdf#tdf 2024#tour de france 2024#tour de france#cycling
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nereidprinc3ss · 2 months
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just like heaven
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in which flirty!reader finally confesses her feelings to a pining spencer reid after a night out. she's slightly buzzed. it's complicated.
fluff (some angst) warnings/tags: fem!reader, reader drinks alcohol, dirty jokes, so much flirting and banter, some arguing kinda, but spencer is such a gentleman, everyone gets flustered at least once, they really wanna kiss, happy ending a/n: gif :D I hope u like this! not bandages reader but like same vibes. like an AU for my AU
“Emily!”
You drawl the ee sound long, the same way you reach across the table and wiggle your fingers at her half-empty glass. Thin dark brows dart up beneath that glossy sweep of reddish-black hair. 
“Oh, wow. That’s unsettling. What?”
It’s been at least an hour since you had a drink of your own, but enough alcohol is still flowing through your veins so as to render her offensive comment inoffensive. You love Emily. You love the Tequila Sunrise sweating onto the sticky table in front of her which she’s not going to finish. 
“I think she wants your drink,” JJ assists, cheek balanced tipsily on a propped up fist. 
“Uh…”
Emily’s doe-sweet eyes flash uncertainly behind you. 
“I’m basically sober,” you insist, laying your head on your outstretched arm and letting your hair cascade as you bat your lashes, offering her your sweetest smile. “Please, Em?”
It does not go according to plan. She scoffs. 
“Are you flirting with me right now?”
“... Would that work?”
“Oh my god, just… cool it with the fuck-me eyes,” she laughs. “You can have the drink.”
You sit up, turning just barely over your shoulder to address Spencer. 
“See? Emily buys me drinks. Basically.”
She slides the drink toward you, with a subtle roll of her eyes that you choose to interpret as affectionate under the dim canned lighting. As you sit back, content and free drink in hand, her eyes slide to Reid in the seat next to you, brows arching. 
“Are you sure you can handle her all on your own?”
“Handle me?” You frown deeply as Emily gathers her purse and slides out of the booth, followed shortly thereafter by JJ. “I don’t need handling.”
“Then why do you have a handler?” JJ teases.
You slump against the worn vinyl, stirring what is mostly orange juice. 
“He most definitely is not my handler. He’s my science project.”
“I got it,” Spencer assures your friends, with his trademark flattened smile. You can’t help but watch him with a grin of your own, flipping the straw in the drink and nibbling on the end until it’s stained sparkly pink. Goodbyes are issued, and soon it’s just the two of you. Perhaps it’s a tipsy delusion, but you think he seems to relax slightly when you’re alone. His eyes are easy on you. “You know, you’re not actually decreasing the amount of germ transmission by using the other end of the straw.”
“Mm… pretty sure alcohol kills germs, Doctor.”
At that, you giggle. 
Doctor. 
Soon you’re covering your face and having a full-fledged laugh attack. 
“What?” Spencer asks. From between your fingers you can see that he’s smiling guardedly, brows furrowed in a way that reminds you he’s often worried about being the butt of a joke and not knowing it. “What’s funny?”
“Nothing,” you assure him quickly, gathering yourself. “I just… can’t believe you’re a doctor.”
“Why not? What’s so unbelievable about that?”
“You’re so young.”
And handsome. 
“I’m not that young. I’m older than you,” he defends. Only by a handful of years, but you know he’s defensive about his age after a lifetime of being told he looks young for—well, everything. 
“You’re… 32?”
That’s not right—you know as soon as you say it.
“Thirty three.” He very politely captures a hand—your hand—that had at some point ended up a little too close to his eye. You’re not sure what you planned to do once it got there—you don’t recall moving it at all. 
“Sorry.” You take your hand back, choosing to instead fiddle with a button on his coat ponderously. “33 is a good age.”
“Yeah?” Spencer laughs, angling his head as if to regard you from a new angle. It warms you all over. Burns in some places, like a shot of liquor down your throat. Makes you just as dizzy, too. “You have a lot of experience being thirty three?”
“No, I just…” your cheeks heat and you wrestle with a timid smile, averting your gaze and dropping your hand for fear his grin this close up might actually kill you. “I like 33 year old you.”
“So… you didn’t like me when I was thirty two?”
“Stop,” you beg, a self-effacing laugh into the cup of your palm. “I can’t banter. I’m not at peak performance.”
The truth of it hits you, and you sigh, folding your arms on the table and resting your cloudy head. Only then, from this new perspective, do you allow yourself to fully admire Spencer Reid. He is smiling at you, and your heart does skip a beat like you’ve got some school girl crush. These days he wears his hair falling over his face, messy on purpose, and always smells so nice. You wonder when he started caring about that stuff. You want to see what products are in his shower, and learn why he chose that cologne, or how he decides to pair his socks. He probably has some sort of algorithm. 
“Spencer,” you begin, the serious quality of your voice diminished by the smush of your cheek against your arm. Still, he tries to respect your tone, zipping the smile and answering with a playfully twitching brow. 
“Hm?”
You want to push the hair out of his face. Why is he looking down at you like that? Like he likes you?
“You’re a very good handler.”
His eyes narrow as he considers this, but the glimmer in them could still spark a forest fire. You’re probably grinning like an idiot. 
“Oh, I couldn’t handle you. You know this.”
You hum thoughtfully. 
“I bet you could. Wanna try?”
Spencer shakes his head, huffing a laugh through his nose. To his credit, your bold-face innuendos don’t always send him into a tailspin these days. 
Just sometimes. 
“You need a ride home, don’t you?”
You sit back up, stretching your arms out. 
“You don’t have to. I could get a cab.”
“I know,” he assures you, still a hint of amusement playing at the corners of his lips. Why. Is. He. Looking. At. You. Like. That?
“Will you let me drive?”
“I would. But, you know, my affairs aren’t in order.”
You roll your eyes as he gets out of the booth and offers you a hand. 
“I’m not that drunk.”
Spencer just wiggles his fingers. 
“If you can recite the alphabet in reverse you can drive my car.”
You roll your eyes again. Obviously he’s fucking with you, because 1. He’d never let you drive even the slightest bit inebriated, and 2. He knows you can’t say your ABC’s backward when you’re dead sober. 
The truth is you’re more buzzed than anything. You could get up and walk fine without any assistance, but he’s offering you his hand, so you take it. After you’re standing, you wonder how many excuses could you possibly dream up to get it back in yours. Should you pretend to fall?
No. Not quite worth your self respect. 
“You know…” you muse, reveling in the brief brush of him against your back as he holds open the door for you, “it’s a good thing you didn’t become, like… a medical doctor.”
Now walking side by side on the street, he glances over at you, a poorly veiled smile on his perfect face. Like a trap door brushed over with a few leaves. He wants you to see it.
“Why’s that?”
A breeze ruffles your hair. The brisk cold and the walk seem to be making things crisper already. You shrug, bunching your sleeves in your hands against the increasingly frigid night. The skirt and tights you’d chosen were perfect for a stuffy dive bar. Not so much for an early DC spring. 
“Nobody wants a hot doctor.”
He looks down at the sidewalk, hands pocketed, but the curve of his lips doesn’t lessen.  
“Hm. You’re drunker than I thought.”
“What? No! I’m—barely!” Again he laughs at you, and again you flush, looking down and counting the cracks in the pavement as you journey slowly under the bath of yellow street lights. “Why do you say that?”
“Because you called me hot.” He sounds almost delighted as he grins sheepishly around the final word. 
You snort. You’ve said worse things, more graphic things within the past few hours alone—but you suppose they’ve all been more like dirty jokes than compliments. 
“Yeah. You think you aren’t?”
Sandy locks fall side to side as he carefully measures a response. His cologne is warm—sort of smoky. It’s very nice. He doesn’t seem like he’d wear cologne. Have you already thought about his cologne tonight? Once was probably enough. 
“I just think sober you wouldn’t have said that.”
“But don’t you prefer it when I’m aggressively flirting with you? I mean, I know I do it sober too, but it's not as good, right?”
A silent stretch begins and shortly ends, and you don’t mind it. Right now, everything is a winding path through the woods. You’re willing to follow any fork off the trail if it means spending more time with him. 
“I guess I wasn’t aware that was what you were doing.”
“Oh, bullshit,” you laugh, and it echoes through the canyon of a nearby alley, “I’m not subtle, Reid.”
“I don’t know! You—for all I know that’s just how you are! I mean, what did Emily call them earlier, your—your fuck-me eyes?”
Like he does when he’s flustered, he gets shrill and stuttery. It’s nice to be reminded that he’s still a complete dork on the inside—and the outside, too, as pink stains his cheeks like watercolor. You smirk at him in your periphery, watching him against the darkened city backdrop. 
“You noticed those, huh?”
“No,” he denies forcefully, but his brow is pinched like he doesn’t quite believe himself, “I mean, yes, I notice when you look at other people like that, but that’s not what I would call them—I wouldn’t call them anything, I’d just call them your eyes, you know? Not that you always look like you’re soliciting… the implication isn’t there, it’s just—I notice when you flirt with other people! With Emily, and Derek, like, not even half an hour ago. You’re lucky Hotch wasn’t there. You’d probably have given him a heart attack.”
“I’m more concerned with yours, to be honest.”
“My heart is fine,” he laughs. “Worry about my dignity.”
“Hm. I was going for both. Guess I’d better try harder.”
You don’t notice you’ve come to a stop until you’re face to face in front of his vintage Volvo. Spencer is standing closer than usual, hands perpetually stuck in that nice wool coat. He’s all windswept and pretty, smiling crookedly and eyes sparkly with humor. A strand of hair sticks to your lip gloss, and you brush it away, tucking it behind your ear and squinting up at him against the chilly breeze. The flush is either from the nip in the air or your brazen flirting. 
“Or, you could go easy on me. I’m frail. Like a… sickly Victorian child.”
Again his brow knits and he smiles like he knows what he’s said is ridiculous. But his tone is gentler now. Softer. Invites you to fall in deeper and see what you might find. 
“And ruin all my fun? Toughen up, Reid.”
For a long moment, you don’t get a response—only his eyes, soft and thoughtful on you, before you’re distracted by the sweet bow of his lips. If he notices you’re staring, it doesn’t seem to bother him. 
But something evidently does, as when he next speaks, it’s troubled. Curiosity straining against a rope that says maybe it’s better if I don’t ask. 
“Do… do you actually flirt with me? When you’re sober, I mean.”
He expects to be ridiculed. In his most vulnerable moments, he’s still bracing for rejection—turning his cheek slightly so he’s ready for the stinging blow. It opens a fissure in your chest. You frown, and speak gently. 
“Yeah, Spence. More than anyone else. You really don’t notice?”
Sometimes his face is so expressive, in the pull of his brow and tightening of his eyes and the way he wets his lips. But he probably doesn’t know that. And he can’t seem to meet your eyes, instead choosing to study the leather of your heeled boots. Sounds of late-night traffic, of tires on wet asphalt buffer the pauses between sentences. 
“I notice… when you talk to Derek and Emily and JJ and Penelope the exact same way you talk to me. I didn’t think…”
Another gap in conversation, filled with the chatter of some group pouring out of a bar somewhere. You realize he’ll need some gentle prompting to bridge it. 
“You didn’t think what?”
When his eyes flash back up to meet yours, you have a feeling like he’s shutting the pipes off. 
“It’s—uh—” he clears his throat— “it’s not important, we can—we’ll talk about it a different time. We should—”
“Wait.”
He’d been turning away but snaps right back to look at you as if on command, wearing a brand new face that tells you he’d like to wipe the past minute or so completely away. 
“Yeah?”
“Spencer. I wanna know what you were going to say.”
“I told you. It’s nothing.”
“You didn’t tell me. You mumbled evasively and walked away. We were in the middle of something and I want to know what you were going to say. Please?”
“Well, you’re drunk,” he finally sighs, and it’s a bit sharp. Stinging. 
“I am not drunk,” you defend, and it feels true, with a bitter cold lashing at your cheek and blood heightened from the walk. “You know I’m not too drunk to have a coherent conversation. Why are you being weird?”
“Because I asked you to drop it! We can’t have this conversation right now, all right? I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
Your stomach flips, and your breath comes a little heavier. Spencer is clearly frustrated with you. Maybe being on the wrong end of this mild vexation, and so suddenly, should make you feel guilty, or some kind of bad—but all you feel is a sort of buzz in the tips of your fingers and the thrum of your heart, something deeper than excitement pooling in your veins at having inspired this sort of passion. It means he feels something. Something for you. 
“I’m sorry,” he tries halfheartedly, unable or more likely unwilling to stay angry at you for very long, “you didn’t—”
“What conversation?”
It’s jarring how quickly this has spun on its head. The very air you’re breathing seems to have changed. The metropolitan soundscape is a rife undercurrent of tension and louder from all the words unsaid. 
Finally he swallows. 
“There’s no conversation. I’m—it was a poor choice of wording. I just meant we should get you home.”
Before he can make it to the driver’s side door, you’re calling out. 
“You think I don’t like you. And I just flirt with you ‘cause I flirt with everyone.”
Spencer stops, and turns to face you once more, sighing and head dropped to one side like you’re doing something incredibly inconsiderate. He’s never looked at you like that before, but you don’t let it shake you. 
“That’s what this is about, right?”
He says your name, but you don’t let him get further than that. 
“No, I think there is a conversation here, and saying I’m not sober enough to have it isn’t fair and you should have said something before and I think you should just say it now.”
You’re pushing his buttons with a heavy hand, though your own voice shakes. He’s feeling it too—you’ve never been so short with each other. His voice is raised. 
“What am I supposed to say?” 
It boils over. 
“That you like me!”
It rings. 
Then it’s silent. 
His face is mostly blank. A little sorrowful around his eyes. 
It’s cold, jumping into the deep end like this. 
“We can’t talk about this right now,” he finally says, glancing to the side as if to suggest a situation the size of the whole city. 
“Spencer, I—”
“It’s impossible to have a meaningful discussion until your judgement isn’t impaired, otherwise it’s—”
“I am telling you that I flirt with you because I really like you.”
“I—”
It appears you’ve truly thrown him for a loop.  For a moment his jaw works at nothing, a soliloquy of words go unspoken, and then he’s stuttering and fumbling for the right thing to say, looking everywhere but at you. 
“I can’t—that’s—regardless of whether or not it’s even true—”
“It is true.”
“Could you—stop?” He pleads. “You can’t tell me that. I mean, the power imbalance when you’ve been drinking and I haven’t—it’s—I mean, it's coercive. Because I brought it up, I asked an inappropriate question—or at least started to ask it, and you—not that it was your fault, I’m the responsible party in this instance, but if tomorrow you realize you never wanted to tell me—so I have to take that with a grain of salt. I’m just—I have to pretend I didn’t hear that, alright? And you can’t say it again.”
He’s ridiculous. You shift your weight onto one foot casually. 
“That’s not very nice. I just confessed to having a huge crush on you and you’re gonna leave me hanging?”
There is an undeniable sort of pleasure in the bright of his eyes, and you phrased it that way on purpose, just to see him preen and glow—also to see if you could make him trip all over himself some more. Right now, despite the liminal space your relationship may or may not be occupying, you’re teasing him like you always do. Like he’s a friend, because he is. Before anything else. 
He tries to glower, barely. 
“Were you listening to me at all?”
“It was hard with all the stammering. I thought you might pass out.”
“I might,” he grumbles, and the admission pleases you greatly. Your lips tug as you admire him for a moment—watch his defenses go down and his features ease into something more inviting. 
God, maybe you really had been too hard on him. Maybe he really didn’t expect that you would like him back. 
You’re struck with the need to reassure. 
A dampened clack emits from your shoe where the heel hits the ground as you step down off the curb. 
“You know… I do like you. A lot. I mean it. And I’m glad I told you, because... you like me too, right?”
He raises his brows, like don’t do anything stupid, as you approach unhurriedly. It’s good to see that you haven’t broken his spirit completely. 
Less than a foot away, you stop. Close enough to be in his space. Too far for him to have the grounds to step back. 
His eyes are careful on you, analytical as always, constantly predicting an infinite number of outcomes to any given scenario. That’s how he keeps his footing in the world. But he’s never very good at predicting you. And it helps that his razor sharp intellect is dulled, some, with affection. Attraction. 
It shows in his eyes. He’ll let you push boundaries he knows he shouldn’t. More so if you keep speaking to him this softly. Almost whispering.
“Tell me you like me, Spencer.”
Because he hasn’t yet. All the heavy lifting has been done for him, and that just won’t do. 
First, he opens his mouth, and you watch the internal debate, a million things he could say, spinning round in his eyes like pinwheels. Rules, and buts, and caveats.
In the end, he just clears his throat. Speaks in the same secretive tone. Low enough to be intimate.
“I like you.”
Such a simple thing has never made you feel so airy before in your life. You steal another glance at his lips.
“So it’s really not that complicated. We could probably just kiss.”
He tinges pink.
“We definitely can’t.”
“You also said we couldn’t talk about it, and yet…”
“Talking is different. As far as I’m concerned, nothing you say to me tonight is binding. Whatever just transpired happened completely off the record. We can… talk about it tomorrow, but right now, you and I are friends.”
You shrug.
“Friends can kiss.”
“No, they can’t,” he says definitively, though not without a healthy dose of sardonic self-awareness and a dark smile. His hand finds your waist, and it’s glancing, if anything a light push, but you’re delighted nonetheless. Almost as pleased as if he really had kissed you. “It’s cold. I’m ready to leave.”
You’ve pushed him enough for one night. And it is cold. So you shuffle around the car with quick steps to the passenger side door, hooking your fingers under the biting metal handle and waiting for him to unlock the vehicle. 
You’re shivering as your thighs press against leather upholstery, only the thinnest layer of synthetic material protecting your legs. Spencer is already starting the car, but the engine is too cold to bother turning the heat on yet. 
“I think it’s colder in here than outside. Look at my hand.” You hold it up for him, and it is discolored, waxy, as he mindlessly takes it between his own much warmer ones. “I thought alcohol was supposed to keep you warm. Didn’t that chef on the Titanic survive hours in the ocean because he was hammered?”
“That’s a myth. Not the chef—he did survive, but it was a complete anomaly. Alcohol causes vasodilation in the dermis layer of the skin, so you feel warmer, but it draws blood flow away from your internal organs and significantly raises your likelihood of developing hypothermia.”
Does he notice how he’s holding your hand? Carefully pressing his thumbs to the center of your palm and pushing up through your love and life lines, cupping the fingers, before sandwiching them between his own and generating friction the way a child furiously rolls a play-doh worm?
“I guess I’m really not that drunk, then.”
He’s not expecting it, and maybe he doesn’t know what to make of your exceptionally gentle tone at first. It was a mistake, you think, as he relinquishes his hold on your hand, and you curl it to retain the memory of his warmth. But then he tucks hair behind your ear, like he’s done once or twice before, and smiles in a way you don’t quite understand. 
“I know.”
You won’t push him. You won’t ask for anything else, and you won’t demand an explanation. Spencer is special. It can all wait, because you have something good with him already. Something important. Something like holding hands. 
It comes as a surprise when he leans across the console, and you lean in a trance to meet him, and another surprise when he gently redirects, pressing his lips to your cheek, close enough to match the corners of your mouths and nothing more. 
You’d let him do it a hundred times over, but he draws back after a fraction of a lingering second, and finds your hand to stroke the back of it, forgotten in your lap. 
“You said no kissing,” you murmur, as if in a dream. If you had the wherewithal to be embarrassed maybe you wouldn’t be ogling so much. 
“Compromise.”
If anything, you should be the cheek-kisser. But there will be time to feel slighted about that later. Time to amend. For now, you look ahead robotically. 
“Is there a rule against friendly hand-holding?”
“Probably,” he says.
But he lets you hold his hand in your lap the whole drive to your apartment, anyway. 
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rvp32 · 2 months
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One Step at a Time
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 Mina is an idol, a princess, and an enigma. She was a star that burned brightly in the sky but always just out of your reach. She was a beauty like none other, like an angel who had descended onto Earth. She was your best friend, with whom you shared everything—everything except the one secret you kept hidden because you were scared of ruining the friendship you cherished the most.
“Mina, we need to leave soon. The music video shoot will start in a bit,” you reminded her as you finished packing some necessities.
Mina emerged from her room, her radiant smile lighting up the space. “Yes! Just one sec, I need to grab my Switch from the console,” she said, heading to the TV.
You watched her with a mixture of admiration and longing. She was effortlessly graceful, her every movement a dance, every glance a spark of life. Being her manager had its challenges, but the hardest part was hiding your feelings. You admired her from afar, cherishing every moment you spent together, yet always mindful of the line you couldn’t cross.
As Mina gathered her things, you took a deep breath, steadying yourself for another day of keeping your emotions in check. You loved her dearly, more than she could ever know. The way her eyes sparkled with excitement, her laugh that could brighten the darkest day, her unwavering dedication to her craft—every aspect of her drew you in deeper.
Your mind drifted back to the countless nights you’d spent talking about dreams, fears, and everything in between. She was your confidante, your muse, your everything. But you were just her manager, her best friend, the one who was always there but never close enough.
“Got it! Let’s go,” Mina called out, breaking your reverie. She flashed you a smile, and your heart ached with the weight of your unspoken words.
As you made your way to the car, you stole glances at her, committing every detail to memory. The way her hair caught the light, the subtle scent of her perfume, the way her eyes twinkled with anticipation. Each detail was a precious fragment of the person you loved but could never claim.
“How are you feeling today? Are you ready for the shoot?” you asked, occasionally stealing glances at Mina through the rearview mirror.
“Yes! Thanks to you I got some much-needed rest. If you hadn’t taken my Switch, I might have ended up playing the entire night,” Mina said with a playful smile.
You chuckled. “Well, someone has to look out for you. You know how you get with those games.”
“I do, I do. And you’re always there to keep me in check,” she replied, her tone affectionate. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
You felt a pang in your chest but kept your voice light. “Probably pull a few all-nighters and show up to shoots with panda eyes.”
Mina laughed, the sound like music to your ears. “True! And then you’d have to deal with a grumpy, sleep-deprived me. Not a pretty sight.”
“Hey, I’ve seen you at your worst, and you still look like an angel,” you said before you could stop yourself.
She blushed slightly, looking out the window. “You’re too kind. Really.”
There was a comfortable silence for a moment, filled with the hum of the car and the city sounds outside. You took a deep breath, feeling the weight of your unspoken feelings settle back into place.
“So, what’s on the agenda for today’s shoot?” she asked, changing the subject.
“It’s the final scenes for the music video. Lots of choreography, some close-ups. The director wants to capture that ‘ethereal princess’ vibe you do so well,” you explained.
Mina nodded, her excitement palpable. “I love those kinds of shoots. They’re always so magical.”
“And you make it look effortless,” you added, your admiration clear.
She glanced at you through the mirror, her eyes soft. “I have a good team behind me. Especially you.”
Your heart swelled with emotion. “Just doing my job.”
“More than just your job,” she said quietly. “You’re always there for me, in ways I can’t even begin to describe.”
You swallowed hard, the intensity of your feelings threatening to spill over. “That’s what friends are for, right?”
“Right,” she echoed, her voice filled with something you couldn’t quite place.
*****
The shoot went smoothly, finishing no later than late afternoon, much faster than scheduled due to Mina’s professionalism.
“Good work, Mina! You were amazing out there!” you complimented her.
“Thank you! I’m so tired,” Mina said, walking toward you to grab the drink you were holding.
“So, what else is on the schedule for today?” she asked, sipping her drink.
“You have group practice coming up later this evening, and by 8 p.m., you should be done and free to go home,” you informed her.
“Yay! I can’t believe I’m getting out so early today!” Mina cheered.
******
Later, you drove her to the JYP Entertainment building. Mina was in high spirits, humming along to the radio as you navigated through the city traffic. Upon arriving, she waved at a few familiar faces and headed towards the practice rooms.
As you walked down the hallway, Mina spotted Hyunjin from Stray Kids. He was leaning against the wall, scrolling through his phone. When he saw Mina, his face lit up with a warm smile.
“Noona! Great to see you,” Hyunjin greeted, straightening up.
“Hey, Hyunjin! It’s been a while,” Mina replied, returning the smile.
The two of them chatted for a bit, catching up on their busy schedules. You watched them interact, noting the easy camaraderie between them. They laughed and teased each other, the conversation flowing naturally. At one point, Hyunjin playfully ruffled Mina’s hair, and she swatted his hand away, giggling.
“You’re always messing up my hair,” she complained, but her tone was light and affectionate.
“Just keeping you on your toes,” Hyunjin teased back.
The moment was sweet, a reminder of the strong bonds formed within the industry. You felt a pang of jealousy but quickly brushed it aside. Mina’s happiness was what mattered most.
“I’ve got to head to group practice now,” Mina said, glancing at the time. “Catch you later, Hyunjin!”
“Good luck!” Hyunjin called out as she turned to leave.
Mina walked over to you, her smile still lingering from the interaction. “Ready?” she asked.
“Ready,” you replied, leading her to the practice room.
Inside, the other members were already warming up. Mina joined them, her focus shifting seamlessly to the task at hand. You watched from the sidelines, admiring her dedication and skill. She moved with a grace that was both powerful and effortless, her presence commanding the room.
As practice continued, you kept an eye on the time, making sure everything stayed on schedule. Mina’s energy never wavered, her passion for performing evident in every move. You felt a swell of pride, knowing that you played a small part in supporting her journey.
When the clock struck 8 p.m., practice wrapped up. The group exchanged a few words of encouragement before heading out. Mina approached you, her face flushed with exertion but glowing with satisfaction.
“All done for the day,” she said, a hint of relief in her voice.
“Great job today, Mina. You were incredible,” you praised.
“Thanks to you,” she replied softly.
You smiled, your heart full. “Ready to go home?”
“You go on and head home, Hyunjin wanted to grab some food so I am going to meet with him and have him drop me home,” Mina says 
Hearing Mina’s gratitude made your heart swell, but it also brought a sharp pang of longing. A part of you wanted to stop her from going, to hold her back and keep her close, but you knew you had no right to do that. Being powerless in this situation, you could do nothing but nod and say, “Okay, good night, be careful!”
She gave you a warm smile. “Good night. See you tomorrow!”
You watched her walk away, every step pulling her further from you. The ache in your chest grew, but you forced a smile, hiding the turmoil within.
After Mina left, you made your way to your office to pack up. The room felt emptier than usual, the silence almost suffocating. You gathered your things, trying to focus on the tasks at hand, but your mind kept drifting back to Mina. The image of her smiling face, and her gentle words, lingered in your thoughts, a bittersweet reminder of what you could never have.
As you headed home, you took a detour through the parking lot. That’s when you saw them—Mina and Hyunjin. They were standing by his car, talking animatedly. Then, to your dismay, Hyunjin pulled her into a hug. She hugged him back, her expression relaxed and happy.
A wave of jealousy crashed over you, raw and intense. You gripped the steering wheel, your knuckles turning white. The helplessness you felt was overwhelming, the realization that you had no place at that moment, no right to feel this way, cutting deep.
Mina and Hyunjin broke apart, and she got into his car. You watched as they drove away, the taillights disappearing into the night. The sense of loss was almost tangible, a hollow ache that settled in your chest.
When you finally arrived home, the emptiness of your apartment felt even more pronounced. You dropped your bag by the door and sank onto the couch, staring at the ceiling. The events of the evening played over and over in your mind, each memory tinged with longing and regret.
You closed your eyes, trying to push away the thoughts, but they persisted. The sight of Mina and Hyunjin together, the easy affection between them—it was a stark reminder of everything you couldn’t have. The love you felt for her, unspoken and unrequited, weighed heavily on your heart.
Reaching for your phone, you scrolled through the photos you had taken during the shoot. Each picture was a testament to Mina’s beauty and talent, but also a painful reminder of the distance between you. You lingered on one photo, in particular, a candid shot of her laughing. It was a moment of pure joy, unguarded and real. You wished you could be the one to make her laugh like that, to share in her happiness in a way that went beyond friendship.
But you knew it was a dream, a fantasy that would never come true. Loving Mina from afar was all you had, and it had to be enough. You had to accept that.
******
This was the last music show Twice would be on for this comeback. The comeback had gone exceptionally well, with the group winning numerous awards. After this final performance, all the members were given some well-deserved free time to relax and enjoy themselves. As everyone waited in the dressing room, the atmosphere was filled with laughter and excitement.
You were busy making sure everything was in order when Hyunjin appeared at the door, carrying bags of food and drinks. He wore a bright smile, his presence immediately lifting the already jubilant mood.
“Hey everyone! I brought some snacks and drinks to celebrate your amazing comeback!” Hyunjin announced, his voice full of enthusiasm.
The members of Twice cheered, grateful for the thoughtful gesture. “Hyunjin! Thank you so much!” they chorused, crowding around him to take the treats.
You watched as Hyunjin handed out the food and drinks, your eyes inevitably drawn to Mina. She accepted a drink with a grateful smile, and then, to your dismay, Hyunjin made a beeline for her. They began chatting animatedly, their laughter filling the room.
You tried to focus on your tasks, but your attention kept drifting back to them. The way Hyunjin leaned in slightly when he spoke, the way Mina’s eyes sparkled with genuine happiness—each detail stoked the fire of jealousy burning in your chest.
From the corner of your eye, you saw Mina gently touch Hyunjin’s arm, her gesture full of warmth and familiarity. It was a small act of affection, but it cut deeply. You felt powerless, standing there with your heart aching and your mind racing.
Trying to shake off the feelings, you busied yourself with organizing the room, making sure everyone had what they needed. But the image of Mina and Hyunjin together was seared into your mind.
Finally, you stepped outside for a moment, needing some air. The hallway was quieter, offering a brief respite from the whirlwind of emotions. You leaned against the wall, closing your eyes and taking deep breaths.
******
It had been two weeks since the holidays started, and as of today, it was the eighth time you were driving Mina to meet with Hyunjin. Each time hurt just as much as the first, and you had finally decided that this would be the last. You had asked to be transferred to a different department, and today you would tell Mina about it.
The drive was quiet, the air filled with unspoken tension. You stole a glance at Mina, who was looking out the window, a small smile playing on her lips. It made your heart ache, knowing this was the last time you’d be doing this.
When you arrived at the café where Hyunjin was waiting, you parked the car and turned to Mina. “Mina, can we talk for a moment before you go in?”
She looked at you, her smile fading slightly. “Sure, what’s up?”
You took a deep breath, trying to steady your nerves. “I’ve asked to be transferred to a different department.”
Mina’s eyes widened in surprise. “What? Why?”
You forced a smile, trying to keep your voice even. “I think it’s time for a change. I’ve been with you and the group for a long time, and I feel like it’s time to explore new opportunities within the company.”
“But… I need you,” Mina said softly, her eyes searching yours. “You’ve always been there for me. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Your heart clenched at her words, but you pushed forward. “You’ll be fine, Mina. You’re strong and talented, and you have a great team to support you. It’s not like I’ll be gone completely; I’ll just be in a different department.”
She looked down, her fingers fidgeting with the strap of her bag. “I guess… I just didn’t expect this. It feels sudden.”
“I know,” you said gently. “But I’ve been thinking about it for a while. It’s not an easy decision, but I believe it’s the right one for both of us.”
Mina took a deep breath and nodded, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. “If this is what you want, then I won’t stop you. But I’ll miss you. A lot.”
You smiled, trying to hide your pain. “I’ll miss you too, Mina. More than you know. But this isn’t goodbye forever. We’ll still see each other around.”
She reached out and took your hand, squeezing it tightly. “Promise me you’ll take care of yourself. And if you ever need anything, you’ll let me know?”
“I promise,” you said, squeezing her hand back. “You take care of yourself too. And keep being the amazing person you are.”
Mina nodded, her grip on your hand lingering for a moment before she let go. “I should go. Hyunjin’s waiting.”
You nodded, watching as she got out of the car and walked towards the café. As she greeted Hyunjin with a warm smile and a hug, you felt the familiar pang of jealousy and heartache. But you knew this was the right decision, for both of you.
****** 
The next few weeks had been the worst. No matter what you did, you always thought about Mina, missing her laugh and her silly conversations. You knew it was for the best to avoid her because you needed to get over your feelings for her. So you drowned yourself in work, starting a new project on the production team for a new music video. All you did was eat, work, and sleep, not going out or even meeting with any of your friends.
One night, just as you were about to sleep, the doorbell rang. To your surprise, it was Jihyo. She was one of the other members you were close to.
“Hey, what is this I’m hearing? Are you no longer Mina’s manager?” she questioned.
“Yeah, it’s been a few weeks since I was transferred. Did she not tell you?” you replied coldly, not wanting to continue the conversation.
“She did, but the reason you gave her makes absolutely no sense. I know you, and you would never leave Mina, no matter how bored you got with the work. Otherwise, you would have never been her manager. So tell me, what is the real reason you left?” Jihyo asked her tone firm yet concerned.
You sighed, feeling the weight of your emotions pressing down on you. “Jihyo, it’s complicated. I... I have feelings for Mina. And it was getting too hard to be around her, especially when she’s spending so much time with Hyunjin.”
Jihyo’s eyes softened with understanding. “Oh, I see. But from what I can see I don’t think they are dating. He’s been supportive during her comeback, but I don’t think there’s anything more than that.”
You shook your head, the pain still fresh. “It doesn’t matter. I needed to distance myself. It was too painful watching them together, even if they were just friends. I couldn’t keep pretending everything was fine.”
Jihyo looked at you thoughtfully. “I get it. But you know, Mina misses you. She’s been asking about you a lot. She doesn’t understand why you left so suddenly.”
“She’ll be fine, Jihyo. She has you and the rest of the group to support her,” you said, trying to convince yourself as much as her.
Jihyo sighed. “You’re right, but it’s not the same. You were always there for her, more than just a manager. She needs you, even if she doesn’t realize it.”
“I appreciate you coming here, Jihyo, but I’ve made my decision. I can’t go back. It’s too much,” you said, your voice filled with resignation.
Jihyo nodded slowly, seeing the determination in your eyes. “Alright. But if you ever change your mind, know that we’re here for you. And if you need to talk, about anything, I’m here.”
“Thanks, Jihyo. It means a lot,” you replied, feeling a small sense of relief from her understanding.
After Jihyo left, you thought a lot about what she said and how much you missed all the other girls. Realizing how your decision had affected not just Mina but also the rest of the members with whom you were close, you began to reconsider. Though you were busy with work, the occasional messages from them reminded you of the bond you shared.
A few months passed since your conversation with Jihyo. After the shooting of the music video and the comeback schedule finished, you were promoted to the head manager of Twice. It wasn't something you were particularly excited about, but the significant pay rise made it an offer you couldn't refuse. Still, you knew it was going to be challenging.
Not long after your promotion, you found out that Mina was dating Hyunjin. The news hit you hard, but you chose to ignore it and focused on your work. It was painful, but you buried yourself in your new responsibilities, determined to make the best of the situation.
Despite your busy schedule, you found solace in spending time with Jihyo. Whenever the two of you had free time, you would hang out and talk about various things, with golf being a frequent topic of conversation. Jihyo had insisted you try it, and to your surprise, you found it quite enjoyable.
One afternoon, after a particularly long day, Jihyo invited you to the driving range. "Come on, you need a break. Let’s hit some balls and unwind," she said, her tone light and encouraging.
You smiled, grateful for her persistence. "Alright, Jihyo. Lead the way."
As you both practiced your swings, the conversation flowed easily. Jihyo’s laughter and positive energy were infectious, helping you forget your troubles, even if just for a little while.
"So, how are you holding up with all the new responsibilities?" Jihyo asked, adjusting her stance.
"It's been a lot, but I'm managing," you replied, taking a swing. "I just try to stay focused on the work and not think too much about... other things."
Jihyo nodded, understanding. "I know it’s tough, but you’re doing great. We all appreciate everything you do for us."
Her words brought warmth to your heart. "Thanks, Jihyo. That means a lot."
As the sun began to set, you both sat down on a bench, enjoying the peaceful evening. "You know," Jihyo said thoughtfully, "I'm really glad we’ve been spending more time together. It’s nice having someone to talk to about things outside of work."
You nodded in agreement. "Yeah, it’s been good for me too. I’ve needed the distraction."
Jihyo smiled, her eyes twinkling. "Well, anytime you need to vent or just hang out, I’m here. We’re all in this together, right?"
"Right," you agreed, feeling a sense of camaraderie and support that you hadn’t felt in a long time.
*******
Walking through the halls after taking a few printouts, you were suddenly pulled into a room. "Oh my god! What the fuck?" you screamed out of surprise.
It was even more shocking because it was Mina, who you hadn’t spoken to about anything other than work since you came back as the head manager. “Oh Mina, what happened? Is anything wrong?” you asked, trying to be professional despite your racing heart.
Mina’s eyes flashed with a mixture of emotions. “What’s wrong? You tell me! Ever since you came back, you’ve been avoiding me. You spend all your time with Jihyo now. What’s going on?”
You took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. “Mina, it’s not like that. I’m just trying to do my job and—”
“Do your job? You barely even look at me anymore! We used to be so close, and now it’s like I don’t even exist to you unless it’s about work,” she interrupted, her voice rising.
“Mina, please understand. I needed some distance. It’s not personal,” you explained, your voice gentle but firm.
“Not personal? It feels pretty personal to me!” she shot back, her frustration clear. “I see you laughing and talking with Jihyo all the time. Why can’t you be like that with me?”
You sighed, struggling to find the right words. “Mina, it’s complicated. You have Hyunjin now, and I—”
Mina cut you off, her eyes narrowing. “What does Hyunjin have to do with this? This is about us. Our friendship.”
Before you could respond, she stepped closer, her eyes searching yours. “I miss you. I miss us,” she whispered, her voice breaking slightly.
Your heart ached at her words, but you knew you had to stay strong. “Mina, you have no idea how much I’ve missed you too. But things are different now.”
Her eyes filled with a mixture of desperation and determination. “Why can’t we go back to the way things were?”
As you tried to explain, she suddenly leaned in, her lips brushing against yours in a brief, impulsive kiss. Shocked, you gently pushed her away, your heart pounding. “Mina, you can’t do this. You’re with Hyunjin.”
Mina stepped back, her face a mask of confusion and hurt. “I—I don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry.”
You took a deep breath, trying to steady your emotions. “It’s okay, but we can’t do this. You need to figure out what you want.”
Mina nodded, tears welling up in her eyes. “I just… I don’t understand why this is happening. I don’t want to lose you.”
“You’re not losing me, Mina. I’m still here, just in a different way,” you said softly. “But you need to be honest with yourself and with Hyunjin.”
She wiped her eyes, trying to compose herself. “You’re right. I’m sorry for putting you in this position.” 
She left you alone in the room, and you collapsed to the ground. Kissing Mina was something you had always dreamed about, but somehow this wasn’t how you wanted it to be. It was overwhelming because you wanted nothing more than to give in to your desire, kiss her, and enjoy every single second of it. You wanted to hold her close and never let her go, but you knew this was something impulsive. Mina was confused, and at the end of the day, she would go back to her boyfriend.
Sitting there on the cold floor, you buried your face in your hands, trying to calm your racing heart. The weight of the situation bore down on you, and the reality of your feelings hit you harder than ever before.
After a few moments, you managed to pull yourself together and stood up, taking a deep breath. You knew you had to stay focused and professional, even if it felt like your heart was breaking.
As you walked back to your office, your mind was a whirlwind of emotions. The memory of her lips on yours was vivid, but you pushed it aside, knowing that dwelling on it would only make things worse. You had a job to do, and you needed to be strong.
Over the next few days, she kept her distance from you. You coordinated schedules, managed logistics, and ensured everything ran smoothly for Twice’s upcoming projects. The busyness helped to distract you, but it couldn't erase the ache in your chest.
During one of your breaks, you found yourself sitting with Jihyo in the practice room. She noticed the tired look in your eyes and gave you a concerned glance. “You okay? You seem a bit off lately.”
You forced a smile, not wanting to burden her with your troubles. “Just a lot on my mind, that’s all.”
Jihyo raised an eyebrow. “Does this have anything to do with Mina?”
Her perceptiveness caught you off guard, and you sighed, unable to hide the truth from her. “Yeah, we had a bit of a... moment the other day. It’s complicated.”
Jihyo frowned, leaning closer. “What happened?”
You hesitated but then decided to share. “She kissed me. It was impulsive, and I know she’s confused. I had to push her away because she was with Hyunjin. But it’s been eating me up inside.”
Jihyo’s expression softened with understanding. “That’s tough. But you did the right thing. She needs to figure out her feelings, and you can’t let yourself get caught up in that mess.”
“I know,” you said, your voice heavy with resignation. “But it doesn’t make it any easier.”
Jihyo reached out and squeezed your hand. “Hang in there. Focus on the positive things, like our golf sessions. You’ve been improving a lot, you know.”
You chuckled and she hugged you, appreciating her attempt to lighten the mood. “Thanks, Jihyo. It means a lot to me to know that I have 
Jihyo smiled warmly. “And remember, you’re not alone. We’re all here for you. Don’t be afraid to lean on us when you need to.” 
You didn’t let go of Jihyo for a few minutes because it felt calming, but that wasn’t the best idea. Mina walked into the room and saw it, her face contorting with fury. Not caring about anything else, Mina stormed towards you, grabbing your hand and pulling you toward the door. Her grip was tight, her nails digging into your skin.
“Mina, stop! Where are you taking him?” Jihyo screamed, panic in her voice.
“Jihyo, stay out of this!” Mina screamed back, her voice echoing through the room. It was rare to hear Mina that loud, and Jihyo, shocked, decided to let you both figure it out yourselves.
Mina dragged you into an empty room down the hall, slamming the door shut behind her. She let go of your hand, and you rubbed the red marks left by her nails. "Mina, what the hell? What's going on?" you demanded, trying to keep your anger in check.
"What's going on?" Mina shot back, her eyes blazing. "You tell me! I walk in, and I see you all cozy with Jihyo. What am I supposed to think?"
"Mina, Jihyo was just trying to comfort me," you said, trying to keep your voice calm. "We're friends. That's all."
"Friends? You think I don't see what's going on?" she yelled, her voice breaking. "You’ve been avoiding me, spending all your time with Jihyo. Do you know how that makes me feel?"
"How it makes you feel?" you echoed incredulously. "Mina, you're the one who kissed me and then went back to Hyunjin like nothing happened! How do you think I feel?"
She flinched at your words, tears welling up in her eyes. "I... I don't know. I was confused. I still am. But seeing you with her... it hurts."
You took a deep breath, trying to find the right words. "Mina, I’ve been trying to deal with my feelings. It’s hard seeing you with Hyunjin, knowing I can't be with you the way I want to be. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you."
She stepped closer, her voice trembling. "I miss you. I miss us. I don't know what to do with these feelings, but I can’t stand seeing you with someone else."
You felt a pang of guilt and longing, but you knew you had to stay strong. "Mina, you need to figure out what you want. You can’t keep doing this to yourself, to Hyunjin, or me. It's not fair to any of us."
She looked down, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. "I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry."
You reached out, gently lifting her chin so she could meet your gaze. "It’s okay to be confused, Mina. But you need to be honest with yourself and with Hyunjin. Only then can we figure out what comes next."
She nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks. "I will. I promise."
It was an improvement because there was some hope for you and Mina, as she was feeling something similar to what you were! But it was still confusing, and you needed time to think, especially after all that had just happened. You called in sick and left the set immediately, deciding to grab a drink to cool down a little.
You found a quiet bar a few blocks away and took a seat in a dimly lit corner. The bartender approached, and you ordered a drink, hoping it would help settle your racing thoughts. As you took your first sip, the events of the past few weeks replayed in your mind. The kiss, Mina’s outburst, the tension, and the hope of something more—it was all too much to process.
The bar was relatively empty, the low hum of conversations and soft music providing a comforting backdrop. You nursed your drink, trying to make sense of your feelings. Mina's confession had given you hope, but her confusion and the reality of her relationship with Hyunjin kept you grounded.
After a couple of drinks, you went home and eventually crashed.
It was the weekend, and you had no plans whatsoever. Planning to drown yourself in alcohol and play games the entire day, you settled into a routine of indulgence and distraction. Eventually, you fell asleep again in front of the TV, watching some stupid videos. You were woken up by a sudden knock on the door. Groggily walking to the door, disheveled, you opened it to find none other than the one woman in this entire world you were trying to avoid.
“Mina.”
She stood there, looking almost as disheveled as you felt, her eyes wide and filled with a mixture of determination and hesitation. "Hey," she said softly, biting her lower lip.
"Hey," you replied, unable to hide your surprise and confusion. "What are you doing here?"
"I needed to see you," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Can I come in?"
You hesitated for a moment, but then stepped aside, letting her enter. The room was a mess, a testament to your recent attempts at distraction, and Mina took it all in with a concerned glance.
"I didn’t know where else to go," she admitted, standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. "I’ve been thinking a lot about what we talked about. About us."
You ran a hand through your hair, trying to shake off the remnants of sleep and the fog of alcohol. "Mina, I don’t know if this is the best time..."
"I know," she interrupted, her eyes pleading. "But I can't keep avoiding this. Avoiding you. We need to talk."
You sighed, gesturing for her to sit down. "Okay, let’s talk." 
Just as you were about to turn around to get her some water, she grabbed you and pulled you into a kiss and yet again you pushed her away. 
“MINA!” You screamed. 
"I ended things with Hyunjin," she began, her voice steady but her eyes filled with emotion. "It wasn’t fair to him, and it wasn’t fair to you. I needed to be honest with myself and with you."
Your heart raced at her words, a mix of hope and fear swirling inside you. "Mina, that’s a big step. But where does that leave us?"
"I don’t know," she admitted, her voice trembling. "All I know is that I miss you. I miss us. And I can’t stand the thought of losing you."
You looked into her eyes, seeing the sincerity and vulnerability there. "I miss you too, Mina. But this is complicated. We can’t just pretend everything’s okay."
“Fuck complicated! I need you right now. Those kisses are so intoxicating, it's like a drug, and I can’t live without it,” Mina said, already frustrated. You could see she was trying to hold back as much as you were.
You could no longer hold back either and finally gave in, pulling Mina into you and kissing her. The kiss was so passionate, tongues dancing. Her hands freely explored your body while yours did the same, tracing every curve and line, memorizing the feeling of her against you.
"Mina," you murmured against her lips, the word a mix of desire and need.
She responded by pressing closer, deepening the kiss, her fingers tangling in your hair. The world outside seemed to fade away, leaving just the two of you, lost in the intensity of the moment. You could feel her heartbeat, rapid and strong, matching your own.
As your hands roamed, exploring every inch of each other, you felt a surge of emotions. Desire, yes, but also love and longing, things you had tried to suppress for so long. You broke the kiss, both of you panting, eyes locked.
"Mina, are you sure?" you asked, needing to know she wanted this as much as you did, despite the complications.
"Yes," she whispered, her voice breathless but certain. "I've never been more sure of anything."
You pulled her back into another kiss, this one slower, more deliberate, savoring each second. The tension between you, built up over months, finally found release in the shared intimacy. It was like nothing else mattered but the two of you, here and now.
You carried her to the couch, your movements urgent but careful, laying her down gently. She looked up at you, her eyes dark with desire and trust. "I've wanted this for so long," she confessed, her voice soft.
"Me too," you admitted, leaning down to kiss her again, your hands exploring the soft skin beneath her shirt, skin as smooth as silk. She fit so perfectly in your hand. 
Your hands sneak underneath her bra, playing with her boobs, her nipples hard as a rock causing her to moan. The bra was a disturbance so you unclasp it and take it off Mina. 
“Mina you are so fucking perfect. You don’t know just how happy I am right now,” you say. Not able to contain your excitement, you bite Mina’s neck you knew it would leave a mark but you didn’t care because right now she belonged to you and no one else. 
“Ngh! Y/N slow down, it’s going to leave a mark,” Mina says as she tries to push you away. 
Pulling away from Mina you look into her eyes and say “That’s what I want. I want everyone to know that you belong to me now.”
Mina’s face turned red, “hey! Don’t say that,” Mina said as she buried her face in her hands. 
“Alright, I will do it somewhere no one can see then,” you say before you begin nibbling just above Mina’s right breast. Mina’s breasts must have been a sensitive spot for her because as you nibbled on her breast, you could hear her moan and her grip on your head tighten. 
To ensure that Mina’s other breast is equally attended, use your hand to play with the nipple. After giving her boobs the appreciation they deserved, you began to place kisses all over her body, memorizing every inch of her perfect body. She had a few moles on her body and you placed kisses on them multiple times before moving on. Mina’s moans echoed through the room as you worshipped her body. Once you reached her pants you looked up at Mina, asking for permission and she nodded, but before you took off her pants you said, “If we are going to do this then I would rather have my first time with you on a  proper bed.”
Grabbing Mina’s hand you pull her with you to the room, once you are inside, you kneel in front of her. Pulling her pants down along with her panties, placing kisses on her thighs near her but not touching it. 
The pants now discarded, Mina stood in your room naked, a scene that you never thought would become reality. Taking one of Mina’s legs you place it on your shoulder, her wet pussy on full display for you. 
“D-don’t stare,” Mina says, shy from how vulnerable she is. 
“Artwork such as this needs to be admired, baby,” you say, not noticing the endearment you had just used. Not wanting to keep her waiting, you dive into her pussy, licking it. Her pussy was delicious, something that you would never get tired of eating. 
Mina grabbed your hair, trying to keep her balance and not fall. Her moans get louder every second. The pleasure slowly took over her brain, her pussy throbbed around your fingers every time you flicked her clit. 
“CUMMINGG!” Mina screamed before squirting all over your face. Her balance was completely lost, she was leaning completely on your body and was able to stand with some help from the bed frame. 
But that balance soon gave in and she ended up falling onto the bed, recovering from her orgasm, still panting and shaking. You joined her on the bed, lying down next to her, waiting for her to come back to reality. 
“Fuck, This is the first time, I came that hard,” Mina says, after coming down from the high. 
“My turn now,” Mina says before getting up to undo your pants and get rid of them. She slowly pulls down your underwear and your dick pops out and hits Mina in the face. 
“Someone’s eager,” Mina says, grabbing your cock she starts to stroke it, slowly using her spit as the lube. After stroking it for a few seconds, she took your cock in her mouth. It was warm and just as perfect as you imagined it would be.
Mina began bobbing her head, trying her best to take more of your cock, she was struggling to take your entire length but you didn’t mind because the way she looked at you made you go feral, her look was that of someone wanting praise. 
“Fuck! Mina, I want to fuck your mouth so badly,” you said, doing your best to hold back and not scare her away. 
Mina pulls your cock out of her mouth, panting and coughing from how much she was pushing herself. “Do it the, fuck my face please, I want to make you cum the same way that you did to me,” Mina said, looking up at you with those captivating eyes, begging to be used for your pleasure and who were you to say no. 
She slowly puts your cock back into her mouth and begins bobbing and pushing herself as deep as she could. Grabbing the back of her head, you push her head further into your body until her nose touches your pelvis bone, Mina gagged a little but she didn’t resist. 
You pulled it out a little before you started pounding her face, “Fuck, I’m going to cum!” you groaned before pushing Mina’s head down your dick and releasing all your cum down her throat.
After you stopped cumming, Mina swallowed up all your cum, without any complaints at all. 
You watched as Mina walked to the washroom, to clean up a little, her as swaying from one side to the other. With every step her ass cheeks bouncing. This turned you on a lot more than you thought it would. 
As soon as Mina came back you pushed her onto the bed and got on top of her, pinning both her hands above her head. 
“How are you so fucking gorgeous? It's driving me crazy,” You say to Mina, looking deep into her eyes. They soften at your compliment, it wasn’t just out of lust but out of pure admiration for her and she knew it. 
“I could ask you the same thing, how is it possible that you don’t have women dying for you because I would do anything to be with you,” Mina says. 
Closing the distance, her breath touching your skin, “Then prove it to me!” 
Mina closes the distance between you, lips touching and moving in harmony. “Enough, please fuck me, I have wanted this for so long, I can’t wait anymore,” Mina says, you can hear how desperate she is. 
“Nor can I baby,” you say before positioning your cock at Mina’s entrance, slapping and teasing it. Her wet pussy juice sticking to your cock.
“Stop teasing and put it in,” Mina whined and you obliged, slowly pushing your tip into her, god was she tight, she was gripping onto your tip so hard. You continue to push into her slowly but stop all when you hear Mina scream.
You start to pull out a little because you don’t want to hurt Mina, “No!! Keep going please, just slowly,” Mina says as she grips your arms. 
“Baby, you need to relax, you are too tense and that's why it’s hurting you,” You say to Mina before leaning in to kiss her. 
Mina’s focused on the kiss, tongue in your mouth, taking this opportunity, you push into her again slowly 
“HGNH” Mina groaned again but she relaxed, focusing more on the kiss. 
Once you were in her completely you stayed still allowing her to adjust and not wanting to hurt her. After a minute or so Mina pulls away from the kiss and says,” You can move now,” 
You begin to move slowly in the beginning. You tried different angles to find Mina’s most sensitive spot. Moans filled the room, louder every time you hit a certain spot. Pleasure building up Mina wanted more,
“Harder, you can go harder,” Mina managed to say in between her moans. Obliging with her commands your thrusts get harder. It was truly a sight to take in, Mina’s tits bouncing out of control, her moans loud enough to be heard by your neighbors, and the most erotic expression on her face. 
“Ahh fuck! Keep going! Oh my fucking god,” All sorts of obscenities were coming out of Mina’s mouth, her elegant image was being destroyed and you were the reason for it. 
You couldn’t hold on much longer but you didn’t want it to end. Without pulling out, you picked Mina up, holding her in your arms as you continued to pound her. Your dick now hitting much deeper. 
“Oh fuck! Keep going, I need you so badly!” Mina moaned as her hands gripped onto your back, nails digging in, and her legs on your hands as you thrust into her.  
After thrusting into Mina’s tight pussy for many minutes, “CUMMING!” Mina screams as she squirts all over your cock. Your dick slips out of her and is now coated with her liquid. 
Soon recovering from her orgasm still in your arms she whispers something that you didn’t expect to hear. “Let me ride you,” 
It was a shocking suggestion but one that you welcomed. You set her down on the bed and join her on the bed, She is now sitting on you, her legs on each side of your body. Her pussy lips are right above your cock. 
Not wasting much time, Mina pushes your cock into her, it wasn’t that hard as now she was a little more relaxed once it was fully in she began bouncing on it like no tomorrow. She was amazing, it was like nothing you had ever felt, the way she moved was immaculate. 
Mina leans down to kiss you as she continues to ride your cock. Given how much her pussy was throbbing it wouldn’t be much longer before she was cumming all over your cock again. 
You grab a hold of her ass and push her down harsher, it takes her by surprise causing her to yelp. You were thrusting into Mina’s G-spot causing her to scream in pleasure. The room was filled with nothing but the sound of skin slapping and the profanities that came out of Mina’s mouth. 
“Fuck, I’m cumming, I’m cumming,” Mina warned this time before she orgasmed all over your cock again but this time you didn’t stop. 
“F-fuck.. I can’t- ‘s too much,” Mina cried, tears staining her pretty cheeks as you continued to thrust into her even though she just came
 “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Mina cried, a clear stream of liquid gushing out from her pussy
“There we go, that’s a good fucking girl,” you praised, thrusts getting sloppier as you approached your second orgasm. “God baby, you’re gripping me so hard. Gonna cum in that tight little pussy okay?” 
Mina’s head was so empty, nodding absentmindedly as her eyes threatened to close shut. “Fuck” you groaned loudly, bottoming out inside her and allowing your seed to fill you up. Some of it dripped down your thigh as he pulled out.
Mina was panting hard in an attempt to catch your breath, the body still spasming as you let her fall limp against your chest. “you’re a meanie,” Mina pouted tiredly, feeling your pussy flutter at the newfound emptiness.
“I know I am baby, but you did so good, took it so well” you chuckled, gripping the flesh of her ass as you kissed softly down the delicate skin on her neck.
After both of you came down from the high of your orgasms, you finally realized what just happened and how big this was. 
“Mina, this means that we are dating, right? Because I don’t think I could ever face you as anything but your boyfriend after what we just did,” you said, your voice trembling slightly with the weight of your words.
Mina looked up at you, her eyes softening as she took in the seriousness of your expression. She reached out, cupping your face in her hands, and smiled. "Yes, it does. I want us to be together. I’ve wanted it for a long time."
Relief and joy flooded through you, and you leaned down to kiss her again, this time with a sense of certainty and commitment. The kiss was tender, full of promises for the future.
The next morning, you woke up with Mina in your arms, her presence a comforting warmth against your side. The sunlight filtered through the curtains, casting a soft glow over the room. Mina stirred, blinking sleepily as she looked up at you.
"Good morning," she whispered, her voice still husky with sleep.
"Good morning," you replied, brushing a strand of hair from her face. "How are you feeling?"
"Happy," she said simply, snuggling closer. "And a little scared, but mostly happy."
You nodded, understanding the mix of emotions. "Me too. But we’ll figure it out, together."
She smiled, her fingers tracing patterns on your chest. "Yes, together."
The weeks that followed were a whirlwind of adjustments. You had to navigate your new relationship while maintaining professionalism at work. There were moments of awkwardness, but also moments of pure bliss as you both found your rhythm.
You and Mina kept your relationship private, sharing it only with those closest to you. Jihyo was ecstatic when she found out, giving you both a knowing smile and a heartfelt hug. The other members were equally supportive, happy to see Mina truly happy.
One evening, after a particularly long day, you and Mina found yourselves on the company rooftop, a favorite spot for a quiet escape. The city lights twinkled below, and the cool breeze provided a perfect backdrop for a heart-to-heart conversation.
"Can you believe how far we’ve come?" Mina mused, leaning against you.
"It feels surreal," you admitted, wrapping an arm around her. "But I wouldn’t change a thing."
She turned to face you, her expression serious. "I know this won’t always be easy. There will be challenges, both personal and professional. But I want to face them with you."
"We will," you assured her, kissing her forehead. "One step at a time."
As the night grew darker, you both sat there, comfortable in the silence and each other's company, knowing that no matter what came next, you were in it together.
927 notes · View notes
hoshifighting · 4 months
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Hello, may request smut reaction from Seventeen watching their s/o(reader) wearing a sun dress??
Seventeen reaction to you using a sundress
a/n: aww so lovely, I loved this request <3
Seungcheol
 you know, Seungcheol thinks summer is the absolute best time of the year, and it’s all because of your sundresses. the moment you step out in one, he can’t help but grin like a kid on Christmas morning. It’s like the sun gets a little brighter, and his energy just skyrockets. he’ll tell you, “you know, I’m pretty sure your sundresses make summer even better!” with a playful wink that makes you blush.
Jeonghan
when you wear a sundress around Jeonghan, he just can’t stay quiet. It’s like you’ve put on some magical pheromone perfume, and he’s drawn to you like a moth to a flame. he’ll sidle up to you, whispering, “you really know how to make it impossible for me to stay away, don’t you?” and you can feel the warmth of his breath on your ear, making your heart race.
Joshua
 will spend the whole day showering you with compliments, loving how you get all shy with each one. “u look absolutely stunning in that dress,” he’ll say, his eyes sparkling with genuine admiration. he can’t get enough of seeing you blush, and you can’t help but smile at his sweet words.
Junhui
 when you step out of the closet in your sundress, Junhui turns as red as a tomato. he can’t stop staring, completely mesmerized by how pretty you look. “you’re so beautiful,” he manages to say, and his blush is so contagious that you find yourself giggling and blushing along with him.
Hoshi
 sees you in your sundress and immediately rushes to change his shirt. he wants to find something that matches perfectly with your outfit. “we’ve got to look good together, right?” he says with a big, goofy grin.
Wonwoo
Wonwoo wants to see every angle of your sundress. “Give me a twirl,” he says, his eyes lighting up as you spin around. “Absolutely gorgeous.” He’s not one for many words, but the way he looks at you says it all.
Woozi
 Woozi’s mind races, thinking about how he could write a song about you and that sundress – just like ruby. the way the light hits you, the soft fabric, the summer vibe—it’s all so inspiring. “you look amazing,” he says, his eyes thoughtful. “I think I’ve got an idea for a new song…”
Minghao
 Minghao appreciates every detail of your dress—the tone, the cloth, the pattern, and especially how it fits you so perfectly. “this dress was made for you,” he says, examining the way it moves. his appreciation for beauty is evident in his admiring gaze.
Mingyu
 Mingyu grabs his camera the moment he sees you. “hold still,” he says, leading you to a spot with flowers and dappled sunlight. he takes countless photos, capturing your every smile and twirl. “you’re my muse,” he says, showing you the stunning shots.
Seokmin
 Seokmin always treats you like a princess, but when you wear that sundress, he takes it up a notch. “don’t lift a finger,” he insists, carrying everything for you. his protectiveness is sweet, and he constantly checks to make sure you’re comfortable and happy.
Seungkwan
there’s something about that sundress that stirs something new in Seungkwan. “you look... incredible,” he says, his voice soft with awe. he compliments how the skirt flows and how the straps sit perfectly on your shoulders, his eyes filled with admiration.
Vernon
 Vernon doesn’t say much at first, just a quiet “wow” under his breath. But later, maybe the next day, he mentions it casually. “that dress looked really good on you yesterday,” he says, his words simple but sincere. you know he means it from the way he says it.
Chan
 Chan is so impressed by how you look in that sundress that he immediately starts searching online for more. “I’ve got to get you more of these,” he says, excited. “you look amazing.” It’s clear he’s found his new favorite look for you. 
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Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 13: The Regrets Are Useless] [Series Finale]
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A/N: Below are your final predictions. Let's see how you did... 🥰
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Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍
Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon™️, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes.
Series title is a lyric from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.
Chapter title is a lyric from: “Whatsername” by Green Day.
Word count: 6.1k
💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜
Rain pours outside the cabin, mist-shrouded pine trees and still dark water, a place in southern Oregon called Lake of the Woods. The twin-sized bed with a thin foam mattress was once used by kids attending summer camp, capture the flag and s’mores, hikes and scary stories, but now the children are ghosts and the monsters are real, stumbling down streets and lurking in dark places, licking blood from what’s left of their lips.
Aemond is here but he’s also not, a castaway on an island where the world never ended, his hands in your hair as you straddle him, your hips moving tentatively, his lips and teeth at your throat, the sharp points of his canines like fangs.
“Am I doing this right?” you murmur doubtfully. “I feel like I’m definitely not doing this right…”
“Shh, you’re great, you’re incredible.”
“I’m sorry I don’t know how to do everything already, I’m sorry you have to teach me—”
“Stop,” Aemond commands, a sharp sigh through your hair. “I love this. I love you. I want to teach you things until the day I die.”
The nervous tension in your muscles unravels—peddles thrown into water, campfire smoke vanishing into indigo night—and now his hands are on your hips, steadying you, guiding you. You link your fingers around the back of his neck and try to find a cadence that isn’t uncomfortable, ungainly, effortful. You wanted to try this. You want to experience everything with him.
“Take your time,” Aemond is saying like it’s difficult for him to keep a train of thought, his eye closed, his cheeks flushed, blood-colored blooms like a dusk sky. “I’m fine down here, don’t worry about me…”
Rain drums against the windows; lightning flashes in the sky and thunder growls. From the front porch of one of the other cabins, you can hear the indistinct droning of conversations and Aegon strumming the acoustic guitar he brought from the beach house. It’s something you’ve overheard him singing before, one of his strange midcentury darlings, a song that should be too old for him to know the words to.
“All you big and burly men who roll the trucks along
Better listen, you’ll be thankful when you hear my song
You have really got it made if you’re haulin’ goods
Any place on earth but those Haynesville Woods…”
Your skin gleams with a cool sheen of sweat; there is a draft through the cabin walls that makes you shiver as you cling to Aemond. You roll your hips a certain way and he moans—suddenly, involuntarily—and you know you’ve found the right rhythm.
“It’s a stretch of road up north in Maine
That’s never ever ever seen a smile
If they’d buried all them truckers lost in them woods
There’d be a tombstone every mile
Count ‘em off, there’d be a tombstone every mile…”
Aemond is kissing you deeply, desperately, trembling hands and gasping shallow breaths. And there is not just euphoria written into the lines of his face; there is disorientation, there is wonder. He barely manages: “Alright…um…if you want me to last longer than about thirty more seconds, you should probably slow down…”
“No,” you tease, grinning as you bite at his full lips.
“When you’re loaded with potatoes and you’re headed down
You’ve got to drive the woods to get to Boston town
When it’s winter up in Maine, better check it over twice
That Haynesville road is just a ribbon of ice…”
Aemond cries out, louder than you’ve ever heard him before—you’ve never had privacy, you’ve never truly been alone—and then again, a helpless ecstatic sound, pleasure so overwhelming it almost starts to feel like pain.
“Quiet!” you whisper, giggling, touching two fingers to his mouth. “Everyone’s going to hear you.”
“Oh my God,” Aemond says. He falls back onto the mattress and brings you with him, his arms wrapped around you, kissing your cheeks and your forehead as the two of you lie there panting and entangled, his blue eye astonished. “Okay, okay, I need a minute. I think I just burst an aneurysm.”
“I killed you?” you purr with feigned distress, basking in your conquest.
“You can kill me whenever you want. You can kill me five times a day.”
“When you’re talking to a trucker that’s been haulin’ goods
Down that stretch of road in Maine they call the Haynesville Woods
He’ll tell you that dying and going down below
Won’t be half as bad as driving on that road of ice and snow…”
Aemond stares up at the ceiling—a steep gable roof, a motionless fan—and now you can tell he’s thinking about his family again, discorporate screams, misplaced trust. Otto Hightower’s bones were found in the shower, meaning he likely died before or not long after their power failed and water would have run out in the municipal system. They were probably killed before you and Aemond ever met, distant galaxies lightyears away, remote long-dead stars. And so all the blood you paid to get to California was wasted.
“Do you ever think about the people you have saved?” you ask gently as your fingertips trace the ridge of his scar. “You stitched yourself back together. You healed Aegon’s burns. You sutured Cregan’s arm. You got me and Rio down from that transmission tower.”
“I guess I did,” Aemond says, but his voice is ambivalent, as if none of these things count. He has not found someplace safe for you yet. His job is not finished; his triumphs may only be temporary.
“Aemond…back in Pennsylvania…why did you decide to help us?”
“Luke spotted you guys, and we all talked it over. If it had just been Rio, honestly, I wouldn’t have taken the chance. A man his size, and possibly armed…could be trouble, you know? But I figured since he was traveling with a woman and you seemed to be with him by choice, he was probably okay. And then when we first met, he was so protective of you…didn’t want me touching you, didn’t leave you alone…I realized he had to be a good guy.”
“He was,” you say solemnly. I was supposed to remind him about the racks. I was supposed to warn him. But you didn’t warn Rio about what was waiting to kill him in that sand-swept grocery store in Winnemucca, just like you didn’t warn Jace about radiation or Baela about the way the rungs of the ladder that ran up the side of the grain bin were rusted and creaking, and maybe there is more than enough blame to go around.
“And then after Battle Mountain, as soon as we found the gasoline and ammo, I knew we had to go back for you. It hit me all at once. I couldn’t protect you by leaving you with Rio and Cregan. And I couldn’t let you go. I’ve never had something like this before. I didn’t know it existed. I told the others we were turning around, and Aegon said: Thank fucking God. Rhaena took off sprinting towards the car.” Then Aemond kisses you again, but tenderly this time, slowly, like you’ll have forever and there’s no need to rush. “I’m going to get you to Odessa. I’m going to take you somewhere safe.”
The rain is stopping; there are still a few hours of daylight left.
~~~~~~~~~~
“Hey, Chip Skylark. Check it out,” Aegon says, grinning at you from where he’s sprawled on the wet dock and smoking a cigarette, wearing his neon green plastic sunglasses, his left leg finally freed from its bandages and on full display. You’re all wearing the same things, stolen t-shirts and shorts, sweatshirts at night when it gets cold, sneakers you can walk hundreds of miles in; but Aegon won’t give up his Sperry Bahamas. “It’s nature’s tattoo.”
You sit down beside him and admire the scar tissue, red knots and white cords, jagged terrain like a mountain range, organic highways and bridges and trails. “It’s a roadmap.”
“That’s appropriate.”
You’ve been traveling on foot for two weeks since Criston’s white Tahoe ran out of gas and was abandoned in the town of Mad River, California. Now you are only about ten miles from Odessa, close enough to reach in half a day but too far to get into town before nightfall. This time tomorrow you’ll be there, and it will either be a haven or a wasteland, and if Rio’s parents’ community in Odessa has disappeared then so has your last idea for where to go. Absentmindedly, you skate your fingerprints over the bumps and grooves of Aegon’s leg like a blind man reading braille. He shifts and clears his throat; you’ve made him uncomfortable somehow. You lift your hand away.
“I’m sorry, does that hurt?”
“Nah. I can’t really feel anything besides pressure. The nerve endings got fried.”
“Oh.” But now you don’t know what you did to upset him. Aegon doesn’t provide an explanation. Down the dock a ways towards the shore, Rhaena is reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and listening to the pink Sony Walkman formerly owned by a little girl named Ava. Inside whirls Green Day’s 2004 album American Idiot, which Aegon took from his bedroom at the beach house to add to his CD collection, a cultural archive, a gift for posterity. Cregan is teaching Daeron to fish with poles he found in one of the cabins; Helaena is bringing them worms. Aemond and Luke are gathering things dry enough to burn—books and wooden chairs from inside the cabins—and piling them up so Cregan can cook dinner once it’s caught.
“So,” Aegon says, changing the subject, scrutinizing you as he puffs on a Marlboro Gold. “Everything going okay?”
You know what he means; he must have heard Aemond earlier. “Yup.”
“Got it all figured out?”
“Sure did.”
“Great. I’m happy for you,” Aegon says, and yet there’s a twinge of melancholy he’s trying to hide. It must be hard for him; he and Daeron are the only single ones.
“We’ll find you some suitable candidates for your harem when we get to Odessa.”
He chuckles. “Oh, come on.”
“Guys, girls? Do you have a preference?”
He’s smiling wistfully down into the water, a dark rippling mirror. “I have too specific a preference, that’s the problem.”
“Yacht girls in bikinis. Golf cheerleaders.”
“There are no cheerleaders in golf, you yokel.”
“Okay, well…I’m sure you’ll be very popular with the lonely, traumatized, widowed women of the apocalypse.”
Aegon gazes morosely out over the lake. He pitches the end of his cigarette into the water, and your eyes catch briefly on the black ink of the tattoo on his forearm: It’s not over ‘til you’re underground. “I don’t know. I’ve been sober for two weeks and now everything is annoyingly clear.”
“What’s bothering you?”
He waits a while before he answers, evasive. “I’ve never been good at anything.”
“Everyone feels that way sometimes. Luke thinks he’s not good at anything either.”
“But Luke’s nice. I’m a rat bastard.”
You laugh. “You’re kind of nice, Aegon.”
“Yeah right.”
“No, seriously. I like being around you. You make me feel better. You’re like…” You ponder how to word it. “I feel like I could tell you whatever and not worry about being judged for it.”
He snorts. “As if you’ve ever done anything judgeable.”
You shrug, peering out over the lake. “I abandoned my family. I stopped sending them money, I stopped calling. And when everything happened…the zombies, the world ending…I didn’t even consider going back to Kentucky to try to help them. I went west with Rio instead. And now they’re probably all dead and it’s my fault. That’s evil. I couldn’t have gotten away with that level of betrayal. I must be cursed.”
Aegon is watching you, eyebrows raised. He has never heard this before. “But your family sucked, right?”
“Yeah,” you admit. “I think it would be hard to argue they didn’t.”
“So fuck ‘em,” Aegon says simply.
You smile at him, touched, grateful. “Okay. Fuck ‘em.”
“I’m relieved my family’s gone,” Aegon confesses, something so brutal he’d never tell anyone else. “I mean…I feel kind of bad about my mom and Criston. But as long as they were alive, I’d always be the person they raised. And if I could bring someone back, it wouldn’t be any of them. I’d pick Rio.”
“I would too,” you say softly, staring down at the faint burn marks on your palms from when you were stranded on that transmission tower with him, talking him out of suicide, so adamant that both of you were going to make it to Oregon. And you were wrong.
“So if you’re cursed, Pita Chips, sign me up because I’m right there with you.”
Rhaena pulls out an earbud and says to Aegon: “I don’t get this album.”
“What?!” he exclaims.
“It’s so good!” you concur. On the shore, Cregan is spearing several gutted rainbow trout on sticks so they can be roasted over the fire. Ice is gleefully gulping down fish organs.
Aegon continues: “Whatsername! St. Jimmy! Jesus of Suburbia!”
Rhaena blinks, glancing between you and Aegon. “But neither of you grew up in the suburbs.”
“It’s not about the suburbs, Rhaena!” Aegon replies with frenetic hand gestures. “It’s about being disillusioned and angry and failed by all the adults in your life, and self-medicating, and losing love every time you get a taste of it, and wanting to burn everything down and start over. It’s about hating the world and the world hating you back.”
“Okay, sure. I still don’t get it.”
You say: “You might have had too happy a childhood.” And you and Aegon burst out laughing.
“You guys are so weird,” Rhaena says, but she’s smiling. She stands up, gives Aegon back his Walkman, and walks to the end of the dock where Cregan is cooking the rainbow trout. Aemond and Daeron are gathering up the aluminum buckets found at the campground and set outside earlier today to collect rainwater. There is one five-pound bag of trail mix left to share, and then all the food is gone. If Cregan doesn’t kill something, you won’t eat.
“We should go help them with dinner,” you tell Aegon.
He groans. “Should we really?”
“Yeah. We should.”
“Fine.” He takes your hand when you offer it and struggles to his feet. Then you inhale a lungful of the scent of roasting trout, and startlingly powerful nausea punches through your stomach, so repellant you have to clamp a hand over your mouth to stop yourself from retching.
There has to be something wrong with the fish. It’s never smelled like that before.
Aegon seems baffled. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Does the trout smell right to you?”
Aegon sniffs the air like a labrador. “I guess…? I barely smell anything.”
“Well you probably destroyed your nose cells with all the coke.”
“That’s discriminatory. Addiction is a disease.” But his brow is furrowed with concern. “Seriously, are you okay? You look awful. Not like that. You know what I mean.”
“I’m fine.” You don’t feel fine; but everyone down by the fire is chatting and joking around nonchalantly, and surely if there actually was something wrong they would have noticed. “I’ll be back in a second.”
“Sure,” Aegon says, perplexed.
You hurry past the others and take refuge in the cabin you’re sharing with Aemond. Inside the trout smell isn’t so strong. You sit at the edge of the bed and suck in several deep breaths, trying to calm down, willing the confounding wave of nausea to pass.
Did I eat something bad, did I get bit by a spider or something…?
You are checking your arms and legs for little raised bitemarks when Helaena enters the cabin and shuts the door behind her. When she opens her burlap messenger bag to root around inside, you glimpse photographs she must have taken from the beach house, the frames left empty on the mantle of the fireplace. Then Helaena pulls out a pregnancy test, just one, Clearblue.
You gawk at it. “What are you doing?”
“You look sick,” Helaena says matter-of-factly.
“Yeah, but I don’t think it’s that.”
She is puzzled, wide innocent blue eyes. “Why not?”
“Well…I mean…that would be freakishly quick, wouldn’t it? Like…quick as in immediately. People can’t get pregnant the first time they have sex, right?”
“Huh. They really don’t have sex ed in Kentucky,” Helaena says, and leaves you alone with your pregnancy test. You don’t feel so nauseous anymore, but you sneak around the back of the cabin to take it anyway, because now you’re thinking about the possibility with a vividness you’ve never experienced before: a round blossoming belly and tiny handprints and Aemond cradling his child in his arms. And by the time you get the result, you aren’t even shocked. It feels like something that’s supposed to happen.
You and Aemond don’t have a moment alone together until after dark, sitting on the porch swing outside your cabin for first watch, everyone else asleep, Ice dozing serenely by your feet. The only sounds are the breeze through the pine trees, cool and damp, and the hoots of owls, and the chirping of crickets and cicadas.
“So guess what,” you say casually as moonbeams float rippling and fractured on the surface of the black-glass lake.
Aemond smiles drowsily, not expecting anything. “What?”
“In approximately eight months, I might be having your baby.”
At first, he doesn’t speak; he only studies the test when you hand it to him, and then looks at you like he’s not convinced you aren’t angry, like he can’t quite bring himself to believe that you’d want this with someone like him. “Are you afraid?”
“No,” you answer honestly. Maybe you should be, but you aren’t. “I’m hopeful. I feel like as soon as I realized it, everything got brighter. And now I’m thinking about the future instead of the past.” They’re not going to grow up like I did. They’re never going to think they aren’t loved. “What should we name it?”
“Not Otter.”
You laugh, trying to muffle it so you don’t wake anyone. Ice lifts her head and stares at you curiously, her shaggy grey ears straight up.
“I don’t know, I’m terrible with names,” Aemond says; and now he’s smiling again, a wide radiant smile, and you know he’s thinking about the future too. “Hope or Peace or something. Something happy. Something about starting over.”
You take his hand. “I can’t wait to start over with you.”
“Just one more day,” Aemond says.
One more day.
~~~~~~~~~~
“So what am I going to do in Odessa?” Luke asks as the eight of you—nine, if you count Ice—trek eastbound on Route 140. You are about five miles from Lake of the Woods and halfway to your destination. It’s only 80 degrees and overcast, good walking weather, although there is a looming threat of rain, occasional rogue drops and far-off rumbles of thunder. “Everyone has valuable skills except me. Chips has great aim and can build things, Daeron has his compound bow, Aemond is basically a doctor, Rhaena is learning how to shoot guns and treat injuries…”
“Aegon has skills?” Cregan jokes, casting him a good-natured grin. Aegon acts like he’s going to whack Cregan with his golf club, which he’s spinning around haphazardly. Both his Marlin .22 and acoustic guitar are slung across his back. There aren’t many bullets left, but everyone has a few.
“Aegon can navigate,” Luke says. “And probably impregnate ten women a day. Very useful during a population crisis.”
“We don’t need that in the gene pool,” Rhaena notes.
“You wrote stories in college, right?” you ask Luke.
“Screenplays, yeah,” he says hesitantly. “But I wouldn’t say I was super talented or anything.”
Aegon claps him on the shoulder “Well I’ve got good news for you, kid. A big chunk of the world’s screenwriters are probably dead now. So you’ll look so much better in comparison!”
“Thanks…?” Luke says.
“What I mean is,” you continue. “You could write books for people to read, since there aren’t really libraries or Barnes & Nobles anymore. And you could interview people to get their life stories and then record them so they aren’t lost forever. The next generation should know what the world was like before the zombies.”
“Yeah,” Aegon says as he pets Ice. “Someone has to tell them about blue raspberry Icees, right Blue Raspberry Icee?”
“Maybe,” Luke says thoughtfully, and you notice that he’s smiling a little.
Ice begins whining, and there is a rustling in the woods to the north, low-hanging branches of bigleaf maple and dogwood and Douglas fir trees being forced aside. “Zombie!” Aegon announces, pointing. Immediately, Daeron nocks an arrow and then releases it, and the figure draped in the shifting shadows of foliage drops to the ground.
“Hey Aegon,” Daeron says after a few seconds.
“Yeah?”
“That was actually a zombie, right?”
“Totally,” Aegon replies, but he doesn’t sound certain.
Aemond turns to his older brother accusingly. “How sure are you?”
“Like…50%.”
“Aegon!” Rhaena cries, petrified, and everyone rushes off the road to investigate.
Blessedly, the felled creature is long-dead, a former park ranger whose tan uniform hangs in gore-stained tatters. The nametag reads: Underwood. The arrow pierced its soft rotting skull and remains lodged there until Daeron pulls it out to be used again, giving Aegon an impatient scowl as he does.
“Close call,” Aegon tells him. “Think they would have charged you as an adult?”
“Lord almighty, that gave me a scare,” Cregan says, chuckling. Helaena spies a blackberry bush and begins picking a handful, and Cregan goes over to join her. Rhaena and Luke are telling Aegon that he needs to be more responsible and should have waited for Luke to confirm it was a zombie with his binoculars. You exchange a glance with Aegon: he rolls his eyes, you offer a smirk of commiseration. Ice is already trotting back towards Oregon Route 140.
You haven’t told anyone else that you’re pregnant yet, but eventually they’re going to notice that Aemond won’t leave your side. He sighs and asks you: “Have you had enough of this little field trip?”
“Definitely.” You head for the road. Aemond walks with you, placing you not on his left side but on his right where he can see you. You ask, smiling: “You don’t trust me to watch your blind side anymore, huh?”
“I prefer the view the way it is.”
You are only a few steps from the black artery of pavement that cuts through the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, a 114,000-acre preserve of wilderness that somehow—although it is 2,500 miles away—reminds you a bit of eastern Kentucky, endless emerald forests, the omnipotent shadows of mountains. And because you are on Aemond’s right side, he can look down and see something just in front of you on the earth strewn with knobby roots and pine needles and dead leaves.
“Don’t!” he shouts, snatching your forearm and yanking you backwards, and he’s never touched you like this before—so forcefully, so violently—and you stumble and almost fall, and your arm burns and aches where he grabbed you, and people are asking what’s going on, and you peer up at Aemond with confusion, fear, mistrust.
“Why…?”
And then you hear it rustling from the same place where you were standing a moment ago. The others yelp and dash out of the way as the snake escapes into the woods, a drab spotted olive green, a rattling tail, an angular skull like an arrowhead.
“Aemond?” you say, because he hasn’t moved, hasn’t made a sound. He looks down, and your gaze follows his. On his right calf, just a few inches above his ankle, are two small puncture wounds from the snake’s fangs, each dribbling a thin river of blood.
“Northern Pacific rattlesnake,” Helaena says, her voice shaking, tears welling up in her horrified eyes. “Venomous.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Aemond has one arm draped across Cregan’s shoulders, the other over Aegon’s. He’s moving slower, or is that just your imagination? His steps are less steady, his breathing more labored. His leg is swelling, a deep blue phantom of a bruise spreading beneath his skin, so tight it looks like it might split open.
“We’re almost there,” you say; you keep saying it, because hopefully that will make it true. “We’re only a few miles from Odessa, and we’ll find people who can help us.”
“Aemond, you’re a doctor,” Luke says.
Aemond’s voice is weak, pained, hazy. “I’m not a doctor.”
“You know what I mean!” Luke yells, frantic. “How do we fix you? What can we do?”
“Nothing,” Aemond says listlessly. “There’s nothing you can do without a hospital. I’ll either get better or I won’t.”
“People in Odessa will know how to help,” you insist. “They’re outside all the time, they hike, they hunt, they fish, they’ve seen snakebites before. They must have. They’ll have treatments.”
“Aemond,” Rhaena breathes, and you turn to see there is blood running from his nostrils. You scream, and Aemond touches his fingers to his face and then watches as they come away bloody.
“Put me down,” he tells Cregan and Aegon.
“No—” you begin, but then his knees buckle and he’s on the pavement anyway, blood pouring from his nose and his lips, blood filling up his right eye. Cregan walks to the shoulder of the highway, his head in his hands. Aegon stays beside Aemond, and you’re kneeling there with him, both of you using anything you have to clean the blood from Aemond’s face: the corners of your shirts, your bare hands.
He’s covered in blood, you think. Just like Jace, Baela, Rio.
“Can’t clot,” Aemond is murmuring. “The venom causes coagulotoxicity. Internal bleeding too. I feel like…like there’s all this pressure inside…”
Rhaena is taking Aemond’s pulse like he taught her to, fingers on the underside of his wrist. “It’s really faint,” she says quietly.
You grab a plastic Gatorade bottle filled with rainwater out of your backpack and tilt it against Aemond’s crimson-stained lips. He manages to swallow some of it. “Aemond, listen to me,” you say as calmly as you can. “You’re so close. We’re almost there. I need you to hang on a little longer.”
He shakes his head, slow dizzy motions. “It doesn’t matter.”
“They might have doctors in Odessa.” This is a fantasy, but you can’t resist it.
“Even if they do, there won’t be any antivenom. And it’s too late anyway.”
“No,” you say savagely, a sob ripping through your throat. “We didn’t cross 3,000 miles so you could die here. I won’t let you. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not fair.”
“Aegon,” Aemond says, reaching for him, drained and fumbling.
Aegon catches his hand. “I’m here.”
His eye—crystalline blue corrupted with red, blood in clear water—drifts to his brother. “You have to get her to Odessa. You have to help take care of everyone.”
Aegon is weeping. “Man, it’s supposed to be you. How can I still be here if you aren’t?”
“You can do this,” Aemond says.
“I’ll try.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, Aemond,” Aegon says, then crawls away on his hands and knees and collapses on the pavement, gutted, inconsolable, hemorrhaging grief instead of gore.
Everyone is crying and touching Aemond—his face, his hands—saying goodbye, accepting tasks, and they come away stained with red, and rain has begun to fall from a dark sky growling with thunder. Rhaena takes his medical kit. Helaena takes his Glock and stows it away in her messenger mag. Then Aemond looks for you, and now you are alone with him here in the middle of the highway, two golden lines on black asphalt, and with your thumbprint you whisk away the rivulet of blood that is spilling from his eye.
“You’re going to be okay,” he whispers as his heart fails, as his lungs fill with blood instead of air, as his pores leak rust and ruin. “Odessa will be everything we hoped for. I just won’t be there with you.”
“You can’t leave me,” you’re saying as rain patters against the road. I left my family and now my family is leaving me.
“Love,” he sighs, almost too softly to hear. “I don’t want to.”
You lie down on the pavement with him and rest your head on his chest, feel it rise and fall beneath you as the rain descends in sheets. And then Aemond exhales, deep and rattling, and he never tastes oxygen again, never speaks, never touches you. You don’t move from where you’re lying. You’re there until you’re drenched to the bones with rain and the world is a cold mist of pine trees, of wilderness, and you can never go back to any of the places you’ve been before, you can never get back the people you’ve left there.
Aegon is shaking you. “We have to keep moving,” he chokes out through tears.
You reply without looking at him. “I’m giving up now.”
“No you’re fucking not. We have to walk to Odessa.”
“Everyone’s dead in Odessa. Everyone’s dead everywhere. I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to stay in a world like this.”
On the periphery of your vision, you can see Aegon glancing at the others, standing just off the highway and under the canopy of the pine trees. He seems defeated, he seems lost.
Then suddenly Aegon turns back to you. “Hey!” he screams, so loudly you jolt upright, your palms on wet pavement, rain dripping from your hair. “I’m still alive. You’re still alive. This isn’t over yet. I said I would get you to Odessa, so that’s where we’re going. Stand up. Right now.”
Aegon holds out his hand. Thunder booms, lightning strobes, and then you take it. He pulls you to your feet and hesitates, as if he didn’t think he would get this far. Then he throws his arms around you, a crushing desperate embrace, a wordless devotion, a silent vow, sobbing into the curve of your neck, tasting the copper and iron of his brother’s blood on your skin.
“We have to keep moving,” he says again, like an apology, like he understands how impossible it feels. “The storm’s getting worse. It’ll be too dark to see soon.”
“We can’t leave him alone like this.”
“That’s not Aemond anymore,” Aegon pleads. “Aemond’s gone. And he would want us to live.”
Now the others are here on the road too: Daeron, Helaena, Cregan, Rhaena, Luke, Ice whimpering and licking scarlet stains of blood off your hands. You’re all holding each other; you’re all any of you have left. Cregan carries Aemond off the pavement and on a patch of grass alongside Route 140, the seven of you cover his body with branches of pine needles and white petals from dogwood trees. Rhaena is the first person to begin walking again, heading east. One by one you follow her. The downpour is torrential; if you are attacked now, you are nearly blind. Aegon stays beside you no matter how slow your steps are. You think if he disappears, you will too; the strings that tie you to the earth will fray and unweave and your bones will turn to mist, your voice will only be the wind howling down mountainsides. You have no way of knowing how long you’ve been walking or how many miles are left. You wonder what will happen to Aemond’s child if there is nothing for you in Odessa.
The rain is stopping. Now you can hear crows, woodpeckers, formations of geese honking in a foggy sky and squirrels scrabbling up tree trunks. Falcons perch watchfully on dead power lines. Rare aisles of sunlight are breaking through dissipating clouds.
They rise up out of the verdant jungle, a tangle of Pacific ninebark and blue elderberry: four figures in green camouflage, two men and two women, all wearing tactical sunglasses and wielding assault rifles, M16s you’re fairly sure, automatic and with 20-round magazines. Daeron moves to nock an arrow and then stops when he sees you’ve put up your hands. The others follow your lead: palms empty, willingly surrendering.
It’s them, you think dazedly. The people in Odessa. They’re alive, they’re real.
“Please cooperate and hand over all your weapons,” one of the women says, fifties, muscular, alert hawkish eyes.
No one moves. Then you unholster your Beretta M9—received from the U.S. Navy almost exactly five years ago, a different lifetime, a different world—and hold it out to the woman in your open palm. And now everybody else is giving their weapons over too: Aegon and Luke’s .22s, Rhaena’s Ruger, the spare Ruger and Aemond’s Glock hidden in Helaena’s burlap messenger bag, Daeron’s compound bow, Cregan’s axe. Ice peers up at Cregan anxiously, her yellowish eyes wide, but she wags her tail when he runs one of his large, calloused hands over her rain-soaked fur.
Aegon is still clutching his golf club. One of the men stares at him, incredulous. “You can keep that, son,” he says.
The woman nods to the men. “Nick and Glen will escort you five miles up the road, and then return your weapons. We ask that you keep moving and do not turn around. We don’t want trouble, but we can defend ourselves. Don’t think you can double back tomorrow and try to loot us or anything. This is your only warning. Do you understand?”
Aegon nudges your hand with his knuckles, then taps you harder when at first you’re too shellshocked to notice. You have to explain. You have to tell them why you’re here.
“I…I…” You begin, unable to make the words leave your lips, rats from a sinking ship, plummeting bodies from a burning building. Here you stand on a precipice, and with so many other people to save. “I served in the Navy with Bryan Osorio. We left Saratoga Springs together. He told me it would be safe here.”
Now they are interested. Slowly, the woman lowers her M16. “You know the Osorios?”
“I do.” I’ve known them for half a decade.
“Could any of them identify you and verify what you’re saying?”
“His wife, Sophie. She’s blonde, and she likes elephants, and she had a baby recently.”
The woman is scanning the faces behind you. “And where’s Bryan?”
“He’s not here anymore,” you say, and now you’re sobbing again. Aegon is squeezing your shoulder, his head bowed. “I’m sorry. I wanted to help him get home. I was supposed to warn him, I was supposed to stop it from biting him, but I didn’t and now he’s gone—”
“Okay, okay.” The woman motions for you to calm down, but her voice is kind. “Who are these guys? Your colleagues, your friends?”
“They’re my family.”
“You can vouch for them?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll all submit to searches for bitemarks?”
“Yes.”
The woman turns to the men she called Nick and Glen. “Take them inside, will you? Get the ID verified and then we’ll process everyone.”
“Got it,” the older man says. And then, to you and your companions: “Follow me.”
Nick and Glen lead you into the forest, the canopy of pine needles so thick the daylight turns to dusk, and you think of lightning bugs, of firelight, of drinking Guinness on the beach with Rio on Diego Garcia. There are several patrols, groups of four or five, that approach to stop you until they see Nick and Glen and wave you through. Then the trees open into a meadow of buttercups and daisies and pink fawn lilies, and beyond that an immense village, some houses decades old, others currently being constructed with logs from pine trees. There are hundreds of people tending to livestock, hanging up laundry to dry on clotheslines, digging in gardens, making candles and soap and butter. There are children playing without fear, giggling as they chase after scampering dogs, challenging each other to games of kickball and Uno.
In front of one of the houses that predates the apocalypse, brick with a screened-in porch, there is a small blonde woman standing in a garden, smiling and chatting with a middle-aged couple. The baby she carries against her chest in a blue sling has dark curly hair like Rio’s.
Sophie and the baby are here. They’ve been alive the whole time.
You rest a palm on your belly without realizing you’re doing it. “What happens now?” you ask Aegon.
“The rest of our lives.”
It is unimaginable, it is impossible, it is so full of luminous potential you feel like the light will spill out of your pores like blood, it’s an oasis, it’s a second chance, it’s an island in the vast lethal untamed blue of the Indian Ocean.
“Let’s go,” Aegon says softly, taking your hand and leading you across the field of wildflowers, kaleidoscopic blooms in the last days of summer.
212 notes · View notes
slutforsjy · 6 months
Text
“Can I be Layla’s Mom?”
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Synopsis: You made Jake mad (?) and uncomfortable with your banner, so he invited you backstage to talk about it 😇
Genre: SMUT!
Pairing: Idol!Jake X Engene Fem!Reader
Warnings: Making out, blowjob, deepthroating, cum eating, spit kink, grinding, almost sex, pervert jake, nasty jake, dom jake, PURE FILTH!
Word Count: 3k +
a/n this is my first time writing pls bare with me 😭 also eng is not my first language so….rb and comment if you enjoy it 🥰
You and your friend, swept up in the pulsating energy of the crowd, singing along with your favorite group, etching memories that will forever linger in your mind. The venue is a kaleidoscope of colors and sounds, with flashing lights illuminating the stage and electrifying the atmosphere.
Attending a concert had always been a dream, lured by the promise of electrifying vibes, enchanting ambiance, and the palpable connection with the performers, especially your favorite, Jake.
There were so many banners and signs around for enhypen to read and yours were the one that caught the attention of the members.
It says….
“JAKE! CAN I BE LAYLA’S MOM?” with a picture of him and Layla that he posted on twitter.
For the rest of the members they thought it was funny, but for Jake, it sparked a different reaction. The moment he saw you waving that banner, it was at first funny to him at least, until his gaze traveled from your face down to your tight ass dress pushing your breast out a little bit, his reaction shifted.
You tried to catch his attention more as you started jumping, shouting, singing, and dancing not knowing how your boobs wiggle in front of him. His jaw clenched at the sight and you didn’t miss the way he licked his lips. Of course, your fans around you went crazy duh 🙄 but for you? you can’t seem to read what was that expression.
As the concert drew to a close, with each member delivering their heartfelt messages to the crowd, your eyes remained fixated on Jake. When he finished speaking, you seized the opportunity to capture his attention once more, by showing him your banner. However, instead of amusement, you sensed a flicker of irritation in his demeanor. You saw him cock his head looking annoyed by your actions as he diverted his gaze over to the other side of the stage and started waving at the fans instead.
You got worried, fearing that your playful gesture may have crossed a line and maybe it’s not an inappropriate banner for you to show him in the first place. But you just shrugged it off as you put your banner inside your bag and just enjoy the rest of the concert.
Everything inside the venue happens so quickly, and clearly, you don’t want to go home especially that your bias is mad at you. During their encore, you never miss a time when jake steals a look from you. He would look at you with a sharp eyes and then look at somewhere else when you catch him looking directly at you.
At this point you are so worried maybe because you truly made him uncomfortable with that stupid banner.
You’re so stupid!
Consumed by guilt and disappointment, you didn’t enjoy the rest of the concert. You really feel like crying, wanting to apologize to Jake which makes it worse as the thought of never meeting him again hits you and you’re never gonna have a chance to tell him that you’re sorry.
Once they bid their final goodbye, a wave of melancholy washed over you watching how the stage slowly closes hiding the seven most precious human beings for you.
“Bitch what was going on with you and jake?” you were jolted by your friend’s sudden question
See? Your friend noticed it too!
“Right? I really don’t know what I did wrong” you screamed, the weight of uncertainty pressing upon you.
“Dude he stares at you like he’s going to kill you” she says jokingly, attempting to lighten the mood.
“Damn! maybe i made him uncomfortable with my banner” your friend nodded noting how you didn’t use your banner at the latter part of the concert.
For the record, it wasn’t your intention to make anyone uncomfortable especially Jake, you made it for fun! even you friends and the other members find it funny. How is it not funny for Jake too!
As the crowd dispersed, your friends lingered for a final photo, offering a brief distraction from your swirling thoughts. Lost in the digital snapshots of the evening, you were startled by an unexpected interruption.
“Excuse me” he says tapping your shoulder.
You thought it was another engene asking you to take a photo of them but to your surprise you saw what is written in his shirt.
‘STAFF’
“Uhm sorry we’re actually done taking photo, we’ll head out quickly after this” you smiled at him.
You are about the go out of the venue when he calls you again.
“Uhm actually someone wants to see you…… at the backstage” You are so shocked and confused.
“W-what? Why?” your asked nervously
“Just go there, he just wants to talk to you” he then walked away shooting you a smile afterwards
“He?” both of you exclaimed
“Girl what the fuck is goin~?!” you cut your friend off and went immediately to follow the staff
You left your friend there and just shouted to her to just meet you at the hotel.
You’re so nervous walking towards the staff in front of you as he pointed at the door telling you to go inside.
Stopping in front of the door, heart racing, thinking if you should go inside or not.
Just by looking at the door, you think it is a storage room or whatever. You spent few minutes guessing what or WHO could be inside this room.
Once you got the courage to open the door, you were so shocked from what you see.
There you saw Jake,
manspreading, both arms on the head rest of the couch, staring at you with a smirk on his face, eyeing you up and down while licking his lips.
Wearing his soundcheck outfit earlier!
Your knees started trembling, seeing those gaze he gave you earlier at the stage as you nervously averted your gaze to look around the small room.
But this isn’t the time to be nervous, and so you brushed off your own thoughts and say hi and tell him how he did well.
“Hi Jake, i really enjoyed the concert, i can’t believe you called me i~” you were cutted as you heard him speak by his deep voice with thick accent
“come here” he commands while tapping his thigh
You blinked for a while as you look at him confused
“i said come here” his tone is very commanding and scary
You slowly walk towards him and he immediately grabbed your wrist and draw circles on it using his thumb
“so…” he paused looking at you directly in the eye
“you wanna be layla’s mom” that devilish smirk perked up on his beautiful lips once again
You gulp nervously at the question you knew that this was about the banner
“look Jake im sorry i didn’t mean to make you~” he shush you
“you know how hard it was for me to hide a fucking boner?” he raised his eyebrows at you
“what?” you ask sincerely looking at his bulge
He took your hand once again and guided it to palm his hard cock through his pants.
“JAKE!!” you shouted his name and step back a little bit taken aback from what he did.
GOD IT’S HUGE 😭
He smirked again from your reaction as he let go of your hands and quickly removed his glasses and leather jacket leaving him only with tank top perfectly flexing his biceps and showing his toned chest through the tight material.
You tried not to look at his body but failed anyways
“So” he licked his lips and started placing both of his hands at the back of his head, spreading his legs even more to pull you closer to him.
Youur mouth waters from the sight alone and jake noticed it and smirked again for the hundredth time.
“To be layla’s mom, first you should know how to suck my dick” he looked up to you waiting for your response
Your eyes widened from what you heard.
“WHAT?!!” you’re so confused right now
“can you make me feel good” palming his hard cock through his pants, once again biting his lips, and winking at you. “I want someone who can take care of my cock too, you think you can do that?”
This is guy is so perv but you love it. It’s not all the time that you could suck a dick like jake’s 🤷‍♀️
You don’t know what’s going on with your mind as you nodded to him slowly kneeling down and you put both of your hands on either side of his thighs
“that’s a good girl” he said patting your head as he tucked your hair behind your ears
You can’t really talk right now. All you can think of is HIS cock and the taste of his cum.
Without any hesitation you immediately reached for his pants unzipping it in no time. He lifted his lower body so you could pull down his pants together with his boxers.
You gulped at the sight in front of you, it’s average in length but what shocked you the most is its thickness, it’s fat FAT!
You tried to scan his fat cock a little bit more as you also noticed how veiny it is. Well this isn’t so shocking for you because you see how veiny his hands are.
You can’t help but to lick your lips as you can’t really wait to savour his cock. You’re basically drooling over his cock. “you like what you see baby? why don’t you show me how you like it hmm?”
You wasted no time putting your pretty lips around the tip of his cock
You hummed as you try to please him with only the head
He leaned against the couch and put his hands at the back of his head
HE IS SO HOT! you were so turned on at the sight of him looking down at you with smile, biting his lips and his armpit on full display.
You try to taste every inch of his fat cock starting from the head, you started sucking it like your life depends on it. He guided your hands into his balls implying you to massage it.
He can’t help but buck his hips wanting to hit your throat immediately.
After a few minutes of sucking and licking just the tip you gave it a few more peck while looking at him still looking down at you with a smirk as he caress your cheeks
You tilt your head and work on the base of his cock this time. You gave it a long lick from his balls to the top of its head. You could literally feel in your tongue the bumps of his veins running through his cock. HE TASTES SO GOOD!
“baby i want more, please suck it more” he whined getting boring with your way of pleasuring him.
You got sad cuz you want to take your time, to WORSHIP his cock. But this isn’t about you, so upon hearing his words you’re eager to please him more, to SATISFY him.
You started by spitting on top of his cock as you locked eye contact with him. You saw him nodding at you flashing his eyebrows encouraging you to do more.
You worked your mouth down on his pretty cock reaching the back of your throat in one go earning a few cuss from his him.
“fuck that’s it, so fucking tight and warm ahh..” he grabbed the back of your head and pushed it down a little bit more.
He guided you as you bobbed your head up and down aggressively until you choked out loud, causing you to immediately pull his hands off of your head and let go of his cock for a second.
You looked at him with teary eyes, catching your breath, signaling for a pause.
“im sorry baby did i go too hard?” he asked while tracing your lips with the head of his cock STILL smirking.
“just a few more, i know you can take it” he leaned down to lick the corner of your lips where your saliva is dripping and asked “right baby?”
damn he’s so hot and nasty 😵‍💫 but you like it. You like how he’s being rough with you
“please” he says with puppy eyes
and who are you to ignore his cock?
“stick your tongue out for me please”
As the cock slut you are you stuck your tongue out as he placed his heavy cock on top of your tongue rubbing it slowly.
You both stayed like this for a while feeling the heaviness of his cock while he says a few reminders.
“when i cum down this mouth i want you to swallow all of it, understood?” you badly want to make this the best blowjob he will ever get, so you immediately lick the tip of his cock as a response while nodding
“fuck” he hissed at your actions and pulled you out of his cock by your hair and held your chin up
“you can’t wait huh? you really want my cum?” he says slapping his cock against your cheeks
All you can do is to nod at him, your eyes watching how he hits your face with his cock tapping it all over your face harder and harder spreading his pre-cum
He teases you like this for a few seconds as you go after his dick sniffing it and catching it with your mouth
He chuckles while looking at you so desperate looking like a dog going after its toy “Slut!” he slapped it one last time against your cheeks and started patting your head
“good girl, now open up i’ll go hard okay?” he stands up, forcefully gripping your jaw using his one hand and spat on your mouth which you gladly took and swallow like it’s yours.
“god you’re making me crazy” without a warning he shoved his cock all the way in to your throat. You looked at him with teary eyes while he harshly fuck your throat like there’s no tomorrow.
He pulls out for a second to give you a break as he pats your head and caress your cheeks “so good for me, taking me so well”
“please fuck my mouth jakey” you beg
“oh baby i will” you try your best not to choke as he picked up his pace this time. You gripped around his legs as a support as he uses your mouth like a flesh light with every hard thrust letting a sinful moans and grunts from him.
You keep sucking, using your tongue to rub the underside of his dick that's filling up your mouth. He pulls your hair again causing you to moan around his dick and you close your eyes, only to feel a slap on your cheek.
You open your eyes and look up at him to see him looking down at you with a frown, hand still on your jaw. " You're gonna keep looking at me got it?" He said, his thrusts never faltering. You hummed in agreement and his smirk returns.
“ughh fuck this mouth so good for me” he thrusts slowly but deeper this time angling his hips.
“you like this huh? such a good girl for me yeah?” he asked mouth wide open and eyes squinting as pleasure takes over his body.
You stay like that for a few more minutes, unmoving as Jake uses your mouth for his pleasure, swallowing saliva and precum, until you feel his grip in your hair get tighter and his thrusts gets deeper.
“Im close baby, remember what i told you?” he says as his speed increases, the sounds of you choking and gagging bringing his climax ever closer.
You felt him grabbed your head with both of his hands as his thrusts started to get sloppy and shallow indicating for him to reach his climax.
Hearing his sexy moans and gasps made your pussy clench around nothing. So you tried to reach for your pants and work your own orgasm.
Jake is too lost on his mind to even notice how youre trying to pleasure yourself. With that he just continues to punish your pretty little mouth mercilessly.
“ah fuck! fuck! fuck! im cumming, ah” he cried so loud enough for people outside the room to hear
With few more thrust he buried your head against his cock, the tip of your nose hitting his pelvis as he shoot his load to the back of your throat as you hollow your cheeks even more getting all the cum out of his cock.
You looked at him head thrown back, furrowed eyebrows, mouth wide open moaning out loud, body twitching, and gasping for air. His face says it all.
You felt his dick twitch one last time as he shots his 6th cumshot in to your throat, some spilling down your mouth.
He thrusts one last time to make sure all of his cum goes down your throat.
“fuck” he fell down the couch sweat all over his face looking at you proudly as you showed him how you eat and swallow all of his load~draining him.
“fuck i came a lot, didn’t I?” he moves closer to your face as he brought his thumb to wipe off the remaining of his cum on your chin and shove it back inside your mouth.
You hummed sucking his thumb while looking at him, your pussy is now forgotten as you came just from tasting his seeds.
“good girl” you’ve lost count on how many times did Jake called you that. It boosts your ego.
You started getting up on your knees, and grabbed your things, and the reality just hits you now. You can’t process what just happened “jake i have to go, thank y~”
You were cut off once again
“wait” you glanced over him as you see him get something from his bag
He walk over you still with his cock hanging between his legs and hand you a piece of paper~with his contact number written on it.
You find him cute on how he just stood there, smiling at you like a puppy as if he didn’t just choked your life out earlier.
He leaned closer to your ear as he grabbed the back of your neck and whispered something to you
“i still don’t know your name, pretty” he said in a flirty and sexy tone making you wet once again.
You were about to say your name when you felt him bit your ears.
“Jake uhmm wait” you tried to stop him as his mouth went its way down to your neck sucking it desperately.
“mhmm jake please” you cried tilting your head to give him more access to your neck
It took a while before jake got his senses back as he stared at the mark on your neck proudly with a smirk.
“so…how do you want me to call you baby” he looked at your eyes
“y/n” you said voice shaking
“what a sexy name” he says with a raspy voice squeezing your ass up pressing your clothed pussy on his once again hard cock
“feel that y/n?” you moaned as you feel his cock against you with your pants the only boundary. At this point, both of you are so hungry and desperate for each other. You follow the rhythm of his body, grinding against him.
He grabed you by your head and started lapping, eating, devouring, the entirety of your mouth almost licking all parts of your face. Making you gasp and open your lips for him. But he doesn’t gave you time to catch your breath as he pushed his tongue inside your mouth feeling him suck on your tongue harshly. You placed both of your hands on his shoulder as you try to kiss him back with the same intensity. You continued for a few more minutes exchanging salivas while still grinding against each other until you heard a knock from the door calling for Jake.
You pulled back from the kiss and saliva dripped down your lips but Jake is too quick to catch it with his own tongue. Licking your chin all the way up to the tip of your nose. He groaned, disappointment evident from his face.
“Damn baby you’re so hot, but i need to go” he said while putting his Calvin Klein underwear back on together with his pants.
“call me by the number i gave you…” he thrusts in to you one last time…
“Im going to MAKE you a mom” he whispers pecking your lips one last time
Leaving you dumb and speechless
Leaving your pussy dripping from your second orgasm
Leaving you wanting for more
Leaving you curious about his last words~
THE END
HI! OMG thank you for reading this! I hope you enjoy 🥹
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justagalwhowrites · 9 months
Note
I saw this video and I feel like something like this would be fun to read! I have to ask would you ever consider writing a kidnapper!Joel fic?
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8Dfp6Na/
Hi Bestie!
So.... Yes :)
Not quite the vibe of the linked video but I hope you enjoy it!
Run Rabbit: Part One
It was just over a year after the world ended that you were captured by Joel and Tommy Miller. They're harsh, they're cold and they're killers. But, as a nurse, you're a valuable person to have around and they're not the worst thing wandering the wasteland that was the United States. And there might be more to these men than meets the eye.
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PLEASE READ ALL WARNINGS. Written as part of the @romana-after-dark Dead Dove December event (but posted late because it's impossible for me to make a deadline at the moment apparently.) This will be in two parts.
Relationship: Joel Miller x Female Reader X Tommy Miller
Warnings WHOLE FIC: DUBCON (reader is a captive, participation might be enthusiastic but consent is dubious under the circumstances.) Raider!Joel; Raider!Tommy; Captive reader; Canon-typical violence; graphic depictions of violence; graphic depictions of injury; attempted SA (not by Joel or Tommy); Dom/Sub dynamic but not an established relationship; Dom-ish Joel; Brat tamer-ish Joel; Sub-ish reader; DDDNE; M/F/M threesome; unprotected P in V sex; Anal sex; Oral sex; No use of Y/N; Minors DNI 18+ Only
Length: 8k
PLEASE NOTE: part one does not get smutty ❤️
Part 2
November, 2004
“You can have whatever you want, please!” 
Your hand was clamped over your mouth as you tried to keep quiet from your place below the floorboards. Your boyfriend, Zach, had tucked you into the crawl space when he ran in from hunting with three men on his tail. 
“They don’t know about you,” he’d said, breathless. “Stay quiet, I’ll get us out of this.” 
But even a year into the apocalypse, Zach wasn’t a great shot. It wasn’t long before he was out matched and the men were breaking down the door to the cabin you’d been holed up in for a few days. 
“Seemed awful keen to protect whatever it is you got,” one of the men said. “How do we know you’re not gonna just come and try to take it back?” 
“Should just kill ‘em,” another man said. “Don’t gotta worry about it then.” 
“No, no, I swear I won’t,” Zach pleaded. 
“Prove it,” the final man spoke for the first time. “Got no reason to trust you now, why should we leave you alive?”
You kept your hands tight over your mouth, trying not to cry, trying to stay quiet, hoping they’d leave Zach alive. 
“Because I have something better than supplies!” He yelled it, his words flowing together as he stumbled over them. 
“Like?” The third man said. 
“My girlfriend,” Zach panted. Your breath caught. “She was a nurse before, in an ER, she can keep you alive, you can have her, please…” 
“And where is this girlfriend?” The first man said. “You seem awful alone here…” 
You hoped Zach was just buying time, that he wouldn’t actually tell these animals where you were. 
You were wrong. 
“In the closet,” he said. “There’s a crawl space there, I told her to hide there while I took care of things here. Please, she’s worth a lot, she’s good at patching you up, she’s real pretty, you can have her, you can have her…” 
The sound of his begging almost covered the thud of boots as you heard the closet door creak open and the floor over your head disappeared. 
“Well, would you look at that,” a large man with shaggy curls and a patchy beard - the first one who has spoken, you thought - smirked down at you. “He’s not full of shit.”
“No,” you shook your head, eyes wide. “No, please…” 
The man ignored you, grabbing a fistful of fabric at your chest and hefting you up from the crawl space with a grunt. He dropped you on the ground and you tried to scramble away only to have another man grab your shoulder and throw you down. You landed on your backside, a different tall, broad man with dark curls looming over you. 
“Where you think you’re running to, little rabbit?” He smirked, the second man who had spoken. You pulled yourself back from him, looking for a way out. The third man, blond and pale and the youngest of them, stood over Zach, a gun pointed at his head. He started humming Run, Rabbit, Run as he smiled at your boyfriend, glancing your way, prowling toward Zach. A predator enjoying his prey. 
“So,” the first man dropped your pack that had been in the crawl space next to you at your side with a thud, making you jump. “You really a nurse?” 
“She is,” Zach answered for you. “She is and you can have her, please…” 
“Zach!” Tears tightened your throat. 
“I’m sorry, honey,” he said, not looking at you. “I’m sorry, but I can’t…” 
The man who pulled you from the crawl space sighed, pulling a handgun from his side, going up behind Zach and pressing the barrel to his head before pulling the trigger. Your scream hung in the air longer than the crack of the gun, the salty, metallic taste of Zach’s blood on your tongue as his body slumped to the ground. 
“Hey,” the man who shot Zach dropped to one knee in front of you, grabbing your face roughly, gripping your cheeks in his large hand. There was blood on him, too. “You really think that piece of shit is worth screamin’ and cryin’ over? He was sellin’ you, girl, he ain’t worth any grief of yours.” 
He released you and looked over his shoulder to the other dark haired man. 
“Tommy, got something we can hold her with?” The other man - Tommy, apparently - started going through his bag. He looked toward the blond next. “Vince, gather what you can, we’re heading out in 10. Made a lot of noise here, don’t want to wait and find out what that attracts.” 
“Are you going to kill me too?” You asked quietly. 
The man who seemed to be in charge cocked his head at you. 
“Now why would we go and do a thing like that?” He asked. “Your boyfriend might have been scum but he was right, you’re valuable cargo. You’re gonna be a good girl for us, right?” 
You weren’t really sure what to say to that, your heart beating so hard and fast you were sure this man could see your pulse in your throat. 
“Don’t really matter either way, does it?” He said as Tommy handed him some rope. “You either cooperate or you’re more trouble than you’re worth and we just kill you. Don’t make much difference to us. Hands out, wrists together.” 
You just looked at him and he sighed, pulling his sidearm out again and putting it below your chin. The muzzle was warm and wet from where he’d just killed Zach and, for a moment, you thought you were going to vomit. 
“Didn’t I just say I’d kill you if you got to be more trouble than you’re worth?” He said. “You’re already a lot of trouble by bein’ and extra mouth to feed so I recommend cooperating before my temper runs out. So. Hands out, wrists together.” 
You obeyed and the man wrapped your wrists in rope tight enough that you had no hope of wriggling out but not so tight that it was painful, just uncomfortable. He wrapped his large hand around the cluster of rope between your wrists and yanked you to your feet. 
“Got anything on you I should be worried about?” He asked. “Be a lot easier on you if you tell me now than later.” 
“Knife,” you said, voice shaky. “Right pocket.” 
“Good girl.” 
He reached into your pocket and pulled the weapon free, opening and examining the blade. 
“Know how to use this?” He asked, brows raised. 
“I’ve used it,” you replied. He nodded and closed it, putting it in his pocket. 
“Be a good enough girl for a long enough time and maybe you can get it back,” he said before turning to Tommy. “I’m gettin’ a head start with this one, heading north west, back to site. You know the way.” 
“I know it,” he said. “We’ll clear out quick, catch up soon.” 
The man who had you grabbed your pack from the floor and slung it over his shoulder before bringing his rifle around to his front, nudging you forward with the muzzle. 
“Let’s go,” he said. “Try and take off and I’ll shoot ya. And I don’t miss.” 
The man kept close to you, nudging you along in front of him and you tried not to trip on roots and overgrown brush but you’d only been walking about 20 minutes when you failed, falling with a pained grunt. The man sighed and grabbed you by the collar, pulling you to your feet. 
“You OK?” He asked, gun pointed at the ground and not at you. 
“Yes,” you said, even though your hands were scraped up and your knees hurt and you had your boyfriend’s blood on your skin and your throat hurt from screaming.
“Keep movin’,” he ordered. 
You kept looking back over your shoulder at him. He reminded you of a guy you dated once who was in the army. He never looked in one place too long, head constantly turning, looking, searching. There were threats, he knew that. He also knew how to see them coming. The gun was tilted toward the ground but close and ready. You were waiting for him to change his mind about you, to shoot you, too. Part of you wondered if this was part of a game for him, if he was going to walk with you just long enough to lull you into a false sense of security before shooting you. Maybe he liked the fear, the surprise. Maybe he’d given too much away by killing Zach and now he couldn’t get what he wanted from you. 
Maybe that was better than the alternative.
You were only walking about an hour when the other men, Tommy and Vince, caught up to you. The man you were with turned and pointed the gun, noticing their approach before you did. You froze, only realizing that it was probably a good time to run now that his attention was elsewhere once it was too late. 
“Just us, Joel,” Tommy called as they climbed up the hill you’d just made it up yourselves. “No trouble behind us.” 
The man - Joel, apparently - lowered the rifle and the men joined you. They had four packs between the two of them, two you didn’t recognize and two backpacking bags that you recognized as yours and Zach’s. Your stomach turned. 
“Not a terrible haul,” Tommy said. “These two had decent gear and must have just taken somethin’ good. A lot of jerky, good stock of ammo, some medical shit.” 
Joel looked down at you, his eyebrows raised. 
“You know how to use the shit in those bags?” He asked. You just looked back at him. He sighed and grabbed a fist full of your hair, jerking you close to him, making you squeak in shock. “Don’t play dumb, girl, you know how to use that shit?” 
“No,” you said sarcastically, not sure where the guts for that came from. “I enjoy hauling around shit I can’t do anything with.” 
Joel’s jaw tensed and you weren’t sure if he was about to yell or laugh. 
“Not gonna get far with an attitude like that, little rabbit,” Tommy said, but he was smirking a little. “Lot better for you if you just answer the questions when we ask ‘em.” 
You looked between the two men closest to you for a moment. You wondered if they were related. Their eyes were the same, same hair, too. They would have been handsome in another context, one where you weren’t afraid they were about to kill you. 
“It’s mine,” you said after a moment. “We were backpacking when the outbreak happened, we didn’t even know for a day or two, we were in the middle of the mountains and there weren’t other people around. I know how to use it all.” 
Joel released you. 
“Good to know you ain’t completely useless,” he said. 
“You mean outside the fact that I can save your life?” You bit out. Again, you weren’t sure why. 
He snorted. 
“Outside of that. Keep movin’.” 
With the other men there, Tommy took the lead and you followed, Vince and Joel behind you. You could feel Vince’s eyes on you, the cold, lecherous feeling of his gaze making your stomach churn. 
Night was starting to fall by the time you reached a cabin that showed greater signs of people than you’d seen in what felt like forever. There was a stack of wood on the front porch, a line between the house and a tree that looked like it was meant for drying clothes, barrels placed to gather rain water. You stopped, staring at the small structure. 
“Inside,” Joel said after a moment. 
“I have to pee.” 
He sighed. 
“Vince,” he said. “Take her to piss. Don’t fuckin’ touch her unless she tries to run, got it?” 
Vince groaned but nudged you off to the side of the house with the muzzle of his gun. You looked around, trying to get a lay of the land, see what a good route out might be. There was a small path that looked like it would take you deeper into the woods, eventually up into the Smokies. That was fine. If you could get your pack, you could survive out there for at least a week or two on your own, maybe find a settlement or something. You’d never had to survive on your own, you’d never hunted or shot a human being. Zach had handled that. You weren’t sure how long you could really make it on your own but you’d rather give that a shot than leave yourself to whatever these men had in store for you. 
“Here’s good,” Vince said after two minutes of walking. You held out your wrists and he raised his eyebrows. “You think I’m a fucking idiot?” 
“I can’t really pull my pants down like this,” you said. “I’m not a man, I can’t just whip my dick out…” 
He stomped over to you and unbutton and unzipped your jeans before yanking them down to your knees, ignoring your surprised sound before going back to your hips. His fingers trailed over your skin, sinking into the meat of your ass and making your stomach churn, before he pulled your panties down, too. You could feel his eyes on you, lingering on you, before he stood up. 
“There,” he said. “Happy?” 
He walked a few steps away and turned back to look at you. 
“I can’t go with you watching.” 
He shrugged. 
“Not my problem. You have to go bad enough, you’ll go.” 
You glared at him and held his gaze before squatting and peeing, missing toilet paper and privacy more than you had since the damn outbreak started. You straightened up when you were done and stood there, still looking at him. 
“Afraid you’ll have to come pull up my pants, too,” you said. “Since your boss apparently wants you to wait on me hand and foot.” 
A muscle in the man’s neck twitched but he stalked over and yanked your clothes back up, harshly buttoning and zipping your jeans before shoving you back toward the cabin hard enough that you stumbled. 
Inside, Joel and Tommy were sitting at a rustic table, a fire going in the nearby fireplace. There were two Nalgene bottles of water on the table and a bag of jerky between them. The jerky you recognized. You and Zach had made it just a few days earlier. 
You tried not to think about it. 
“He behave himself?” Joel asked, stretched out with his legs far in front of him. 
“You’re really gonna take this little cunt’s word over mine?” Vince asked. 
Joel just kept looking at you, ignoring him entirely. 
“Asked you a question girl,” he said. “He keep his hands to himself?” 
You glanced at Vince who was staring down Joel, his blue eyes hot and angry. You looked back to Joel. 
“He was fine,” you said. 
“Good,” Joel said, getting up, grabbing a bottle of water and going over to you. He put one of his huge hands on your shoulder, guiding you to the nearby couch and nudging you down onto it. 
You obeyed his unspoken command, lowering yourself slowly down but not relaxing into the cushion, staying on the edge of it. 
“Open,” he ordered. 
Your eyes narrowed. He glared back. 
“Open your mouth,” he said when you didn’t obey. 
“You put your dick in my mouth I’ll bite it clean off.”
Joel squared his jaw and held up the bottle of water. 
“Don’t got a smaller bottle right now and you can’t hold this with your hands tied. Don’t want you droppin’ dead from dehydration after we went through all the trouble to get you here so open your goddamn mouth.” 
You ground your teeth for a moment before you obeyed. He unscrewed the top and poured the water on your tongue, crisp and cool and making you aware of just how thirsty you’d become in the few hours you’d been with him. 
“Good girl,” he said. “Was that so hard?” 
Eventually, he stopped and you closed your mouth, wiping your lips on the back of your tied hands as he closed the bottle. 
“Don’t gotta worry about that shit from us,” he said. “Prefer when a woman begs for it, not about to take it from one who ain’t.” 
“Because I can trust what a group of murderers says,” you snapped. 
“Murderers,” Joel shrugged. “Not rapists. Hungry?” 
“Why?” You asked, tongue still sharp. “Going to be kind enough to give me scraps of the food you stole from me?” 
“Something like that,” Joel said. “If you’re gonna try to starve yourself to death, just let me know. Save you the trouble and put you down quick instead.” 
You watched him for a moment. For some reason, you trusted what he was saying to you. That he wasn’t going to hurt you - at least, not like that. That he was intending to keep you alive. 
“Not hungry,” you said eventually. 
Joel shrugged. 
“If you change your mind.” 
You sat on the edge of the couch cushion as the men took inventory of what they stole from you, what they killed Zach to take. You tried not to cry. 
It’s not like you’d been especially close to Zach when the outbreak happened. You hadn’t said “I love you” yet, you’d been dating for a month and a half and fucking for just a few weeks of that. 
The backpacking trip had been a spur of the moment thing for both of you. You had some vacation time to burn before the end of the quarter, his job was flexible and you’d bonded over a shared love of the outdoors. You’d ignored the words of caution from your girlfriends when he wanted to take you hiking for a second date, the two of you ending up exhausted but proud as you came to the end of the seven mile trail he’d selected. He kissed you there for the first time, his lips salty with trail mix and sweat and a view of a valley swelling with shades of green spread out below you. 
You were somewhere in the mountains when the world collapsed. You didn’t even know it had happened until you returned to where you’d parked your car to find the windows smashed and the inside looted, a body missing a chunk of its skull not far away. You’d ran to it on instinct, dropping to your knees beside them to check their pulse even though it was clear that there was no way they would be alive. Their skin was cold and there were fibrous, vine-like tendrils swarming in their brain. 
It had been you and Zach from there. He was more of a survivalist than you. He knew how to hunt and trap, taught you how to skin a rabbit and process a deer. You weren’t sure if you’d truly come to love him or not, if the feeling you had for him was just what happened when you went about surviving the end of the world with another person and became dependent on them for your very life. 
But you were certain that he hadn’t loved you. Not really. If he had, he never would have given you over to these men. 
You’d never have done that to him.
Maybe you did love him. You weren’t sure you’d ever know. 
“Sleep here,” Joel ordered as the day fully shifted to night and Tommy and Vince started readying for bed. “I’m keepin’ watch for now. We were gone long enough, some dumbasses might think they can move in. Don’t try anything.” 
He went onto the porch and you stretched out on the couch, the other men going into what you expected were bedrooms at the back of the cabin. Your hands were still bound. You stared at the dying embers of the fire, the orange glow, and cried. 
***
Joel needed Vince to stop acting like a shit head. 
The man didn’t seem to understand the position he was in. He was the least valuable person here. He was young, he was dumb and he was disposable. 
He just didn’t seem to realize it. If he kept looking at you like you were something he could take, he’d find out just how disposable he was.
Joel came in from his watch about 5 a.m. to find you whimpering quietly on the couch. He sighed. 
“You really still crying over that jackass you were with?” He asked as you sniffled quietly. 
“Shut up,” your voice was thick and wet. 
“He ain’t worth it,” he said gently, sitting in the armchair that was near where your head was. He wasn’t sure why he was bothering. But then, he’d never really taken a captive before. He usually just killed people or turned them loose. You were valuable enough to keep and sending you out into the wilderness alone seemed crueler than holding onto you. He just had no idea what the fuck he was supposed to do with you now. “He didn’t know who the fuck we were or what the fuck we’d do with you - lot worse out there than us, little girl - and he handed you over on a silver fuckin’ platter. More than happy to trade your pain for his sorry life.” 
“He’s the only person left that I knew,” you said softly. It was the first truly genuine thing Joel had heard you say. Except, maybe, when you asked if he was going to kill you. “I’m alone now.” 
“Not alone, little girl,” he said. He wasn’t sure why he was reassuring you. He shouldn’t care. “You’re better off.” 
“Why do you call me that?” You asked, lifting your head ever so slightly from the arm of the couch to look at him. “I’m not a little girl…” 
“Little compared to me,” he said. 
You scoffed and sniffed at the same time. 
“You’re a giant,” you said. “Everyone is little compared to you. Don’t see you calling Vinny there little boy…” 
Joel laughed a bit. 
“Maybe I should. And you’re a girl.” 
“I’m a woman,” you said, a spark of defiance in your tone. “I don’t think I’m much younger than you, if I am at all.” 
Joel frowned a bit at that. 
“How old are you?” He asked after a moment. 
You thought for a second, like you were doing the math. Which was fair. It’s not like he’d celebrated his last birthday, either, his stomach twisting at the thought. He had to think about it, too. 
“I’m 33,” you said. “How old are you?” 
He was surprised. Not that you looked terribly young, now that he thought about it. More that human faces lacked much definition to him anymore. Anyone older than a teenager looked about the same until they started going gray. You just seemed younger. 
“I’m 37,” he said. 
“Yeah, I’m not a girl,” you said, putting your head back down. 
“You could tell me your name,” he said. 
You scoffed. 
“Then I’m not sure what I’m supposed to call you, little girl,” he said. He could feel you glare at him. 
“I had a whole life before,” you said quietly, more to yourself than to Joel. “I had a house and a job and friends and I used to go to dinner and to concerts and buy the people I loved presents. I had a life before.” 
He realized then why he’d thought you were younger. You were, possibly, the most human person he’d come across in a year. Some small spark of divine mortality - the juxtaposition of life and a kind of death that was still possible - there in your eyes that didn’t exist in others. It seemed naive, in a way. Made you seem younger than you were. But he wasn’t sure that was it. Maybe you weren’t naive. Maybe part of you was just clinging to your humanity harder than anyone else left. 
“We all did,” he said, voice harsher than he’d really meant it to be. There was part of him that wanted to snap that tie in you. It was unfair that you got to keep it when he didn’t. But it was a kindness, too. You’d survive better without it. “You move on. Go to sleep.” 
He went to the room he shared with Tommy who was unconscious, sprawled out on the bed and snoring. Joel took the sleeping bag on the floor and stared at the ceiling, trying to make himself not listen for the sound of you crying in the next room. 
Things were surprisingly smooth with you for the next two days. Vince was a fucking idiot and got a nasty cut on his arm that you tended to, giving him stitches while he leered at you and Joel ground his teeth. 
He felt better with you tied. Your wrists, at the very least, but during the day when the men were coming and going, Joel bound you to a chair at the table. 
“Comfortable?” He asked the first time he did it. 
“No,” you spat, face scrunched in anger that was so fierce it was almost cute. If Joel even found things cute anymore. “I’m not.” 
“You gonna lose a hand from me cuttin’ off your circulation?” He asked instead. You just glared at him. “Good. Stay put, like a good girl.” 
“I hate you,” you seethed at him. 
Joel shrugged. 
“That’s fine,” he said. “Don’t gotta like me to keep me alive, do ya?” 
He went outside to gather wood. 
By the third night, you were yawning and looked barely conscious before the sun had even set. Joel frowned. 
“I keep telling you to sleep,” he said. “You ignoring me for fun or you think exhausting yourself is good for your health?” 
“I’d love to sleep,” you snapped. “But something about having my wrists bound keeps me up at night. Maybe it’s the discomfort, maybe it’s the looming threat of death, who can say?” 
Joel pulled Tommy and Vince aside after dinner, the men standing in the dirt outside the cabin, snow starting to drift down. 
“She hasn’t tried to hurt anyone yet,” Tommy shrugged. “Don’t think she’s gonna go far if she gets away and doesn’t seem like the kind to kill us in our sleep.” 
“Don’t like it,” Vince said, glaring at the cabin for a moment before looking back at Joel. “Can’t trust her as far as we can throw her…” 
“No one said shit about trust,” Joel cut him off. “But we can’t keep ‘er tied up forever.” 
“Fine,” Vince shrugged. “We can put her to use then kill her. Won’t need to tie her up then.” 
Joel could hear the blood in his ears. 
“Suggest that one more time, little boy, and see how long you last,” he straightened up as he said it, the full six inches he had on the younger man all the more apparent then. “You want to do that kind of shit, find someone else to run with.” 
“Fuck, sorry,” he raised his arms in a moment of surrender before crossing them again. “Just don’t come crying to me when she slits your fucking throat.” 
“Can’t cry if she kills me, can I?” Joel said, stomping back toward the house, pushing past Vince on the way. 
You were still bound to the chair. He wordlessly unwound the rope and you relaxed your elbows, stretching your arms as best you could with your wrists still tied. 
“Hands up,” he said. You frowned, just looking at him. “You heard me, you want me to untie you or not? Hands up.” 
You practically flung your wrists at him and he tried not to laugh at you as he loosened the knot and pulled the rope from your wrists. 
The second you were free, you rolled your shoulders and closed your eyes, groaning at the feeling of it. 
“God that’s good,” you moaned before you started flexing your fingers and rotating your wrists before you glared up at him again. “What? You try being tied up for days, see how you deal with it.” 
“Rather not,” Joel said, winding up the rope. “Better be a good girl, don’t try anything stupid.” 
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” you said as you spread your arms wide and sighed. Joel found himself smiling a little for the first time in he didn’t know how long. He stopped himself. 
“Actually get some sleep,” he said, voice gruff. “No good to us exhausted.” 
He left you alone, taking the bed in he and Tommy’s room that night and Tommy taking the floor. It took effort to not listen for you moving in the front room as he drifted off. 
He wasn’t sure how long he was asleep when Tommy shook him awake. 
“Joel,” he said urgently. “She’s gone.” 
***
Absolutely none of this was ideal. 
You were exhausted, the only thing keeping you upright the adrenaline that ran through your whole body. You didn’t have supplies, your pack and all its valuable contents in the bedrooms of the men. You were stuck running through snow, leaving a clear path to follow until the woods got dense enough that the snow hadn’t piled up much. 
But you had to go, you had to go now, now, now, right now. You couldn’t spend another night there like that, not when you had the option to get away, not when you had the use of your arms back. 
Your body wouldn’t let you sleep, even for an hour or two, even just for a night to try to make a break for it tomorrow. The second Joel had freed your hands it was like you could feel every part of your body in sharp, acute detail. Every frayed nerve, every thrumming vein, every peaked hair was stark and clear. You couldn’t relax enough to sleep. You had an opening, a chance. You had to take it, you had to. 
You didn’t even have your knife. 
But you had your body and you knew how to push yourself over long distances in the mountains. You’d been good at it before, too. You’d hiked most of your life, knowing how to get yourself to make it to the top of the next ridge even when your calves were burning and your lungs felt on the verge of collapse you knew you could make it. 
All you had to do was do that now, through all the exhaustion and all the panic, and put as much distance between yourself and those men as possible. 
You’d find some way to keep yourself alive eventually. There’d be supplies or a settlement. Something. You were sure of that. 
Mostly. 
Your breath rose in a cloud in front of you and you broke away from the trail into the brush of the woods, thankful that the moon was bright enough that you could have some sense of where you were going. 
You were just starting to relax a little when you heard it behind you. A sharp, shrill whistle. You froze. 
“Come on out, little rabbit,” Tommy called. “Not gonna hurt you…” 
“Shit,” you whispered as you panted for breath. They sounded pretty far away but they’d catch up eventually. 
You scrambled through the forest until you reached a cluster of ferns that was thick and full and you ducked into it. If you stayed quiet and still, they’d walk right past you. You could stay put for a while and then find your way from there. Simple. 
You tried to not shake from cold and fear as you heard the signs of the men getting close. There was the crunch of sticks, the rustle of leaves and the eerie sound of Vince humming Run, Rabbit, Run. The glare of a flashlight trickled between the ferns and you held your breath, the humming getting louder. 
For a second, a glorious second, you thought you were in the clear. Vince had passed your hiding spot, poking through the brush closest to the trail with his rifle but you were just far enough off the trail that he missed you, and you relaxed. 
Then you heard the snap of a twig. 
“Found you.” 
You spun, Vince turning the flashlight on and shining it in your face, all but blinding you. You threw up a hand instinctively to protect your eyes and he grabbed your wrist, yanking you out of your hiding spot and almost pulling your arm out of its socket in the process. 
You yelped in pain, you couldn’t help it, and he all but threw you onto the trail. Your eyes were still adjusting to the light but it took you a moment to realize that he had his gun trained on you. 
“Knew you’d take off on us,” he said, panting a little. You put your hands up and looked for a way out. “Knew you’d be more trouble than you’re worth…” 
You backed away from him, more on instinct than anything else, not able to watch where you were going and you shrieked as you tripped and fell back, landing hard and barely catching yourself before your head smacked into the rock of the path. You rose up on your hands quickly, scrambling back from him as best you could but he was standing, could see where he was going. You didn’t have a hope. 
“Please,” you whispered. “Please just… just let me go, you already have my supplies and…” 
“Can’t let you go with you knowing where we are,” he replied. “And you were already more trouble than you’re worth in my opinion…” 
“I stitched up your arm,” you said, tears stinging at your eyes. “I helped you…” 
“And those two idiots won’t even let me fuck you,” he cut you off. “What good is pussy you can’t fuck, hm?” 
“Please,” you said again. 
“That’s not an answer,” he prowled closer, the muzzle of his rifle so close you could almost touch it. Your heart was in your throat. “Think I’ll just kill you, bet that pretty head of yours would make all kinds of nice colors when I blow it off…” 
“Hey!” Tommy snapped, his gun up and pointed at Vince. “Know you’re not threatenin’ to kill her, not when we all agreed to keep her alive.” 
“You agreed,” Vince snapped. “You and your asshole brother, not me.” 
“That asshole has been keepin’ your sorry ass alive,” Joel growled from behind you. Your head whipped around to see him there, looming large over you. His gun was up, too, pointed at Vince. “You need us a whole hell of a lot more than we need you. You can do what I fuckin’ say or you can move on. But you keep pointing that gun at her and you ain’t gonna have much to move on with.” 
The three of them stood there for a moment, Vince aiming at you, Joel and Tommy aiming at him. Your heart felt like it was going to break your ribs it was beating so hard. 
Vince lowered his gun. Tommy did the same but Joel left his up. 
“Joel,” Vince said but Joel cut him off. 
“Don’t like men who don’t listen,” he said. “Not worth shit to me if you can’t take orders. Said you could join me and my brother if you did what you were told.” 
“I told you she’d run!” Vince snapped. 
“Don’t give a shit,” Joel said. “You think nurses pop up every five fuckin’ feet? She’s valuable. To us and to people we come across. Worth a little trouble. Worth a whole hell of a lot more trouble than you. Know your goddamn place.” 
He lowered his gun and looked down to you. 
“You alright, little girl?” 
You were too shaken to fight the nickname. Instead, you just nodded. 
“Good.” 
He slung his rifle on his back and reached down, yanking you sharply to your feet, the movement so rough it shocked you. Once you were on your feet, he grabbed you by your chin, his callused fingers harsh on your cheeks, and pulled your face close, so close that you’d expect him to kiss you if he were your lover. 
But he wasn’t that. He was your captor. 
“Thought I told you not to try anything stupid,” he asked, his face almost eerily calm but his tone on the edge of anger. “You seem smart enough to know better, give you an inch and you decide to take a mile. Several, in fact. Maybe Vince is right, maybe we should kill you…” 
“Joel,” Tommy said cautiously but Joel threw him a glare and he quieted. 
“You really think you can do better than us out there? Hm?” He demanded. “You think you can survive all on your lonesome?” 
“No,” you said, fighting to not cry. You hated that you reacted this way, that when you were scared or mad your first instinct was to cry. “But I could find…” 
“Find what?” He cut you off. “Find someone else who’s willin’ to stick their necks out for you? Willing to feed you, shelter you without takin’ more from you?” 
He released your chin and you slumped back from him, massaging your face and working your jaw, trying to right it. 
“You’re damn lucky to be with us, little girl,” he snapped. “Real damn lucky. Better start actin’ like it instead of running off like some scared little rabbit. Hands out.” 
“But…” 
“No,” he shook his head firmly. “You lost the privilege of using your fuckin’ hands without my permission. Hands. Out.” 
You obeyed, arms trembling, and he bound your wrists together, the ropes finding the same indentations they’d made on your skin before. He dropped your wrists once they were bound and you looked at him as you still fought to not cry. His eyes met yours, sharp and cold. 
“You’re mine now,” he said harshly. “Sooner you figure that out, the easier this gets for you. Move.” 
The walk back to the cabin felt long and, when you got there, you went to lay on the couch but Joel stopped you. 
“What do you think you’re doing?” He asked, shrugging out of his coat. 
You frowned. 
“Going to sleep…”
“Not there you’re not,” he said. “You’re sleepin’ with me, you don’t get to be unsupervised anymore.” 
Your eyes went wide and you shook your head. 
“No, no, please, you said you weren’t…” 
“Wasn’t offerin’ to fuck you, girl,” he cut you off. “You’re sleeping where I can fucking see you so get in my bed.” 
Your whole body shook as he nudged you to one of the back rooms. You hadn’t been in one of these before. You had no idea how to try to escape if you needed to. It was stupid of you, you realized now, to trust Joel when he said they might be murderers but they weren’t rapists. Just because they hadn’t forced themselves on you yet didn’t mean they wouldn’t now. 
The room wasn’t huge, a queen sized bed in the middle and a sleeping bag on the floor. There was a door - to a closet, you assumed - and a dresser with some picture frames on top. 
“Shoes off,” Joel said. 
“Please,” you said softly. “Please don’t do this, I…” 
“Didn’t I say I wasn’t offering to fuck you?” He asked, sounding exasperated. “I don’t want you tracking dirt into the goddamn bed. Shoes off, get in on that side, one by the dresser. I’ll keep my hands to myself if you will.”
You obeyed and curled as tightly in on yourself as you could, facing away from him. You felt the bed dip as he climbed in, the heat of his body close to yours. But he didn’t touch you. 
“Actually sleep,” Joel muttered after a moment. 
You glanced over your shoulder at him. He was flat on his back, eyes closed, arms crossed over his chest. The opposite of someone who looked like they were about to grope you the second you passed out. 
Still, you rolled to face him, curled tightly on yourself, and watched him until his body loosened and his breaths evened. Tommy snored lightly from the sleeping bag on the floor. You weren’t sure if their unconscious state made it feel safe enough to rest or your body gave out from exhaustion but, the next thing you knew, it was morning and you were alone. 
You sat up slowly, hands still bound, an unfamiliar blanket draped over you that hadn’t been the night before. 
You made your way slowly, cautiously, to the main part of the small house. The men were talking in low voices around the kitchen table and you hovered for a moment, not sure if you wanted them to notice you or not. 
But Tommy was the first to see you there, a slow smile spreading over his face. 
“Well hey there little rabbit,” he took a sip from a mug. “You look rested.” 
“Probably wore herself out taking off,” Vince muttered. 
“Gonna be just you and me today,” Tommy said, ignoring Vince’s comments. “Those two are headin’ out to do some business.” 
“Business?” You asked, brows raised. “Is that code for murder?” 
“Our business is none of yours, little girl,” Joel said, drinking from a mug of his own. “You stay here, behave yourself, and maybe we’ll bring you something back.” 
“Rather not get anything that comes from killing,” you said. “Thanks though.” 
Joel just rolled his eyes and shoved back from the table. 
“You’ll take what I give you and you’ll like it,” he said, coming to stand in front of you. He put two fingers below your chin and tilted it, forcing you too look him in the eye. “Gonna take off on me again? Or do I need to tie your legs up, too?” 
You gritted your teeth. 
“No.”
“Good girl.” 
Tommy helped you use the bathroom and you sat on the couch with jerky and sore wrists and resentment as you watched Joel and Vince get ready to head out to do… whatever it was they were about to go and do. 
You weren’t sure what you were supposed to do to pass the time. You’d had some books in your bags but you weren’t about to risk pissing off the men for a little entertainment. 
But Tommy didn’t let you sit in silence for too long, flopping down next to you on the couch as you tried to find patterns in the peeling paint of he wall. You looked at him, cagey. He smiled. 
“You’re cute when you sleep.” 
You frowned. 
“What?” 
“You’re cute when you sleep,” he said again. “All curled up and shit, just like a little rabbit.” 
You shrank back from him and he put his hands up. 
“Not gonna touch you,” he said. “Unless you wanted me to.” 
“Well… I don’t.”
He shrugged. 
“Didn’t expect you would,” he said. 
He was quiet again for a few minutes before he spoke again, a gleam in his eye when he did. 
“Wouldn’t happen to play poker, would you?”
You didn’t but he seemed happy enough to teach you. But you couldn’t hold the cards well with your wrists bound and, after a few minutes of struggling, Tommy glanced toward the door like he was half expecting Joel to walk through it. 
“Gimme those,” he said, holding his hands out. You thrust your wrists at him faster than you were proud of and he laughed a little, taking hold of you gently. He paused before starting at the rope. “You’re not gonna take off on me, right, little rabbit?” 
“Not at the moment,” you said. 
“Good,” he replied, untying you. “Not a fan of keepin’ you all tied up anyway…” 
You turned your wrists, the bones popping as you luxuriated in the movement. 
“Thank you,” you said, massaging one wrist and then the other. 
He shrugged. 
“The game is Texas Hold ‘Em,” he said, dealing. “We’ll play a few hands open and then see how you do…” 
It was oddly easy to forget that you were being held captive when playing cards with Tommy. He was lighter than the other men, more like people you remembered from before, making easy going conversation about things that hadn’t mattered in more than a year. 
“I’m still mad that I didn’t get to see the second Matrix,” you said, watching as Tommy put the flop on the table. 
“That, darlin’, was a blessing,” he replied. “Wasn’t nearly as good as the first.” 
“I heard that, but still,” you said, looking at the seven of clubs, three of hearts and king of clubs on the table and trying not to smile at the seven of spades and king of hearts in your hand. “I think it might have been better than I heard. And maybe it would have made more sense when the third one came out…” 
“Maybe,” Tommy said, putting the turn on the table. Ace of diamonds, no good for you. “But I dunno, you seem too smart to like something that shitty.” 
“Bold assumption,” you smiled a little and he smiled back. 
“Before I put the river card out,” he said. “How about we make this interesting?” 
“Interesting,” you frowned. “Interesting how?” 
“I win, you tell me something about yourself,” he said. “You win, I’ll give you something you want. Can’t be a weapon but something else.” 
You looked at him, brows raised. 
“C’mon, little rabbit,” he gave you a cocky smirk. “Let’s have some fun.” 
You looked at your hand again. 
“Alright,” you smiled a little. “Let’s do it.” 
The river was the king of spades and you tried not to smile too wide. 
“Alright,” he said, looking like he was holding back a grin himself. “I’ll show you mine then you show me yours.” 
You shrugged and he smiled as he put the king of diamonds and the three of spades on the table. 
“Full house,” he said. “Kings over threes.” 
“Damn,” you sighed. “I just have the kings…” you lowered the card, looking disappointed and enjoyed Tommy’s excited expression for half a second before you put the second card on the table. “Oh, and the sevens. Sevens are higher than threes, right? I mean, I only went to nursing school, I can’t be sure…” 
“You little shit,” Tommy laughed. “You’ve got a damn fine poker face on you! Alright, what is it you want?” 
“My books,” you said immediately. “I had two, I think, in my pack. I’d like them. Please.” 
“I can get you the books,” he smiled. “You sit tight.” 
He brought you the books and you played another hand with the same stakes. And another. And another. And more after that.
You got some hair ties and clean socks out of the deal. Tommy got to know your favorite food and what you liked to watch on TV back when there was TV. 
After a while, he looked at the books that you’d set aside on the table. He picked up the top one, Slaughterhouse Five. 
“Think this was on my reading list in high school,” he said, looking over the back of it. “Never actually read it though.” 
“It’s good,” you said. “You missed out.” 
“Read it to me,” he said, holding it out to you. 
“Read it to you?” You asked, brows raised. “What are you, five?” 
“Never much enjoyed reading,” he shrugged, still holding the book out. “But I like listening. Like listening to you well enough. C’mon, little rabbit. Tell me a story.” 
You considered him for a moment. You felt oddly safe with Tommy. You weren’t sure if it was because he was showing you kindness and one of the only three people left in the world you knew now or if he was actually safe. You weren’t sure you could trust anything you were thinking and feeling. 
But reading to him didn’t sound bad. 
“Can we move to the couch?” You asked. 
He laughed. 
“Think we can manage it.” 
You settled on the couch, you folded into a corner and Tommy stretched out. He watched you closely as you opened the book. 
“All this happened, more or less…” 
You fell asleep on the couch before Joel and Vince made it back but you woke up in he bed, Tommy snoring next to you. 
Part 2
A/N: Hey yeah so... this was supposed to be a one shot but it got away from me. So now it's two parts. Part two up sometime within the next week or so ❤️
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Can you do a damsel in distress reader with maybeee re4r Leon? Need to be saved by this man🙏🏼
OH I LOVE THIS🤭
Summary: RER4 Leon saves reader from when they got captured by the monks in the castle. (Sticking to the game lore bc I love the concept of it) so basically, you’re Ashley.
Warning: reader is gender neutral, short, no smut, no angst, just vibes. SFW.
A/N: imma clean up my account😔 I feel like I can be more aesthetic but lowkey I like how silly my acc already looks
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Leon had told you to run so you did. How did this even happen? Leon had led you two out of the maze and into the long decorated hallways on the castle. Then proceeded to lead the two of your further into the castle until a group of zealots, or monks, began to surround you two, screaming phrases in Spanish like “agarradlo!”
“Quick! Get behind me!” He yelled to you as he put his hand out to cover you and push you back. He took out his gun and began to shoot left and right.
When you first encountered Leon, he had told you to duck down whenever he shoots so he wouldn’t accidentally shoot you. And trying to survive, you listened to him. Every time he would point his gun and you were in front of him, he would yell “Y/n get down!”
So it was really unexpected when a monk, tall with its black robes covering its entire body- including the face and head- took hold of your waist and hoisted you up to its shoulder. You screamed in defiance and tried to break free from the monk’s grasp but to no avail. Leon had been too busy shooting the zealots that had weapons and were ready to plunge at him.
“Leon!”
It wasn’t until he heard your voice that something flipped in him. His head turned towards your direction so fast, his neck pained but he didn’t care. He saw the way the monk had captured you and began to take you away and he couldn’t let that happen- not when he promised you that he would bring you back home. He shot the zealots left and right, mostly trying to aim for the head but often times he’d use his combat knife too.
Blood splattered across his skin as he killed those who tried to stop him from rescuing you. He dashed through the dimly lit hallway and shot the zealot that had been holding you hostage.
He didn’t aim for the head as he didn’t want to accidentally hurt you, instead he aimed for the monk’s knee and shot. The monk fell to one knee but still held a strong grip around you. Leon ran up to the zealot and kicked its head with his foot. His strength was like no other. The zealot recoiled to the floor and let go of you. You fell to the floor with a small thud as you closed your eyes tightly in fear.
Leon walked up to the cultist now laying on the floor and with a swift motion he took out his combat knife and stabbed its neck. Blood seeping through its neck and towards the knife as the life began to leave the zealot. Leon sighed in relief before he stood up and walked over to check on you. He crouched down to his knees and gently placed a hand on your shoulder, “You okay?” He asked in his deep voice. A voice that was full of concern but determination.
You slowly sat up and nodded, “Yeah, I’m fine.” But you weren’t fine. You hated this situation more than anything, you don’t even know how you ended up in Spain. Right in the middle of nowhere. It seems as if bad luck always has had a way of finding you. All you wanted to do was to go home.
Leon was no fool, he knew. But he didn’t press on it. You were strong, although you didn’t believe him. He put his hands around your arms and gently pulled up from the ground, “Are you sure you’re okay?” His voice was a little bit quieter and softer, as if he knew the real answer already. But you, stubborn as you are, nodded your head and decided to just keep moving, “Yeah, I’m okay. We should get moving,” Leon nodded and began to lead you two further down the castle.
You couldn’t help but feel like he really is your knight in shining armor, always coming to help when you need it. He looked at you with soft eyes every time he saved you, eyes full of care and worry. He cares for you.
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lukolabrainrot · 9 days
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Part 2. Explanation
In one of the interviews (don’t remember exactly, Vogue one perhaps) they are asked who is most likely to fall in love at first sight and they both point at L, and something similar is stated multiple times throughout the WT in various ways. Now N on the other hand always supports the friends to lovers being the best romantic trope and I think it’s not only because it is her character’s story arc. The way she is talking about a deep connection developing in the course of the friendship being the best way to go about it, implies that she is not someone who jumps into relationships easily. The way they are talking about their first meeting makes me think that it was indeed a love at first sight for L, and attraction at first sight for N. How he talks about this immediate feeling of warmth, the way he describes her dancing that first time, I think he was slowly on his way down. While her first reaction to him was “how tall he is?”(indirect quote), her facial expression makes me think it was not just his hight that captured her attention. Do you see the difference? For him it was a feeling, for her an appearance. And he is not a touchy fella, even with his BRT family cast as close and friendly as they are, usually it is not him who initiates contact, but not with N (who on the contrary is very touchy) even from the earlier moments of filming. “I don’t really do selfies but if you want one we’ll do that,” “l’m not really a hugger. Oh, you want a hug N, as many as you wish.”
Now as I said LOGICALLY, REALISTICALLY we cannot even truly speculate about events or conventions taken/ not taken, had/not had. For all we know they might have never even admitted to anything, to themselves or each other (doubtful but still). And their relationship are entirely platonic (that would make me question so many things about life but who knows). But from the audience point of view I would say biggest shift definitely happened during s3 filming. I want to make it clear that by no means do I wish to imply any kind of infidelity, quite the opposite I am one of those who believe that until WT their relationship never slipped into romance, beyond perhaps certain tension which I think is sipping into what we see on screens (cough* tongue slip *cough). By which point serious relationship were already over, though I truly think they started to unravel sooner, that it was not pretty, and that L was the driving force of it. Why? There was a little movement in adjacent’s SM life which sparked my memories, S posting “my world” giving of vibes of obvious overcompensation? Well during the filming drought of s3, when all Polin fans were feeding of crumbs, someone reposted J’s post of appreciation to L with those words and additional “don’t get to see him a lot this days” (or something of a kind). Undertone is kind of similar, no? And the way she completely wiped him out of her life? Does not really say parting ways amiably to me😬
Yet again we DO NOT KNOW why hbs happened, how 🐜 got in the picture or where their relationship ever stood. But I will only say this, in my eyes it was the public who gave her the label, and as a result importance, not L, not really. All of her little games only make me believe in this more. She was never given permission to imply anything serious from him, a hotel room, a T-shirt, a hand, easily plausible to not be related to him, but posting his face without his consent? Entirely different story. Now as to her traveling with him, again we don’t know the circumstances behind the scene, was she there as a part of a friends group, her and his sister seemed chummy perhaps in some moments it was on hers behalf, or as an easy travel companion, or perhaps they are insanely in love and we are just fools. We DON’T REALLY KNOW anything, we see only what they allow us to see.
And you know what I saw? L was 😍 from the start of WT, his body language pretty much consistent throughout the entire WT. N on the other hand while always affectionate wasn’t as open or obvious until the second half of WT, especially with her 😍, in some of the last interviews she literally has “check out from reality” moments from looking at him. I see their silence as being sooo loud, especially on L part. They themselves stated that denying or commenting is pretty much pointless when it comes to public’s opinion, N said reading certain things online she would have a moment of “this is hurtful, they don’t even know me. THEY DON’T EVEN KNOW ME!!!” WE DON’T EVEN KNOW THEM, and they know that we don’t even know them, and they are right people will always think what people wish to think. (I for one am glad that more and more famous people feel confident enough to stop bending backwards for fans satisfaction. Public’s entitlement to peoples’ privacy is truly outrageous.) And what I see is that the only people whose point of view in this situation should matter are the two people whom we wish happiness. N and L. Look at what they allow us to see and don’t give attention to background dancers that are trying to distract us with flashy costumes from their inability to be in rhythm. To me some watermarks they paint seem like a beginning of a beautiful painting, but we’ll see what comes of it only when they would wish us to. (Not even going to comment on N supposed adjacent, those who believe that side hug is an epitome of romance, and perceive some barely reliable SM based sleuthing as hard core evidence, to each its own)
Again, apologies for dumping this on you. Truly adorable your blog.
Thank you for the kind words Anon, and glad you are here! ❤️️
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wordstome · 1 year
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Last night I did what I always do when I can’t fall asleep: think about fictional men. Here’s a list of wonderful stories written by incredibly talented people who have helped me think about fictional men by providing the most delicious playgrounds.
In the interest of keeping my recommendations brief, I'm going to talk about what I liked about the fic instead of summarizing what it's about. To know what it's actually about you're just gonna have to click through and read the fic <3
(and just in case anybody's gotten lost, this is all COD, mostly modern MW)
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✦ complete ║ ➠ ongoing
König
✦Just Friends by @kneelingshadowsalome Salome is so good at capturing a very unique interplay between König’s social awkwardness and his deep, dark, nasty inclinations. He’s so feral and enjoyable to read, and the sheer force of his desire for Engel is downright intoxicating. I find it difficult to describe how much of an impact Just Friends has had on me and my portrayal of König, to be honest. There's a reason why three of Salome's fics are on this rec list.
✦Fatum Nos Iungebit by kneelingshadowsalome Five words. König with his cock out. That's it. Okay, but in all seriousness, I love his character applied to this setting. All the raw visceral violence a König could ever want, a pretty little lady in his bed—he's so boyish and happy in this au it brings me such joy. The way their relationship between him and Fee develops is so natural and so sweet. Please for the love of God read this.
➠Cat/Mouse/Den by @papaver-decervicatus The chase. The pursuit. The adrenaline when Mouse dances out of König's reach once more. I'm a little biased because I adore Julius and Jenny (I could call her Lucretia but the double J names make me giggle) as ocs already, but CMD is so, so well written. The tension, the flirting, the scene where he catches her falling out of the tree?! As I said in a reblog, I shrieked. You know when you're reading something that's so good you want to bite down on it and shake like a dog with a toy? (No? Just me?) That's how I feel about CMD.
➠Anything by @darklordofthesimp Anything, in only 7 chapters (they are hefty, don’t get me wrong), has turned König and Birdy’s dynamic from “THIS MOTHERFUCKER HAS IRREVERSIBLY SCARRED MY BODY AND MY BRAIN, AND I CANNOT TRUST HIM” to “these two are going to get married someday”. (author if you’re reading this, I say that not as an expectation or prediction, but as a vibe reading.) This one is for the hurt/comfort girlies. Also, shoutout to all the other stories set in the Anything-verse. Sunshine and Ghost are just soooo *grips my hand in a fist so hard it shakes*
➠If you need to be mean by @gremlingottoosilly This mostly serves as a blanket recommendation for all of Gremlin’s fics. I found If you need to be mean, and then visiting Gremlin’s author page was like opening a treasure chest. Want to be König’s pampered, (unwilling) little housewife? That’s If you need to be mean. Want a harem fic with almost all of the COD MW men? Gremlin has two, both with their own little spin to keep it fun. Do you want König to keep you in his basement or hunt you down as a serial killer? Gremlin's got it. Monsterfucker? Gremlin has that too. Special shoutout goes to 1295 kilometers. I think about fucking König on a train a lot now.
➠Break my mind by @kaiasdevotion (kaiasown on ao3) There’s no way around this. This fic has the most unhinged, kinky, downright dangerous smut I’ve read in the cod fandom so far (positive). Just Friends König is the metric by which I judge all other Königs’ nastiness, and Break my mind König is tipping so hard on the “unhinged horny violent freak (affectionate)” end of the scale he’s about to fall off. I don't know if you guys have noticed, but I've developed a taste for writing/reading from König's perspective, and he's so chillingly deranged in the most controlled way possible during the chapters from his pov. Incredible writing. Chefs kiss.
✦Experimental by @uhohdad (surgeoninspace on ao3) Alright, enough of just König being nasty. He is still nasty in this one, but he’s not the only one who gets to have a little fun and be a total creep. Our little scientist here is a grade A pervert, and I was delighted the whole way through. The most important thing I need in a fic is suspension of disbelief, and Experimental takes an unrealistic, maybe a little bit silly situation and makes it so believable. Everybody reacts the way you would expect them to, even if the scenario they're in is A Lot.
➠Little Mouse and Rotes Madchen by @sprout-fics I'm combining the recommendation for these two because while they are both very much distinct, unique fics, I love them the same way. Sprout is such an engaging writer, and the internal dialogue of her characters is so well done. It reveals their personality, motivations, and internal conflicts without being overly expository. Do you guys remember that post I put on the König bible about instant obsession? It's this inexorable attraction borne from obsession that sticks me to Little Mouse like a glue trap. (Is that too morbid?)
✦Hot in Sarajevo by @50cal-fullauto Rags' König characterization post is on my Königcore bible, for very good reason. They get it. König is a feral dog forced to live as a man and loves like a total maniac, emotionally and sexually. I marked Hot in Sarajevo as complete but I don't know how many parts there are going to be, and frankly, I do want more. However, if you're going to only read one part (which. why would you do that??? read both.) I recommend the second part. I want to write love like that. Goddamn.
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Ghost
Yeah, this list is a little bare bones right now. I'm gonna get back to it, I promise.
✦Anhedonia by kneelingshadowsalome The way. Salome takes the "I would take a bullet for him but he's so cold to me" premise and then flips it entirely on its head for the second part is so important to me. The way Simon craves the reader is like human catnip. I reread this fic all the time.
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Keegan
✦For the Weak and Weary by @halcyone-of-the-sea Read this if you want to believe in true love. That's all. Go on now.
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Multiple
✦Easy by @danibee33 When people say "I wish this were a book!" about fanfiction, they usually mean it in a "this is good enough to be published by the traditional publishing industry" way. When I say I want Easy (and Diablesa) to be a book, I mean it in a "I want to get this story bound in a beautiful ass cover and keep it on a shelf so I can take it down and reread it whenever I want" way. I don't want the traditional publishing industry to get their claws in this, because it's perfect as it is. This fic is so wild and fun, and the character moments are so special and well done. Do yourself a favor and savor this one.
➠@ghouljams's entire blog [masterlist] "What do you mean someone's entire blog" YOU HEARD ME. Those aus are some good shit. Good characterization, delicious premises, love the group effort of it all. To absolutely nobody's surprise, my favorite couple is König and Bee from the cowboy au (ditzy but well-meaning and competent in her own way woman x big strong man who is obsessed with her and maybe also creeping on her, my beloved), but I also have a fondness for Ghost and Die from demon darlings au. Trust me on this one. Dig into those masterlists babey.
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f1daydreamers · 1 year
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𝐌𝐲 𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐞 [𝐎𝐏𝟖𝟏]
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gif credits: @u-u-piastri81
Pairing: Oscar Piastri x Fem!Reader
Summary: Oscar is a visitor at your first art exhibition – not exactly his scene – but it's one that he contributed to financially to help you out, an upcoming artist he's taken a bit of a liking to.
Warnings: criticism but not always constructive, fluff, Reader and Oscar being cute, this man in a suit (audience may faint from the gifs), angst, maybe Oscar is a little out of character but I just upped his rizz by a solid 20% because I love him but he's way too shy to do any of this methinks :)
A/N: I know nothing about this profession icl but I got major black tie and exclusive event vibes from the gifs so this is what came out of it. I did a ton of research to make sure it wasn't too unrealistic but experience beats knowledge so if you guys read any things that need some correction, lmk!
Yeah, I never expected this to be so long but once I got to writing, I couldn't stop so hey, enjoy!
Word Count: 4.6k words (17 mins reading time avg)
Safe to say, this wasn’t Oscar’s scene.
Standing among collectors, art enthusiasts, curators, and industry professionals meant feeling a little out of place was a tad understated.
But he wanted to be here tonight. Of course, being invited is one thing but accepting the invitation comes with a whole new world of formalities he hadn’t prepared for.
You hadn’t noticed him yet, busy greeting and socialising with what looked like a few critics and journalists.
The notebooks in their hands were a dead giveaway but your hand drumming on your leg was another. You were anxious.
Oscar took a sip of his drink, the one he was offered when he received an entry pass coming through the venues' doors. He knew how much this evening meant to you, both in the months of planning and the dreams that preceded it.
Initially, the idea seemed farfetched, but as you dove straight into creating the collection, photographing it, staying up late to create statements that wholly captured the essence of your creative process, the once exciting prospect of submitting it to a gallery felt somewhat dissatisfying.
In a few conversations with Oscar, you’d shared your aspirations of seeing your portfolio bask in the limelight. However, the reality of organising a self-funded exhibition in a rented space would blow your budget out of the water.
You don’t know at what point but he’d made the decision to donate a significant sum of money to your artist fund, covering a major portion of the exhibition's expenses.
It helped you realise all those curious questions about possible venues, dates, and basic costs weren’t just to fuel his enthusiasm, but to sincerely offer his support.
You were grateful beyond what words could describe, and the least you could do was ask him to be here today.
You were nervous partially because you had critics and community leaders alike wandering around the space, conversing about your work you’d spent years dedicating blood, sweat and tears to.
But you were also nervous because he was here tonight.
Even if you’d drawn a squiggly line on a blank canvas, Oscar would marvel at it like it was the most beautiful thing on this planet, but tonight was when he was finally seeing your work in all its completion.
He brought your vision to life and the last thing you wanted to do was make him think his investment was a waste.
Last you’d checked, you hadn’t seen his brown wavy hair anywhere around the venue, his innocent smile playing on your mind even when you were entranced in conversation with fellow artists.
You stepped in front of a painting no one else currently seemed to be trained on, focusing on inhaling and exhaling your breaths, fidgeting with your fingers by your sides.
Tonight, was the most important day of your career by a mile.
“Excuse me.” Someone spoke up behind you and you inhaled a deep breath before whisking around to greet them. But your eyes grew soft, and your smile grew amicably at the man glancing downwards back at you.
“Do you know where I could find the host of the evening?” He asked, his smile mirroring yours, fiddling with the stem of his wine glass.
"Oscar," you breathed out, and the F1 driver had to force himself to disregard the palpable sense of relief that accompanied the utterance of his name.
The way it effortlessly rolled off your tongue, it left him wanting to hear you say it repeatedly.
“You made it.” He nodded his head, “I did.” Initially, he had doubts about attending, but considering the venue was conveniently located close to his hotel near Silverstone and his flight to Budapest wasn't until Monday evening, he managed to find the time to come.
You drew in a breath, "you look good." Your compliment was genuine, whenever you'd met up with Oscar or came across photos on Instagram, he was either in racing gear or in casual outfits. To see him in a suit was different. A good different.
"Thanks. Pretty sure I should be counting my breaths though." You chuckle as he looks down at himself, the shirt was a little smaller than he would've liked.
A testament to how life in Formula 1 was like and that his neck size had grown exponentially.
"Each one could be your last," you joked, adding on and he nodded.
"Exactly." His laugh culminated into a final chuckle, melting into a warm smile.
When you looked away, seeing the waiters you'd hired tonight refilling cups as people wandered around, Oscar took the opportunity to let his eyes drag over your figure.
"You look beautiful," his compliment drew a smile from you.
You briefly cast your gaze downward before lifting it to his chest then finally up to his eyes. "Thank you, Oscar."
He responded only with a curt nod; his eyes trained on your face before he tore them away to have a look around him.
"How's it going?"
You hummed, thinking about your answer. "It's okay. There's a few paintings that are getting lots of attention, others a little less."
"Did you expect that?" He asked and you reasoned, you knew when you began this collection that people would naturally gravitate more towards some pieces anyway, that's the advice you were given everywhere you went.
"Yeah, I'd be lying if I said I didn't." Oscar took a sip of some liquid courage before pointing at the painting you'd just been standing in front of with the rim of his glass.
"I like this one." You turned as he took steps towards it, his shoulder grazing yours. "This is the last one." You mentioned as he skimmed over the statements planted on the wall next to the artwork.
"I think it's an elderly couple, and the mirrors all around them are portals into a specific memory of their relationship." He said undisputedly. You look up at him, your mouth parting slightly in surprise.
"Yeah, how did you figure that out so quickly?"
"It's almost like you were brainstorming ideas to me on call a few months ago." You scoff, rolling your eyes but ultimately impressed by his memory.
He hadn't spoken much during that phone call, so you'd assumed he wasn't paying much attention to your endless rambles.
"I never realised you were actually listening." You softly said and Oscar turned his head to look at you.
"Every word." He reassured, and a warm feeling encompassed your chest at his affirmation.
His gaze traced over the painting once more. While he had never hesitated to express his belief in your talent, seeing your artwork displayed in such a way stirred a whirlwind of emotions inside of him.
He was proud of you and excited for you, knowing that you had undertaken this journey for your own sake, garnering an array of artistic admirers. It's no mean feat to organise an event like this, take a risk so early on in your career.
"I don't know how I'll ever be able to repay you." You snap him out of his thoughts, turning your body towards him, standing a few feet away.
Oscar mimicked your movements, turning so he was facing you, and placed his now empty glass on a bar tray that a waiter had extended to him, refusing a refill.
"Why do you think you need to repay me? Remember, it was a donation." He said matter-of-factly. You let out a sigh.
Despite his repeated assurances that he expected nothing in return, you couldn't shake off the feeling of indebtedness that lingered in your thoughts.
You found yourself dwelling on the late-night conversations, wondering if your eagerness to discuss your plans had inadvertently conveyed desperation.
Your gaze drops and without hesitation, he reaches his hand out and gently slots it into yours, his thumb caressing over your skin in a soothing gesture. Your heart skips a beat or two, the warmth of his hand was relieving.
"This is the best way you can repay me. Living the dream." He smiles and you nod, finally lifting your eyes to meet his. His voice was a calming anchor amid your thoughts.
"I'll never forget how you made it possible though," a small smile graced your lips, and he let out a chuckle.
"Yeah, you never miss a chance to mention it," he quipped, his eyes dancing with amusement. You playfully rolled your eyes, a good-natured sigh escaping you as you did.
Oscar's hand retreated to his side, and a subtle longing for his touch flickered within you. Nevertheless, you mask it with a smile that grew as you exchanged a couple more jokes.
...
He courteously held the door ajar, giving a nod to a man entering the bathroom who appeared to appreciate the gesture. Letting the door close behind him, Oscar took out his phone to check the time.
Absentmindedly, he began scrolling through his notifications: a mix of sports updates, a message from his mum, one from Mark. Yet, none seemed particularly urgent.
Just as he was about to tap on one of the notifications, his attention was drawn upward to the sound of your voice.
You were engaged in conversation with a man, his journal held in his hands, and sunglasses perched atop his head. Oscar's gaze briefly went back to his phone screen; he made no overt effort to eavesdrop.
Despite this, fragments of your conversation found their way to his ears anyway.
"I must say, your work is quite disappointing. The lack of technical skill is evident in every piece." Oscar's eyebrows furrow as he observes openly, a marked departure from his earlier disinterested demeanour.
You clear your throat as you try to collect yourself, bringing your fingers up to your mouth to hide your quivering lip.
You had previously cautioned yourself that not everyone will like your work, but experiencing such candid criticism directly was far more destructive than you could have expected.
"Um, okay. What sort of things did you not like about it?" You asked, trying to find some sort of valuable insight from such a respected critic in your community.
"The colours are garish and clash horribly. It's clear that you have no understanding of colour theory or composition." You nod, gathering some form of strength to just take his words on the chin but you were failing rather miserably. Your stomach was sinking, and your eyes were watering slowly.
"It's a shame that your efforts have resulted in such subpar creations." Your jaw tightens and as you scramble for the right words to respond with in your mind, a hand presses into your lower back from behind.
"Excuse me. I want to purchase a piece, but I can't seem to find your sales assistant." The accent is unmistakable, and you muster a smile as you turn to face him.
"I'll help you." Your voice is unsteady, your emotions deflated.
"Thank you," Oscar responds, though his gaze carries a hint of concern. He moves to follow you but before he can do so, the critic extends his hand to grasp his arm, waiting until he's certain you're out of earshot.
"Coming from a collector, don't bother." He smirks, his conviction clear. Yet, the F1 driver's face remains impassive.
"Sorry, I don't remember asking you. Now, if you don't mind." He looks down at the grip on his arm, his fist clenching by his side. The critic seems taken aback at the blank expression looking back at him, devoid of any gratefulness.
He swallows before loosening his grip.
Oscar rounds the pillar just as you press down on the handle to the fire door exit at the distant end.
He contemplates whether he should grant you some space, but he wonders if doing so will only make matters worse.
Pausing briefly, he contemplates his choices before deciding to make his way toward the fire exit anyway. His hand firmly grasps the handle, and he proceeds to push open the door.
With your back turned towards him, you're unaware of his presence. Your palms are pressed against your face as a means of stifling your sniffles hence the closing of the door registers faintly, the sound hardly penetrating your thoughts.
It's only when the crunching of gravel beneath someone's shoes reaches your ears that you realise you're no longer alone. But oddly, you know there's only one person who it could be.
The combination of embarrassment, distress, and sheer exhaustion was what left you feeling so overwhelmingly emotional.
Aware that you don't want Oscar to witness you in this state, you quickly swipe at your cheeks, hastily erasing any traces of tears from your face.
You whisk around, smiling up at him and nodding your head. "I'm good Os. It's not always going to be a perfect score, right?" His heart swells at the nickname you called him, very few people did so, but hearing it from you felt special in a way.
"He's a dick," the F1 driver bluntly responds, his tone carrying a hint of anger.
You chuckle softly, but the sigh that follows is slightly shaky. A wave of heaviness crashes over you again as the critic's hurtful words echo in your mind, your stomach sinking in response.
Oscar picks up on the shift of emotion and his eyes soften at your teary and lowering expression.
Without a word, he opens his arms and pulls you into an embrace. You don't resist; instead, you bury your face in his shoulder, your shoulders trembling as silent tears escape your eyes.
His arms encircle you tightly, offering a comforting refuge as your emotions spill over again.
His chest rises and falls with each steady breath, the rhythm providing you with some comfort despite how irritated you're getting at yourself for letting one conversation bother you this much.
As he holds you, his chest aches both for your vulnerability and the anger he feels towards the critic who provoked it. You reluctantly pull away after a minute or so, a mixture of gratitude and sadness in your eyes.
But in the moment, you can't help but feel that the money he donated for the exhibition might have gone to waste, that your efforts fell short.
Disappointing your clients is business but disappointing him felt personal, he was the reason you even had a chance to do this, and it'd turned out horribly.
"I let you down," you say quietly, and Oscar's eyebrows knit together as he studies your expression.
"How? Every piece I love, Y/N." He responds, placing his hand on your forearm, his touch warm. It sends a flurry of goosebumps over your skin which you're sure he would've picked up on considering his attention to detail.
He positions his index finger under your chin, forcing you to meet his eyes which you do. Your legs suddenly feel like they're incapable of keeping you upright, your face warming under his gaze.
"You didn't let me down." He whispers.
Oscar's concern remains palpable as his hand doesn't fall back to his side. His eyes hold a depth of emotion, the colours in his eyes becoming more distinct.
The connection that you can sense increases, and it's as if the unspoken understanding between you becomes more profound in that moment.
His cologne surrounds you but it's his gaze that flickers to your lips, a fleeting but unmistakable gesture. You realise that he's leaning in closer and there's a fraction of a second when it feels like the world around you fades.
The possibility of his lips meeting yours feels tantalisingly close.
But just as the moment deepens, you're both interrupted by one of the assistants, their voice breaking through the charged atmosphere.
"Sorry," the assistant interjects, sounding somewhat hurried. "There're a few clients waiting to speak with you Y/N."
Oscar slowly pulls back; he tucks in his bottom lip between his teeth and his expression shifts from one of intimacy to one of polite neutrality.
He offers you a subtle smile, the connection lingering between you even as the assistant's words redirect your attention.
"Of course," you reply, your voice steady despite quite the hurricane of emotions storming inside of you. You look to the assistant, ready to face the responsibilities of the exhibition once again. As you move away, you steal a glance at him, his gaze locked onto you for a moment longer before he nods.
That damned connection between you and Oscar remains, but now only punctuated by unspoken possibilities.
...
"Thank you, ma'am." you say with a warm smile as the elderly woman clasps your hand, offering kind words about your artwork while draping her shawl over her shoulders.
Once she'd left, you looked around to see if there was anyone else remaining in the space. Oscar had left a while ago considering he was on a flight tomorrow to Budapest.
Though a tinge of disappointment lingered within you, you understood and bid him goodnight.
You wrapped up a little later than you would've liked, a couple of your pieces had sold so you had to coordinate transport for them.
For the remaining few, you'd wrapped them up, gathered the papers for each one before loading them into the van to have them delivered back to your studio.
Oscar eventually made it back to the space he'd rented on Airbnb, staying in a hotel for a week definitely wasn't something he was fond of doing, a neatly packaged box of takeout planted on the small table.
He threw the crumpled paper bag into the bin and settled onto the couch, his phone in hand. He opened Instagram, scrolling through his feed to pass the time it'd take for him to get sleepy.
As he tapped through the stories, your profile picture caught his eye. He felt a smile tug at his lips as he watched it whole. The familiar scenes of the exhibition unfolded before him – videos capturing the venue, the artwork.
His gaze lingered on the art as if he hadn't been there tonight, his mind wandering into the world you had created. It wasn't just the work itself that interested him; it was the glimpse they offered into your mind, your perspective, and the emotions you poured into your work.
The admiration he felt for your creativity was intertwined with the growing fondness he was developing for you as a person.
Once you'd reached home, you dropped on to the couch with a sigh of relief that the day was done.
So, when your phone started vibrating besides you, you groaned and brought it up to your ear, not bothering to take a look at the caller ID.
"Y/N," you closed your eyes and waited for the other person to respond. They stuttered first before speaking up, "should I - should I reply with my name, or do we just get into the conversation?"
You lightly gasped, chuckling and straightening up on the couch. "Oscar, sorry. I'm still in work mode I think." You rubbed your forehead and the F1 driver poked through his food with a fork on the other end.
"No harm done. You back from the venue?" He asked and you stretched your legs out in front of you, fiddling with the hem of your dress.
"Yeah, only just. Perfect timing, Piastri." He smiled at your response, "I pride myself in that."
"I'm sure you do." You joked teasingly and fell back on the couch again. The similar onset of warmth and goosebumps from earlier bubbled up again inside of you.
"I thought you would've knocked out by now." Oscar hums, swallowing his food as he traps his phone between his ear and shoulder, throwing the now empty box on to the coffee table in front of him.
"Yeah well, I needed to eat. Luckily for me, there was a long queue at every takeaway place tonight." He retorted sarcastically and you scoffed, "typical London."
He agreed wordlessly before shifting his body horizontally, propping his head up on the armrest, his legs splaying over the leather sofa.
"What did you end up getting?" He made a humming sound as he reached for the receipt he'd tossed carelessly aside, bringing it up to eye level.
"Caribbean chicken curry." He said slowly, squinting to read the half-printed letters. Your stomach rumbling beneath you helped you remember that you too hadn't eaten for majority of the day. Your last meal was breakfast with a few snacks you always have on hand.
"Sounds good. I'd kill for some chicken curry right now." You mumble and Oscar's head turns to look up at the clock hung on the wall above the television.
"How 'bout I bring some?" He asks nonchalantly and your heart skips, you stutter in your response, glancing at the digital clock blinking at you from the corner table.
"You'd do that?" You say, a little more high-pitched than you would've preferred.
He smiles, refraining to say something corny. "Yeah, well I mean it's not my bedtime for another hour so..." He trails off thus leaving you to make the decision.
You don't even care about the food anymore, your stomach is doing somersaults from the mere thought of seeing him twice in one day.
"Only if it's alright with you. If you need to sleep, please sleep." You insist and there's a pause, you could swear you hear keys jangling on the other end of the phone before Oscar confirms.
"I'll be there in a bit."
...
You're changed into some slightly more flattering pyjamas than your regular animated giraffe ones when you hear a knock on your door. Taking a deep breath to steady yourself, you walk the length of the hallway and reach for the doorknob.
Giving it a couple of moments, you open the door to find Oscar standing there, a warm smile on his face that mirrors your own feelings.
He's holding a paper bag up and you smile, "my saviour. Come in."
He slides past you, toeing his trainers off and pushing them up to the wall so they weren't in the direct pathway, allowing you to lead him into the living room.
He places the bag on to your wooden dining table and you sigh in delight, the smell of the food faintly wafting out of it.
"How much do I owe you?" He shakes his head, letting you take the box out of the bag.
"Only your eternal gratitude," he replies, his lips curving into a smile as he takes in the sight of your light expression, your eyes lit with appreciation.
"You already have that." You chuckle.
Eventually, you begin eating, all the while holding a conversation. With each passing minute, a subtle worry creeps in - that he might decide to leave soon. Not that you're against him getting his rest, but your own enjoyment of his company is growing stronger by the second.
The idea of the evening ending prematurely becomes less and less appealing. The warmth of his presence, the humour in his words, the hesitance you initially felt about him leaving transformed into a silent plea for him to stay, at least a little longer.
"I'm going to go up and use the bathroom, head over to the couch, make yourself comfortable." You insist and Oscar nods. His feelings he was aware of when he reached back to his place had tripled since he'd got here.
His leg had been bouncing the entire duration he'd been talking, he was nervous but albeit not understandably. He'd visited your place a few times now, he'd known you for nearly a year.
Nothing about the fluttery sensation in his belly, the excitement prior to seeing you, the attraction, the thoughtfulness, made any sense to him.
But at the same time, they made perfect sense. He likes you. A whole lot.
Realising he was getting a bit warm, he pulled the hoodie over his neck to reveal just a plain white tee underneath.
Tossing it on to the dining room chair he was previously sat on, he plops on to the couch, bringing the calf of his right leg up to rest on the knee of his left, his arm outstretching on the back of the couch.
You eventually return, having brushed your teeth since the aftertaste of the curry wasn’t a very pleasant one in your mouth.
“Do you piss for that long?" Oscar asks curiously, locking his phone and sliding it on to the table.
You scoff and feign offence as you sit next to him just a few inches away. "I don't actually, even if I did, what's it to you?" You tease and he shrugs, his lower arm draping off the couch casually, his fingertips brushing close to your shoulder.
"I was bored," he admits, his explanation falling a bit flat.
You raise an eyebrow, a mockingly sympathetic expression on your face. "Poor Oscar, suffering from boredom in my humble abode. My heart aches for you." He smirks, his tongue poking the inside of his cheek as he shakes his head at your antics.
His eyes sparkle with amusement, "Well, I must say your empathy is truly heartwarming."
"That's just me, a paragon of compassion," you quip, a mischievous glint in your eyes. His proximity has your heart racing, and you're acutely aware of the playful tension that's building between you.
He tilts his head, his gaze holding yours as he leans in slightly. "You know, I was half expecting you to beg for my forgiveness."
You roll your eyes, your gaze locked on to his, you didn't mean for them to glance down to his lips, but it didn't skip past his notice either.
Your heart was hammering in your chest and the silence that followed afterwards definitely gave Oscar enough time to be able to pick up on it.
"Please forgive me Oscar, please?" You reduce your words to a whisper and he smiles, refusing to waste another second and he instantly ducks his head to catch your lips in a fervent kiss.
His actions catch you off guard, the sensation electrifying and sending a jolt of surprise through your system.
Your thoughts scatter as the world seems to narrow down to the point of contact between your lips. The kiss is eager and filled with a mixture of longing and curiosity, as if both of you have been dancing around this moment for far too long.
Your heart continues racing, and time feels suspended as his touch sends shivers up and down your spine.
The sudden intimacy of it all is exhilarating, and you find yourself responding without hesitation, your fingers instinctively finding their way to his arm, your body moving a fraction closer to his.
A soft moan escapes you, and Oscar slides his hand beneath your top, pressing his palm against your waist. A squeeze of your skin hints at you to move back slightly, creating the room needed for him to push you down on to your back.
Your lips detach for a moment as he positions himself over you, lowering his head seconds later to press them together again.
His face was level with yours when he eventually pulled away to catch his breath, and let you catch yours, his arm propping him up besides your head.
"Isn't it your bedtime?" He chuckles softly, his fingers toying with a few strands of your hair.
"I'll just have to use the plane's naptime feature." You laugh, bringing your hand up to push his hair out of his eyes.
His gaze flickers across your face, capturing the traces of your faint smile lines and the tiny beauty mark adorning your skin.
He leans in, planting a tender kiss on the mole. Meanwhile, your fingertips journey to the nape of his neck, exploring the contours of his hair.
He grins boyishly when he picks his head up again. "I think I could stay here forever," he admits, his voice a soft confession.
You playfully raise an eyebrow. "Oh really? What if the plane's naptime feature gets jealous?"
He chuckles, a low, melodious sound. "Well, I guess it'll just have to deal with a bit of competition," he remarks before his lips find yours once again.
...
Masterlist
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nyoomfruits · 6 months
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PREGNANT LANDO 📈📈
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okay so the idea is basically omega!lando gets pregnant through a one night stand, doesn't know the guy and doesn't know how to track him down but he decides to keep the baby and just raise them on his own. alpha!oscar takes one look at pregnant lando and goes batshit insane inside becase 'oh my god smell good must protect must keep save must comfort' but like he's a Proper Alpha so he's not going to like. bother lando with all that or whatever. it slips through the cracks sometimes tho. getting lando anything he asks, giving him his hoodies. sort of hovering around him and growling at unfamiliar alphas whenever lando visits the paddock, stuff like that. and lando is kind of charmed?? also oscar's scent is really nice and actually soothes his morning sickness whereas most alpha scents make it worse and so he keeps asking oscar for hoodies even though that's kind of a little innapropriate maybe but oscar gives them anyway so it's fine and maybe he asks oscar to help him out with some stuff and drive him to an appointment and then before they know it they're assembling the cot together in the baby room that's in a color they picked together and still completely oblivious to the fact that they're totally becoming a family ANYWAY i don't have an outline yet so nothing's set in stone BUT i did write this little blurb in the tsgc discord the other day that kind of captures the vibes
The whole meeting feels kind of stupid. Pointless, really. He barely feels pregnant. It’s only been two weeks, it’s going to take months before he even starts showing. But he smells pregnant, and the rules and regulations don’t allow pregnant Omegas to drive, no matter how far along they are.
And so here Lando is, wiggling around in McLaren’s stupidly uncomfortable conference chairs, waiting for the rest of the team to arrive so he can tell them The News. He chews at his thumb for a bit, lets his hand wander over his still completely flat stomach, thinks about what everyone’s reactions are going to be.
Oscar is early, for once. Takes two steps into the meeting room, freezes, whips his head to look at Lando, eyes widening, looking for all intents and purposes like he just got all the wind knocked out of him.
“Yup,” Lando says, doing a little jazz hand motion. “Surprise.”
“Oh,” Oscar says, takes an aborted step forward, freezes again, fumbles a little in place. “I, yes. That’s. Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” Lando says, smiling a little tightly. He hasn’t really gotten used to that, really. People congratulating him. It’s not. He wants the baby, he does. That’s why he’s here right now announcing his pregnancy leave and everything. But it was still a mistake. Sort of. It wasn’t planned. So people congratulating him feels. Undeserved, somehow. Weird.
“Can I. Do you need anything?” Oscar asks, still hovering in the doorway and oh. That’s. That’s kind of precious, really. Oscar’s Alpha instincts kicking in, wanting to take care of a pregnant omega. Protect them. That’s sweet.
And so Lando indulges him, smiles softly. “Yeah, could you get me a tea, actually? Lemon, if they have it.”
“Yes,” Oscar says, and then he’s out of the room before Lando can even blink. Oh, well. If anything, at least he can have fun with that.
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celestialtarot11 · 10 months
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If you were a mermaid or a siren, what powers would you have? Whats your story? What song captures your essence? 🌀🐚
Hi everyone! Super fun and silly tarot reading just to switch it up 🤗 I always fantasized being a mermaid when I was younger and I still do 😤 mermaids are ELITE. Sirens too 👀 if ya’ll liked playing mermaids this is your reading —> Pick below 😈
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• Pile 1: You guys love adventure as a mermaid/siren. I’m getting mermaid vibes for ya’ll instead. You would be the type to talk to fishes and have your little community of fish. I’m seeing fish school 🤣 like if fish could talk you’d have a little meeting where you’re the teacher and you’re teaching the fish the wonders of the world. Meaning you’re telling them your stories of walking on land, and they’re all so intrigued. Talking fish is a little scary for me, but I’m picturing the little mermaid alright 😤 and ya’ll love a good chase either with men or women or both. You guys love the attention, and love to hide at the same time. You never really give up who you are underneath, but you’ve got one best friend who you tell everything too. They’re probably a mermaid too, and they’re super sweet. So maybe you know someone in this lifetime who is sweet, you can picture them as your mermaid sister 🤣 or best friend. As for powers I get the power of creativity.
You cast spells with your eyes and the fire of creativity makes you feel alive as a mermaid. Other people are so intrigued by this they can’t help but wonder who you are, and what you’re doing. As a mermaid, your bubbly nature and warm laugh draws people in, and lures them into your energy. You’re definitely the kind to bring a topic up, scratch just the surface, and never truly give away the details. It leaves people wondering, thinking they truly know you, when in reality they don’t.
Your channeled song: Brent Faiyaz- FYTB this song is literally your essence. More so the lyrics than the beats. “I’m a hot bitch(cannot say the N word) check my degrees” thats literally your essence :)
• Pile 2 Hi :) I’m getting the vibe you moved away from the coast and have had to adjust to the city as a siren. The new life is something you want, but staying on land is temporary for your kind. Eventually, you have to dip your toes in the water. I see you as a siren studying in university or working in a job during the days, but by night your tail is out 💅🏻 you are reserved and it takes a while for you to slowly open up, so people are naturally inclined to wonder about you. You mostly spend time alone, and enjoy the peace the waters bring. But you know all about destruction, and change. You may resonate with this phrase, you are a walking tower of change. People learn different things about you; and you learn different things about others. When you walk into (or swim 😉) into peoples lives, they never remain the same. As a siren, your touch and energy cause people to feel seen. Naked almost, but no ones actually naked lmao. When they feel your otherworldly presence, they shiver and get goosebumps. Immediately, they know you’re different. Because you’ve seen many reactions which are good or bad from them, you’ve learned to isolate.
When you speak, when you move, or just exist, people see your power. People know there’s something intoxicating about you. They know you’re different, and to some it repulses them. For others who are bold, they are attracted to you. They want to know you, but you hold them at a distance. The unknowing push or pull attracts others and that is your power 🐚 I’m also seeing you have healing hands. When you touch others, they feel so much warmth wrapping around them. Some may want more than want you give, they want to be consumed by all the ways you touch them. Physically, mentally and spiritually.
Your channeled song: The Beach by The Neighborhood 🤍
• Pile 3! Hi 🤗🐚🤍 You guys are the real star lovers and moon lovers. Mermaid vibes for sure. Wanderlust and daydreaming. Some of ya’ll use daydreaming as an escape from your life. Some of you guys want to live as a human, and travel long distances without losing your legs. You fantasize about how humans are connected to earth, but find yourself returning to the water as a source of comfort. Both are important to you and it seems to me as a mermaid you want to strike balance with both worlds. You definitely are shy, but not quiet. I think if you had a chance, you’d spill what you want to someone else. You’d tell them your fantasies, your ideas of travel. And their response would be like, “why don’t you do it?” And you’d remember your reality as a mermaid, needing water to live and somehow you’d feel sad. You’re reminded of your hometown. I think leaving home, or a concept of home is scary for you all. As a mermaid, you find yourself talking to birds the most, your fish friends aren’t present as much. Somehow you find yourself connecting to birds more.
What is your power? Definitely your ethereal, starry energy. You resemble the night sky but a soft one. Where the wind blows gently and the stars are clear, and the moon is round and bright. People are comforted by you, and its easy to get lost in the likes of you. People like a good fantasy, they get high off you. They like the euphoria you bring, and want more. When they look in your eyes, they see nothing but a certain dreaminess, mixed with a longing. It makes them want to coddle you almost, or give something to you you never had. Thats how you lure others in. Along with your deep conversations, people think about them a lot after. It stays 🤍🐚
Your channeled song: Cool For the Summer Demi Lovato- this really captured your secretive energy. People are drawn to what secrets you hold, and your curiosity for the world pulls them in. So much about fantasy and paradise in this song, getting lost in someone, but for you its the world 🤍
Hi guys!! This was so much fun to create and definitely got my inner child going 🧜‍♀️🐚 comment below what mermaid you are & what resonated. We need more mermaids and sirens in this human world anyway 😤
Book a reading with me here 🤍
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11queensupreme11 · 2 months
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OKKKKAY IDK IF YOU STILL NEED HELP FOR PERCY’S SCENT! But as someone who used to work as a fragrance chemist this is up my alley 😤 you should’ve said something sooner girlie.
Also please note idk why but it won’t let me put the pics with each perfume I’m talking about so I’m putting the pics in order from what I typed
BVLGARI AQVA MARINE… hear me out.. it’s for men 😭 BUT GIRL look what it has… I LIKE THIS ONE CAUSE WHEN I SMELLED IT ONCE IT HAD A NICE SALTY SEAWEED VIBE LIKE SMELL and our girl is called seaweed brain 🥹 and look at the bottle … it kinda matches her eyes
So the rest aren’t best to worst just a whatever and what I remember 😭
Heeley's Sel Marin (unisex) Okay so this one is nice it def got a salt water smell almost like you walking on the beach when it’s sunny and you kinda smell the saltiness the ocean has to offer when walking near the ocean and it does have a seaweed funk to it not as much but it’s there.
Tom Ford Oud Minerale (unisex fragrance) Okay so here is this one… I go shopping for perfume/ cologne a lot so I have smelled this one recently, so I add the description if you wanna read it, if I remember this one does capture the fragrance of the ocean but it does have a bit of “fresh water” but it’s a bit brackish (so it’s between fresh and seawater) so it’s does capture the sea heavily almost like when you go walking during the night and the breeze is blowing in the air and you can smell the ocean a bit more than the day ( that how I see it)
Armani Privé - Bleu Lazuli Okay so this is not like beach or ocean but it does have nice smell (the description explains it nicely ) I know of this one cause I used to buy it 😭😭 the design is so pretty and it match daddyseidon aesthetic too 😭 # bias
Jo Malone Wood Sage and Sea Salt (Unisex) So this one is nicceee I put this cause it says salty in the description but tbh it leans toward freshie and it captures the smell of the ocean quiet nicely but it’s a little woodsy tho and it made me think of her daddy cause of this chapter where Anubis said she got her dad scent all over her (isn’t the mf scenting her or something???). So it made think how they may smell alike but people can smell her dad’s scent so that’s where the woodsy comes in to tell their scents apart.
Sea of Gray
I honesty came across this one when doing my research and the description seems on point for you tbh I haven’t smelled it but what it says sounds like it may be but if has that ocean like feel I am not sure … also the first website I clicked said it cost $22 which is cheap if Percy ever wants to buy it compare to the rest of them 😭 this I couldn’t add the description but you can search them up
Anyway you can see that even tho they have a salty/ fresh water based to some they always have an extra thing added like spice or vanilla so don’t think toooo much on it. Cause even these things aren’t 100% close to smelling like the actual sea. But hopefully the description of them can help you!!
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IM SORRY BESTIE, I ALREADY GOT THE FRAGRANCE FROM HER I SHOULD'VE WENT TO YOU FIRST 😭😭😭
i picked mermaid's embrace from deep midnight perfumes
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literally i just googled "perfume mermaids sirens" and then a reddit post came up and i saw this one listed 😭 i liked the description so i went with it 💀
BUT YOU USED TO WORK AS A FRAGRANCE CHEMIST????? omg i remember your super detailed post about the yanderes scents and that explains so much lmaooo that sounds so cool though!!!
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katewritesthings · 8 months
Text
Love Me Like I Can // Chapter 1
Chapter 1 // Vibe
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pairing: Joe Burrow x Singer! Original Female Character
•summary: Inspired by Scandoval and Taylor/Travis. R&B singer Diana Hayes navigates falling in love after a cheating scandal captures the attention of America and a certain Bengal.
•warnings: •warnings: Cursing. Cheating. Sexual Situations. Drinking. Drug use. MINORS DO NOT INTERACT.
January 21, 2024.
Diana was currently sitting cross-legged in Biz’s room, computer in her lap, sharing a bottle of wine with her sister. Open on the screen was the Spotify app, with Diana’s first album Get Out pulled. Avoiding the writing she was supposed to be doing, the singer was instead focusing on watching her sister unpack her new room. The activity was a welcome distraction from the feelings that usually came with writing.
The past three weeks had been hectic for the sisters to say the least. Diana had finished up all of her press obligations for Band Together and the release of her EP in the first two weeks of January and spent the past week moving her things into her new rental in New York from Boston. They had two and a half weeks before Diana’s schedule would be filled with writing and recording for her upcoming album and tour. She had thought stepping foot into the house she shared with Connor would make her miss him, but in reality, it just made her angry and sad that every memory she had of Boston was tied to him.
“So, what are you doing again?” Biz questioned, passing the bottle and continuing to hang her sweaters. 
“I’m making a public playlist with some of my songs and some songs by other people who have summed my feelings up more eloquently than I could have,” Diana explained, adding the title song to the playlist. Leave (Get Out) applied to her current situation way than she could have ever thought when she recorded it at 14. She moved on to her second album, eyes scanning the titles.
“No, I know what you’re doing. I guess I should have asked why you’re doing this instead of… yknow, writing and preparing for the songwriting session you have coming up. You record at the beginning of March, you’ve got to have material.”
“I think I’m still more hung up on the situation than I want to be and people to know about. Like, I don’t know what combination of emotions I’m experiencing, but I’m stuck,” Diana admitted, twisting her long hair into a top knot and adding two songs, “The High Road” and “Too Little Too Late” from her second album. “Like, can I write about the situation and still be angry? Can I use the songs I wrote about Connor? I definitely don’t want people to think I’m still hung up on him. I’m really just hurt by the betrayal of it all.”
“Well, I think you’re allowed to still be heartbroken about it still, Di. It’s been three months.” Biz had made her way to Diana to hand her the wine and wrap her into a hug. “This is the first downtime you’ve had since then, you’re allowed to be sad and people will be fine with that. We’re going to get drunk tonight and have fun. If you write, you write. No pressure on healing, okay?” 
Diana stared at her sister’s little finger before her own laced around it and she uttered, “Promise.” 
“Now, turn on some music, and let’s go do a shot!”
Biz indicated to follow her, so Diana did as she was told. Half an hour later, the two were sitting on the couch in their living room laptop between them, taking their second shot of tequila. Diana would be lying if she said she didn’t feel the first and the large glass of Sauvignon Blanc she had been sipping from. 
“Have you texted Joe yet?” Biz’s voice chimed, clearly trying to brighten the mood. Unfortunately for Diana, the alcohol intensified the feelings of rejection as her face settled into a deep frown and a lump formed in her throat.
“No.. uhm, his agent never got back to Cathy, so I never got his number…” She cleared her throat and gave a nervous laugh. “Which is totally fine or whatever because I almost even forgot his name.” Biz rolled her eyes, “Right,” she muttered as she took a drink of her own cocktail. She knew her sister spent at least two days googling the handsome quarterback. “Have you reached out on social media?”
“I don’t want to look desperate, Biz! I don’t even know if I’m ready for another relationship. He’s just cute and looked fun, that’s all.” Diana was still nervous about the idea of jumping into something so soon. She and Connor had been together since she was 19 and while he wasn’t her first relationship, she thought at one point he was going to be her last. The idea of starting over at 26 was scary.
“I think we should invite him and some friends to your birthday party,” Biz interrupted her self-doubt spiral to propose the wildest idea Diana had heard yet. 
“Biz, he won’t even give me his number. How would I even do that?,” Diana shifted in her seat uncomfortably. “His friends were probably just making fun of him because he likes my music.” “I wish you would stop fucking doubting yourself, Di. You’re hot as fuck and dude probably too scared to text you. You build everybody up but yourself. I wish you would give yourself half the love and grace you give other people.” Biz’s words must have sparked inspiration because Diana grabbed her laptop and paused the music. Opening a word document she began typing and humming to a beat. 
Lover girl, loving everything but herself.
Pedestals for everyone, but she’s on a shelf.Emotion comatose, you know how that shit goes.
The sisters spent the next forty minutes sending ideas back and forth to each other, opening another bottle of wine, and listening to Diana sing their ideas into the room. They had finished one song and had even been in good enough spirits to finish a song Diana had been working on before her breakup. Giggling with her sister would never get old, Diana was certain. Everything she had been through in the past three months just made her realize how grateful she was that she had her sister. When their dad died, Diana had attempted to shut everyone from her family out of her life and she was just glad Biz was too stubborn to let that happen. 
Just as the thought that Biz’s stubbornness was a positive trait crossed Diana’s mind, she looked up to see her phone in her sister’s hand and hear a “It isn’t what it looks like,” fall out of her mouth.
“Well, then what is it? Because it sure as hell looks like you’re going through my phone,” Diana shrieked, weakly reaching for the iPhone.
“I just texted Cathy to invite some of the Bengals to your party! You’re already going to be meeting Taylor’s boyfriend, might as well make it an AFC reunion,” Biz said excitedly, knowing it was too late for the text to be unsent.
Diana wanted to be angry at her sister, but she couldn’t help but feel the excitement bubbling in her stomach. 
-------------------
February 3, 2024
Diana hadn’t celebrated a birthday since her 20th and she was nervous. Biz and her manager Cathy, had insisted on throwing her a huge birthday party to make up for the ones that she missed celebrating. Connor had always insisted that celebrating birthdays was narcissistic, refusing even to get her a present in the seven years they were together. 
The redhead was currently sitting in the back of a blacked-out Suburban, between Biz and Taylor Swift. In the third row sat Travis and Austin, Taylor’s brother,  quietly chatting about something that Di couldn’t make out. 
“Thank you again for this, Taylor,” Diana sighed, trying to regulate her breathing. “There is no need to thank me! Everyone needs a friend, Diana. Just because you’ve had some pretty shitty ones in the past doesn’t mean we can’t show you what they’re really supposed to be.” Taylor said, placing an arm around her new friend’s shoulder.
“Plus, if my intuition is right, you just might be making more friends tonight,” Taylor smiled as the car came to a stop. Diana was going to ask what she meant before the door was opened and flashes of light began blinding her vision.
Diana was still trying to get her eyesight back to normal when she stepped into the venue that had been rented for the evening. Her sister had done an amazing job, the entire room was decorated as if they had just stepped foot into a forest. She now understood why her sister insisted on her wearing the cream corseted dress that perfectly fit the theme. Diana felt like a fairy.
Looking around the room, Diana was overwhelmed by not only the number of people but who cared enough to actually show up for her. The room was a mix of people she met since the breakup and ones who have known her since before her debut album. She was almost certain she had seen some people she hadn’t even recognized!
Two hours after arriving and making her rounds, Diana found herself sharing a joint with Elijah, one of her childhood friends from Philly. The two hadn’t seen each other in years, but had picked back up like they never missed a step. The pair were in a fit of giggles when Diana noticed a group of rather large men sitting at a high top near the bar.
Diana took a pull from the join, squinting her eyes to try to make out the faces of any of the four men laughing amongst themselves. “Do you know who they are,” she exhaled the question and the smoke together. 
“Not for real, but it looks like they linebackers or some shit,” Elijah cackled, taking the joint from Diana’s hand. 
“Fuck,” she cursed Biz aloud. “That has to be Travis’ friends, right?” 
Diana was weighing the odds that any Chiefs player, other than the one who was dating her friend, would show up to her party less than a week after losing the spot in the upcoming Super Bowl. She didn’t know much about pro athletes, but based off of the way Travis was talking to Biz in the car, the team was taking it pretty hard. 
“Shit, I know him though,” Eli pointed out Travis in the crowd, heading their way with Taylor. When the couple arrived in front of them, Eli offered the joint to Travis and Taylor grabbed hold of Diana’s hand. 
“C’mon, Di! There’s some people I want to introduce you to!” Taylor’s drunken giggles filled Diana’s ears. She wasn’t sure if it was the four Palomas she had pounded since she got here, the pre-roll she just took part in, or the second-hand confidence that comes from being on the arm of The Taylor Swift, but all of her anxiety was replaced with excitement as she was pulled towards the unknown men. 
“Hey fellas!” Taylor greeted the group, “I’m Taylor and I really think you should say Happy Birthday to my friend, Diana!” 
The redhead shot her a confused look, expecting Taylor to have met these men before at least! Deep laughs pulled her out of her thoughts as a chorus of ‘happy birthdays’ filled the air.
The man that Diana didn’t recognize spoke first, “Thanks for inviting us! I’m Tee.” Offering out his hand and pointing out the other men as he said their names. “Ja’Marr, Joe, and T.B.”
“Oh! Hi!” Diana greeted more excitedly than she would if she were sober. “I saw your interview! Thank you so much for giving me a shout-out. Anyone who plays my music on live TV is cool in my book”
Ja’Marr and Tee broke into laughter as Tee elbowed Joe in the ribs and whispered something to the guys.. She wasn’t sure if it was her projecting or if she actually saw Joe blush and look away. Thankfully, before anxiety could take over Diana’s mind, Ja’Marr shouted over the music. 
“Let’s just say you’ve been on the official playlist since the LSU days with me and Joe. Ever since I met him, he been playing that Marvin’s Room cover..” 
Diana’s face burned, embarrassed about the drunken remix she had done on Instagram Live at 18. A fight with her then-boyfriend sparked a bender of prescriptions and alcohol causing her to lose inhibitions and stream from the recording studio. While she was embarrassed about the situation, she was happy her label had let her finally release more mature music after. 
“Oh, my God! I forgot you did that” Taylor giggled, swatting her new friend’s arm. “That was so Bad Ass.”
“I agree,” Joe spoke for the first time. His voice was clearer, more sure of itself than Diana remembered from the interview. And Mic’d Ups she had seen after googling him. 
“Thank you,” Diana accepted, eyes trained on Joe. One of the other men had changed topics in the brief moment their eyes had locked, but she couldn’t be sure which. The intensity of Joe’s gaze caused heat to fill Diana’s cheeks and she turned back to the group just in time to hear Ja’Marr jesting with Taylor.
“As cool as your boy is, I’m glad it’s not him in the Super Bowl. Like I said a few weeks ago, anyone but the Chiefs.”
“Hey, now. Don’t be bitter we went farther than you, Chase.” Travis’ voice startled Diana, who was doing her best to stare anywhere but at Joe. She busied herself by watching the Tight End as he carefully distributed the drinks he was carrying, an Old Fashion for Taylor and a Paloma for Diana and himself. 
After thanking Travis, Diana turned her focus back to the group. The conversation had turned to the topic of the recent football season and even though Diana knew next to nothing about sports, she found the conversation was piquing her interests more than she imagined. “And I’m not sorry, bro. I said what I said and I said anyone but the Chiefs,” Ja’Marr laughed in Travis’ direction. “Oh, so you guys have beef,” Diana questioned, nervous to show she didn’t know much about the profession of the majority of the group. Luckily the men were kind enough to explain their recent rivalry and some of the basics of the game. Well, as much as they could with the amount of alcohol that was being consumed. Before long Taylor had excused herself to say hi to someone she had recognized, Ja’ and Travis and T.B. had broken into their own conversation, moving to the bar itself. 
“So, Ja’Marr and I are wide-receiver, which means that it’s our job to catch the ball when the quarterback, or Joe, throws it,” Tee was attempting to explain to Diana for the third time. Joe was staring, finishing the last of his drink and Ja’Marr shook his head in frustration as Diana nodded her head in a way that showed she clearly had not committed the information to memory. “Man, Tee, just give up. Let’s go get us some drinks,” Ja’Marr pulled T.B. away, leaving just Joe smiling at Diana.
“So, uh, I’m glad you guys came!,” Diana blurted out nervously, instantly cringing that she had just repeated her introduction. “Well, what I mean is, I didn’t get response from the team or see you guys when I first got here.” “Oh, we lost track of time pregaming and were advised to come in through the back since the press saw some of the guests you had,” Joe smiled, simultaneously calming some of the nervousness she felt and sending her stomach into somersaults. “Apparently you’re quite the popular lady. Taylor Swift and Wiz Khalifa at the same party? Talk about Taylor Gang or die.” 
Diana laughed at the last comment. She really was blown away by the amount of people who showed up for her. She hadn’t even spoken to Cam, better known as Wiz, since their collaboration six years ago and he had shown up to support her.
“Yeah, I’m really grateful that all of these people wanted to spend their evening celebrating me,” Diana beamed. She was in a state of intoxicated euphoria that was giving her the courage to act on what she wanted, like asking Joe to leave the crowded room. “Do you want to walk to the balcony?”
A curt nod of agreement was all it took for the pair to drain their drinks, stand up from the table, and make their way to the outer edge of the room. Conversation flowed freely between the two as they walked, discussing their tastes in music, movies, and books.
“You look wonderful tonight, by the way,” Joe changed the subject, eyes scanning the dance floor where his teammates had found their home for the night. 
Diana was sure that her face was going to permanently be the color of her hair just from the presence of the quarterback to the side of her. “Thank you, you don’t look so bad yourself,” she replied.
And he did. He was wearing a pair of faded black jeans that were perfectly tailored to his muscular thighs, a black t-shirt that was clinging to his chest nicely, a brightly colored jacket and his signature gold chains, including the 9. Diana let her eyes linger on his chest longer than she normally would have before Joe’s voice broke her out of the trance.
“So, can I be honest with you?,” Joe asked, glancing down at Diana. Even in the heels she was currently wearing, the man still stood a good 8 inches taller than the woman at his side. 
“Uhm, sure?” Diana answered, unsure of what was about to come. ‘I’ve known the man for less than an hour, what hasn’t he been honest about?’ Diana thought to herself as they made their way down the hall that led to the balcony.
“I was honestly shocked you invited me after Ja’Marr’s interview,” Joe laughed, opening the door, and letting Diana step onto the balcony before following suit. 
“Are you kidding me? I’m shocked that you guys listen to my music!” Diana shoved his shoulder. “Besides, I got pressured into inviting you all since you curved me last month.” 
The redhead took a few more steps before she realized that Joe was no longer beside her. When she glanced backward, she noticed that Joe was wearing a puzzled expression.
“What do you mean I curved you,” Joe asked slowly like he was trying to put pieces of the puzzle together.
“Well, after I saw your interview, I was honestly shocked that you even listened to my music. Then Ja’Marr said to hit you up, so I had my manager ask your team for your number,” Diana explained, body fully turned towards Joe now. “I never heard back and Biz insisted it wasn’t desperate to try again too.” “You’re joking,” Joe let out a humorless laugh and shook. “I thought that was the team making fun of me after Ja’Marr embarrassed me with the interview.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Was what he said not true?” Diana teased, taking a step toward him. “Are you not a fan?”
“No, I’m a huge fan,” Joe flushed, eyes locked with the aquamarine ones in front of him, encouraging Diana to take another step. “Yeah, what was it the Ja’Marr said? ‘Practically obsessed,” Diana’s voice came out breathier than she imagined, taking another step. She was practically chest to chest to chest with Joe, their eye contact never breaking. “To ‘hit you up’” 
That was all Joe needed before grabbing the back of her head and leaning down to capture her lips in a kiss. The action was drunk and messy, fueled by equal parts lust and alcohol. As the kiss deepened all Diana could think about was how she wasn’t close enough to Joe. Grabbing his jacket, she stepped into him again, causing him to slowly take steps backward until his thighs hit a table beside the door, filled with floral arrangements and an ashtray. Joe shifted his weight so that he was partially sitting on the table, partially leaning. Their lips moved together rhythmically until Joe pulled away and trailed kisses down her jawbone, grabbing at the tulle skirt of Diana’s dress while Diana adjusted her legs on either side of Joe’s so that she was straddling his thigh. 
Joe’s mouth worked its way towards Diana’s neck, finding the tender spot behind her ear. A wave of pleasure washed through Diana, a moan leaving her lips and hips bucking against Joe’s thigh. His rough hands ran up and down her body methodically as if he already knew what buttons to push to cause the woman before him to melt, mouth continuing its path down her cherry blossom tattoo.
Diana rocked her hips again, craving the relief the friction had given her, hands tangling in Joe’s waves. “Fuck,” she whispered, barely finding her voice. Joe pulled back, hungry gaze meeting Diana’s eyes before recapturing her swollen lips. Placing his hands firmly on her hips, he helped her find a motion that kept the moans falling from her beautiful mouth. A familiar tension, one that Diana had only felt at her own hands the past three months, was building in her stomach as she took Joe’s bottom lip between her teeth. Her alcohol-raddled brain didn’t care that she was on a balcony riding a professional athlete’s thigh, she was desperate for release and she was determined to get it.
That was until the door beside them slammed open, causing Diana to take a step back from Joe. Biz stepped through the door, calling Diana’s name. “Di! Are you out he-”
Biz cut herself off when her eyes landed on her sister, lips swollen, love bites down her neck, the skirt of her dress still in Joe’s hand. The pair looked like they had been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. “Oh! I, well, I just came to find you because it’s time for cake. We’ve been looking for you.”
Diana cleared her throat, causing Joe to let go of her skirt and stand up straight. “Right, uh, you better get in there. Can’t cut the cake without the birthday girl. I’ll talk to yo later, I guess.” Scratching the back of his head, Joe did his best to look anywhere but at Biz while he exited the balcony.
“What the fuck was that?” Biz asked, incredulously, still staring at her sister. 
“Well, I don’t know what it could have been, but what it turned out to be was a cockblock,” Diana laughed. “What happened to ‘I barely remember his name’ and ‘he was just making fun of me’,” Biz’s face finally broke into a smile. “I don’t know, Biz. I think we were just both drunk. I’m sure he was just looking for someone to hook up with, it’s probably nothing,” Diana shrugged, brushing past her sister. “Now let’s go get cake.”
After cutting the cake, the last hour of the party was a blur to Diana. Cathy, her manager, had grabbed and insisted she say bye to as many of the music producers as possible before making her own exit. Normally, Diana wouldn’t have minded at all, wanting to take any opportunity she had to suck up to the people in charge of her music. But tonight, Diana could not take her mind off Joe and his blue eyes and soft lips. She hadn’t managed to get his phone number after realizing that he never rejected her and she was hoping to see him again.
After saying farewell to the last of the label reps, Cathy advised Diana to finish up her goodbyes as it was almost time for the car to take her home. Diana followed instructions, making sure that when she found Biz and Taylor, they stayed by her side. While waiting for Travis and Austin to show up with the groups’ coats, Diana couldn’t help but continue to glance around the room for messy brown waves.
“They left right after the cake was cut,” Biz spoke knowingly, a smirk on her face. Diana’s heart dropped. She didn’t get to say bye to Joe.
“Who left?” Taylor asked, “The guys from the Bengals. Seems like Diana and the quarterback snuck off to have a little fun,” Biz cackled, “He even gave her a hickey like we’re in seventh grade.”
Before Diana could reply to her sister, Travis and Austin approached the ladies and started distributing coats before the group made their way outside and into the Suburban waiting for them. Determined to not let disappointment ruin her night, Diana decided to add songs that reminded her of tonight to her public playlist while they drove. She added “How to Touch a Girl” before moving on to her last album. Looking over the tracklist, she added “Vibe” and “Like This”,  deciding that they perfectly described the feelings of lust and excitement she was filled with earlier.
Diana couldn’t shake the feeling as she was falling asleep that she wished that she had stopped Joe from leaving the balcony. Maybe then, she would be falling asleep next to him and not squished in between her sister and her new friend.
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@therapycat21
Ahhhh, I am so overwhelmed by the feedback. Thank you so much for liking, reblogging, and replying. I don't know if you all are interested in the spotify playlist Diana would make or media blurbs after the chapter, but I can also do those.
Thank you again!
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smilesrobotlover · 7 months
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I have a talent for drawing out of context things UwU
Anyways some context: I wanted to explore humans vs Hylians, and in order to escape some people idk who, the men have to like, jump into a Niagara Falls type of thing. Of course, if Rusl were to do that, he’d probably die. I want to explore Kass getting his feathers cut so he can’t fly for a few weeks so he’s also stuck, cuz he will also die if he jumped into a Niagara Falls thing, and Rito don’t have water proof feathers so he would probably double die. Leon however rushes ahead and forces Linebeck into the thing cuz he’ll know he’ll hesitate, Benji pushes Talon cuz he knows he’ll also hesitate, and Rusl and Kass are left behind. They are able to escape and get down safely but Rusl blows up on Leon.
Rusl is a very, very patient and understanding man. He gets very annoyed, yes, but to get him to actually blow up is quite rare. But he’s understandably angry. He and Kass were left behind completely Helpless and almost got captured or killed or hurt. Leon feels guilty cuz he’s the sort of leader and recognizes that he messed up. He’s not used to being around non Hylians and he understands that they are his responsibility. They have a good convo about it and make up, with Rusl giving Leon a hug cuz he’s a hugger.
The rest are kinda chilling lol. I love drawing them vibing!
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