#i haven’t done this in a while because i seemed to always be in charge of the holiday playlists so these weren’t really speaking to me!!!

[wonderwall1968]

12.26.2024

[moonstruckme]

hi love what about a Sirius pre relationship request where reader is super sick and he comes over to check on her and she's just kinda feeling the fever delusions and she asks him why he doesn't like? She's like I want to be ur gf ur so amazing what am I doing wrong? And just angst with fluff bc Sirius does have feelings for her

Hi, I hope you don’t mind that I’ve made this friends-with-benefits Sirius instead of them just being like platonic. Thank you for requesting!

cw: implied past sex? or basically mature themes

fwb!Sirius x fem!reader ♡ 1.2k words

Sirius is moderately concerned that this might qualify as breaking and entering, but he’s a lot more concerned about how you’re not taking his calls, and if you hadn’t wanted him to know where your spare key was, you should have done a better job of hiding it. 

He unearths the key. It slides into the lock welcomingly. Your apartment is dark and quiet, but it doesn’t take Sirius long to find you. Your bed looks like a tornado has hit, your sheets tangled, torn up from where they’re usually tucked underneath the end of the mattress, and one of your pillows fallen off to the side. Only the very top of your head pokes out from the mess, disheveled hair and a sliver of forehead. 

You don’t stir as he eases the covers down underneath your chin. Your face is sweet and placid, your lips pursed funnily where you’ve smushed them against your pillow. The sight of you all rumpled and sleepy melts Sirius to his core, and he says your name with more sweetness than he intends. 

Your lashes only twitch. 

Sirius knows he could nudge you awake with his hand atop your comforter, but he’s selfish. He slips it beneath to touch your shoulder. Your skin emanates a dry heat. 

“Hey,” he says, indulging in a sweep of his thumb when you start to rouse slowly. “What’s your deal, huh? What’s wrong with you?” 

Your eyes open, clearly feverish but nevertheless lovely as always. Your brow scrunches a little as you blink up at him. “Oh.” You sound more than tired, like you’ve not spoken in days. “Of course you’re here.” 

Sirius can’t help but smile. “Of course I am,” he agrees. “You think you can just dodge my calls and I won’t come knocking?” 

You sigh and pat under the covers around you until your hand emerges with your phone. “It’s dead,” you say, showing it to him. 

“You didn’t want to charge it?” 

“Charger’s all the way in the living room.” Your voice doesn’t seem to be growing any less sluggish as you wake up. Sirius finds this vaguely concerning. “I was gonna go get it in a little bit.” 

He wonders how long you’ve been telling yourself that for. You haven’t been responding to his texts or calls since last night. 

Sirius slots his palm alongside your cheek, though he already knows what he’ll feel. You close your eyes, tilting your face into the touch, and a tiny, fond twist behind his ribs makes his breath catch momentarily in his throat.

“How long have you been sick for, sweetheart?” 

You hum. “A while.” Your eyes open reluctantly. “Sorry, m’not much good for a lay right now.” 

Sirius’ hand draws back with the sting of your words. “You’re—that’s okay. I haven’t come looking for one.” 

You study him through the crush of your lashes. “Then why are you here?” 

“You weren’t answering your phone.” Granted, he had originally called to see if you were in the mood. But that cause ceased to matter when he didn’t hear from you, and when he asked around and no one in your circle had for at least a day. Then he’d just wanted to see you. “I came to check on you.” 

Your expression pinches as if his words pain you. It creates a little line on the insides of each of your brows and a sad tightening around your mouth. You look at him like this, occasionally. When there’s a room between you or when you’re high off sex, but never so openly. Never when you know he can see. 

“You’re so nice,” you say mournfully. 

Sirius’ laugh is soft with surprise. “You only think that because of the time I showed you last Friday.” 

“Don’t joke,” you say firmly. He feels his grin slip. “You always act like you’re not, but you are. You’re amazing, Sirius.” The urge to make fun of you rises in his chest, but he squashes it back down, where it settles like an ache behind his ribs. “I really wish you liked me.” 

It feels like all the air in his lungs dries up. “What?” he asks breathlessly. 

“You’re so smart,” you say, nearing a whisper, “and you are funny, but you’re also really good at lots of stuff. You’re good in general.” You seem like you’re looking at him and through him at the same time, your gaze faraway and wistful. “I know you don’t always think so, but you’re good. It makes me wish you liked me back. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong that you don’t like me.” 

Sirius feels like you’ve reached inside him and scooped all of him out. He’s nothing but a pile of guts and mush, his devotion to you in every sorry bit. He wants to tell you that he’s not half the things you say. (That you’re all of them and more.) He wants to say that you’ve never done a thing wrong in your life, or at least nothing that could matter to him, and the worst thing he ever did was letting you look at him with pain in your eyes and pretending he didn’t see. He wants you to know that he more than likes you, that he hasn’t found a word big enough for the feeling he carries around all day which aches in a way he hasn’t decided if he enjoys and throbs horribly when you’re around. And he wants to tell you all of this in a way that’s cool but sincere and makes you smile by the end. 

But when he looks at you your eyes are glossing over, all Sirius’ words tangle up in his mouth. 

“Hey, dollface,” he says, suppressing a much sweeter name and rubbing your cheek tenderly with his thumb, “stop that. Don’t get upset, please? You’re too lovely for tears.” 

The last bit comes out with a teasing bent, Sirius’ habit of shrouding affection with humor kicking in automatically. You smile like you’ve caught him again. It’s a half-hearted, flickering thing. 

“Sorry,” you say, blinking them away. One squishes out the corner of your eye, and Sirius catches it with his forefinger. “I’m being silly.” 

“You’re never silly,” he replies, then reconsiders. “Well, actually, you are. About lots of stuff, but we don’t need to talk about that right now.” Before he can stop himself, he’s bending to rest his lips on the spot where the tear started to roll down your cheek. When he draws back, his lips are warmer and taste of salt. 

Sirius swallows. “Would you be alright if I stayed here for a bit? I want to help make sure you’re okay.” 

You regard him through glassy eyes nevertheless lovely as always. “Okay,” you say. Your voice sounds so normal he almost wonders if you’ve forgotten what you’d spoken about just a few moments earlier. “That’s nice of you, thanks.” 

He fights the urge to correct you a second time. “It’s no problem,” he says instead. “We can talk about the rest when you’re feeling a bit better, yeah?” 

Your expression turns nervous. You haven’t forgotten. “Really?” you ask, voice breathless like it’s a wish you don’t expect granted. 

That unnamed feeling gives a deep, powerful throb. “Yeah, sweetheart.” Sirius rubs your cheek again, your skin soft and precious under his thumb. “I promise.” 

[sensorydephrivation]

Amatonormative assumptions and the language of a hard launch: a rambly DnP essay thing

I have a lot of Discourse Thoughts about hard launching and all that, but there’s not much I can say that hasn’t already been said. This fandom is one that generally has significant representation on both sides of any major issue; any take you look for you can find someone genuinely believing. What I am interested in analyzing is how some people are insistent, whether or not they want it to happen or believe it will happen, that they haven’t Hard Launched, and others are equally insistent that they have. Because on the surface those should be completely contradictory takes, but a large amount of people believe each to be true.

I’ve seen posts making comparisons to PJ and Sophie, and I definitely think that’s a useful tool because it brings up the real question here: how do we speak about romantic and platonic relationships, and what underlying assumptions are at play when we use or don't use certain words?

Firstly, this issue is obviously mostly to entirely due to homophobia. Why do people assume PJ and Sophie are a couple just because they live together, even though they've never used the words? Because they're a man and a woman. Why couldn't DnP be publicly open about their relationship back in the day? Because they're gay. I'm not going to spend too much time on this point because it's obvious, but I feel like it's important to remember that Dan and Phil's relationship wasn't some Great Secret for no reason. They weren't no-homo-ing because of privacy or whatever, but because they weren't yet ready to face the immense challenges being publicly out sticks you with, especially in the early 2010s. If homophobia wasn't a thing, everything else I'm going to say in this post would still be true, but it would all be significantly less charged. Just remember that gay marriage wasn't legal in the UK when DnP met each other, and that 2000s pop culture overall was routinely, openly, virulently homophobic. Just keep that in mind. (Also, everything I talk about in this post refers to 2019 onwards, after they came out. I wasn't around for the no-homo era and can't speak on it. I'm also not going to be talking about the speculation around their relationship, because that's been talked about so much. It definitely is a factor in all of this, but you know that already)

Onto the main point of this post. The reason DnP haven't "hard launched" (that term itself is incredibly vague, but its popular meaning in this fandom seems to be explicit confirmation of a romantic relationship, which is how I'm using it here) while also having clearly done so is because their use of language does not line up with conventional expectations of how language around romantic and platonic relationships should be used.

The concept of "dating" as we think of it today is relatively recent, and language around it is even newer. The terms "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" only became prominent in the mid- to late- 20th century, and it took a while for them to gain the connotation (of almost always meaning a romantic relationship) that they have today. And yet people have still had romantic relationships for forever! How these things were described would depend on the society's norms around marriage and sex and often on the exact social dynamic of the couple. Today, we think we're better than all that and can find words for anything.

I'm no expert on what makes a relationship romantic vs platonic or even how to define those terms. I find it hard to define the concept of romance in a way that doesn't bring with it centuries of heteronormative amatonormative assumptions. And boy are there assumptions. (No, people who live together for life do not have to be romantically involved, that's a silly thing to believe.) When people see a relationship that lines up or does not line up with those assumptions, they expect it to have a clean, simple label. But the words we used for romantic relationships outside of marriage, due to how new they are, are completely not simple!

While these days they seem to be the most "unambiguous" terms to describe a romantic relationship, "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" are essentially euphemisms that can seem infantilizing and demeaning of the seriousness of a relationship. It's easy to see how they aren't for everyone, even if many people are fine using them for serious committed relationships. "Partner" is kind of ambiguous on purpose, thought like bf and gf, I think it's on its way to becoming a word with mainly romantic connotations. The term "significant other" is out of fashion these days, but just like bf, gf, and "partner," it's basically a euphemism that doesn't mean much in and of itself. We have no words to describe an unmarried romantic couple that aren't on some level unclear or unindicative of the actual nature of the relationship.

Dan and Phil have acknowledged that they were once in a romantic relationship, have made many many jokes about having sex with each other, and are committed life partners. On some level, you can take the combination of these things as a very clear confirmation of a current romantic relationship, which many do. Yes, this requires making a few assumptions, but they aren't the craziest assumptions in the world. In fact, as one can see from the PJ and Sophie example, they are assumptions that are often normal and expected to be made in social situations. So why do so many others not see it this way?

Well for one, we are a mostly queer community that understands the complexity of queer relationships and how these assumptions do not get applied equally. We see how these assumptions are often used against queer people to devalue their identities, especially those on the ace-aro spectrum and/or in queerplatonic relationships. We also are an extremely online community, familiar with the complicated layers of discourse around RPF and shipping, and hesitant to make assumptions in a way that could potentially damage relationships or invade someone's privacy.

But honestly? It's because DnP don't call themselves boyfriends. They don't explicitly frame their activities in romantic ways (e.g. call things dates). The terms they use and jokes they make, even in 2024, are not the sort of things we expect from the set of assumptions that go with a committed romantic relationship. (This is also where the discourse about whether or not they're open/poly comes from, but that's a topic for another day.)

The Date Night video stretches this to its absolute max. The game is full of cards about kissing and other things that fit cleanly into the set of romantic relationship assumptions, but they didn't use any of those cards. They only used things that were ambiguous, and tried to downplay the romantic implications as much as possible aside from the lampshading of it at the start of the video ("this is a great game to play with your best buddy as well" "phil says no homo" as well as the entire "ugh i can't believe they send us this" tone of the intro). The use of "partner" in this video is the clearest example of this. The game uses this word exclusively- after all, it's a standard, accepted, gender-neutral word for people in a romantic relationship. Phil confidently reads it off the card, with the "I don't care which set of assumptions this assigns us" attitude that's been prevalent over the past year and past few months especially. Dan avoids it half the time, and at the end of the video, seems to clearly mock the term, saying it in a silly voice and then comparing it to how stereotypical cowboys use the word. This stuck out to me; it made it very noticeable that they don't use that word at least in videos, and made me think about the connation of the word they do use-- "friend." That term, unlike any of the words I've mentioned so far, implies literally nothing. "Friends" can be people with a barely positive relationship or people with an incredibly meaningful relationship they center their life around. With no other qualifiers, it also implies that the people in question don't have a romantic relationship (are "just friends"), or even (because of amatonormativity) that their relationship is not especially deep or meaningful.

Dan and Phil have defined their relationship in quite a few ways-- or rather, Dan has, in BIG and in his interviews for WAD. These quotes circulate on here constantly as people discuss the meaning of them. I'm not really interested in talking about those as they've already been talked to death. I do think it's worth noting that we only get these things from Dan-- the one time Phil has ever spoken on his "current dating life" it was just to say "I don't want to talk about that, the door is closed." Obviously some of this is because the interviewers were pushy, but also I'm sure Dan enjoys his elaborate poetic metaphors enough to not be able to shut up about them haha. (Very unrelated but I wonder if this will come up if they end up doing interviews for TIT?) The thing is, these definitions show a deep, meaningful, complex, committed relationship. They include directly romantic terms like "husbands," "soul mates," and "normal gay relationship." You would think being willing to call someone your husband, even with a million other words around it, would mean you wouldn't have a problem calling them your partner, right? Yet these words do not reflect the language they use when speaking about each other in videos!

There are times when they say "friend" "buddy" or "mate" in a clearly humorous, ironic way, and seem aware that it isn't a term that makes people think of a committed, long term relationship. Other times, they use the word as if it is a fully accurate descriptor of their relationship-- in the glue story, Dan jokes about being ashamed to be seen as "the friend of the glue guy," and in How Phil Nearly Died, he quotes himself telling the hospital staff he is looking for "my friend." I use the hospital stories as examples because they are high-stakes (or seemingly high-stakes in the case of the glue story) situations and examples of how other people in their real lives perceive them. The way they choose to tell these stories to the internet is one in which the fact that a random hospital worker would likely interact differently with Dan if he was Phil's friendly roommate as opposed to his life partner doesn't matter. In other words: if they actually do call each other "friends" irl around strangers, those strangers probably have a very different impression of their relationship than we do. Their consistency in describing themselves doing so just means that they want to consistently use the term "friends" in their videos, not that they actually do that in real life. But to a viewer who is unsure about their relationship status, the fact that they are clearly life partners, no matter platonic or romantic, but in all situations opt for a word that does not imply that seems to be confirmation that their relationship is not clearly romantic, or at least that they don't want to refer to it as such.

If I have to draw a conclusion from all this, it's that DnP consider their relationship very complex and unusual (ymmv on if it is, lol) and have had to deal with a ridiculous level of scrutiny about it nonetheless. Again, Phil has almost never spoken on this, but Dan clearly dislikes any descriptor that carries with it a sense of assumptions about the nature of the relationship, hence why he uses like fifty contradicting ones or strange metaphors instead. "Friend" carries with it no assumptions. You can be "friends" and be in a romantic relationship-- plenty of people say "I married my best friend." But our society considers romantic relationships to be more meaningful and important than platonic ones. People assume that if you are in a romantic relationship, you would want to describe your relationship exclusively using terms that carry that set of assumptions, because that is the most important part about it. I honestly think Dan is being quite subversive in refusing to do so.

I have no idea if or when this will ever change, but I hope I've given enough context for those who are convinced they've already hard launched to understand why others are still waiting, and for those who don't think they have to understand why the issue is more complicated than it seems. This topic has fascinated me ever since I first started watching them, and I hope this post can help people reach a bit more of a understanding, rather than inciting more discourse.

[silky-nereid]

– the dead, the gold, and the obsession || DARK CONTENT

Yandere! Cowboy x Former Cowboy! Reader/You

tw : gun usage, injuries, manipulation, death, kidnapping.

Yandere! Cowboy who was always a close associate turned into a close confidant of yours; at times she knew you better than yourself.

Yandere! Cowboy who was the brains of the group that you lead and  in charge of every single robbery from mills, stealing the occasional cattle or finest horses.

Yandere! Cowboy who always kept you level headed when you were just furious on a simple mistake that would have cost you the whole heist. 

“Look at me.” Her leather gloves gripped the sides of your face. “I said look at me.” 

Your eyes looked at her, your hands brushed at the intricate design of the recently stolen buscadero holder that held your revolvers. Her faded bandana was snug around her neck, a jagged scar extended from the right side of her jawline to under her right nostril.

“Where are we?” She asked. 

“At camp,” you responded. 

“Good,” she replied, “and where in the camp are we at?”

“Why are you doing this?” You asked. “I just need to talk to him.” 

Her eyes looked to see your hands seemingly itching to reach your revolvers; a behavior that she knew far too well. Only talking that would be done would be eulogies to a shallow grave. 

“We are running low on people,” she replied. “We can’t be killing them off, can’t we?” 

“Yes, we can but we could have—“ 

“Where are we again,” she interrupted. “Are we in a cell? At the gallows because we both know that there’s a bounty on both of us.” 

“We…we are at camp in my tent,” you replied. 

“Good,” she replied, “I’ll keep watch while you sleep ‘cause you haven’t slept.”

Yandere! Cowboy who doesn’t trust the newcomer because they just seem a bit off; seemingly becoming your mouthpiece during planning portions of heists or crimes and starts seeing you less and less.

Yandere! Cowboy who notices your candlelight never going out at night even though you are seemingly the first one awake but often wakes up to hushed whispers of your voice and the newcomer. 

Yandere! Cowboy who slowly gets a bit jealous at seeing you and the newcomer side by side; that was her spot not theirs. She notices the subtle changes that weren’t there before like the sudden change in revolvers or the amount of coins in your pocket that you used to donate to the nearest saloon when you were feeling ‘generous’ before robbing it.

Her eyes looked at your tired ones, the newcomer that had weaseled their way into her spot. Their hands that held your tired shoulders while your horse held a muffled person wrapped with your rope, she recognized the person; gloved hands trembled with anger. 

“Do you know who you have tied up?” She asked.

“Someone,” the newcomer chimed. 

“I’m talking to the leader, not you,” she said. “Do you know who you have tied up?” 

She stepped closer to you, sitting on a wooden stump. Your face was stained with grime and specks of dried blood, reeking of fresh gunpowder from your new buffalo rifle and the butt of the rifle had specks of dried blood. 

“I’m asking a question,” she replied. “Do you know who you have tied up on your horse?”

“I know who I have,” you replied. “One of the Buckley boys.”

“You might as well signed us off to the gallows,” she said. “Not just one of the Buckley’s boys but Cyrus’ kid, you realize that we have an even larger target on our backs because of this.” 

Her hands pulled you away from them, arm remained around your shoulder and the dirt underneath your boots were heard with each crunch. Each step, each tether and she held one side of your face. 

“What’s going on with you?” She asked. “Not talking to me, I helped you with one of our greatest heists and this is how you treat me.” 

“I’m just…it’s just,” you replied, trailing off.

“What is it?” she asked. “We have been through enough together but this is nothing, remember? It’s you and me, nobody else.”

She pressed her gloved hands against your face; holding it as if only you mattered to her and her alone. 

“What are we going to do about this?” She smiled. “What are we going to do?” 

Yandere! Cowboy who will have her hands in other things to get knowledge on the next heist that will cause more money to be raised on the bounty that you both shared together since you and her were one of more prominent ones in the spotlight.

Yandere! Cowboy who has the wooden box filled with golden bricks hidden in a special spot that only you and her know because it holds sentimental value to your heart and hers. 

Yandere! Cowboy who for once fails to notice the growing plot of an uprising within your group due to her obsession of you being a slight overwhelming feeling but it never went to extreme levels—or so she tried to make it look like that. 

“I’m not standing for this.” Her finger was itching to be pressing on the trigger of her Winchester rifle that she had stolen during a train hijacking. “They rescued you and this is how you repay them?” 

You stumbled out of your tent, head aching. The cold rain touching the warmth of your skin caused an involuntary gasp while your blurred vision tried to register the scene. 

She stood in the center of the woods, strewn the supposed traitors as she was always making jokes that she would tie them up by their wrists; it seems that she wasn’t joking this time. 

Your boot crunched on a twig and she turned to face you, her eyes always calm; a mixture filled with hatred and annoyance. Her blue-silver eyes darted up and down your face; trying to examine you and her lips grew into a smile. She slung her rifle as it was held by a leather strap and her gloved hands held your face.

“Can’t you see?” She said, “I’m doing this for you—for us.”

You pushed her away, she pulled you back; a short scuffle between the both of you as you and her rolled in the meadow greenery around amidst the struggling of you trying to disarm her. Mud coated your clothes during the struggle and the occasional smacking into stumps of the chopped woods. Yet, she managed to stab you in the leg; she was always a better aim than you. You cried out in the pain, looking down to the blood staining your pant leg and feeling the blade turning around in your leg, your gasps echoing the seemingly peaceful meadow. 

Her blood splattered on your face, your hands held her while grimacing in pain; the blood bloomed on your side that reached your abdomen. One of the supposed tied members managed to get free and used one of the spare guns to shoot; her bloodied face was buried onto your chest. 

You gently pushed her off of you, staggering towards your tent; this life wasn’t working out for you…Not anymore. You looked in the small fractured mirror, seeing your bloodied face staring back. You needed something new—a new identity in a different city.

You managed to get exactly that, giving up your old ways by faking your own death as it was seemingly easier than every average heist that you had committed before for a small farmhouse and having the familiar warmth of a lover that didn’t know about your past—they didn’t need to know because the past you was a different person and they loved you. 

You had managed to get a small career in the back of a saloon for stocking tobacco and cigars for an extra fee to smoke. It was a normal work day and feeling the cold barrel pressed against the back of your head. 

“Tobacco.” The barrel pulled back slightly only to be pressed back again; harshly. “Give it.” 

You handed the crate of tobacco to them and turned to face them; your eyes widened. Recognizing the half of the exposed face and faded familiar bandana pulled up.

“I thought you were—“ you said. 

“It’s you,” she interrupted. “I finally found you.”

Before you could say anything else. She struck you; stumbling to your knees and feeling the hot blood trickle down your face, looking up. Last thing, you saw was the heel of her boot kicking you and fading into black.

Yandere Cowboy who takes out the crates of tobacco and cigars to share with her small group of outlaws; she doesn’t get too close to them since they aren’t you. Nobody could replace you.

Yandere Cowboy who purposely sets up faulty heists that ends up in her group of outlaws slowly dying one by one because she can’t have loose ends now.

Yandere Cowboy who knows where your little farmhouse is and she watches when you come home to greet your lover from a hard day at work; she knows you’re not meant for this domestic life—you just need a push towards this lifestyle. 

You winced and recognized the insides of your farmhouse. Your hand touched the dried blood from, using the doorframe to pull yourself up and seeing the sight in the once organized kitchen; the food in the pot  was charred, table stained with blood, broken plates and your squirming lover who was bruised and slightly bloodied in trying to defend themselves from her but their wrists bound while she aimed a revolver to the side of their head. 

“Dorothea,” you cried out, “let them go. This is between us, right?” 

“Right.” She looked at you then to your lover. “It is just between us.” 

She harshly shoved them to the floor, putting her revolver back into her buscadero holder, watching as they scrambled to you. 

The deafening noise of the bullet flew, whistling in the air and making their home in the middle of your lover’s head. The blood splattered onto your face, cradling their body in your arm; looking up at Dorothea. 

“Why—“ Your voice was broken. “You—Dorothea…”

“Don’t cry on me.” She stepped closer but you stepped away from her. “Don’t be like that. You didn’t like being tied down, remember?” 

“I—This life.” You held them closer to your breaking body as if this was a dream and you would wake up anytime soon. “You promised—I don’t…” 

She maneuvered you to let go of them with mild disgust of how overly sensitive you were towards them; they were a corpse, nothing more. Her hands—calloused hands held your bloodied and tear stained face. 

“It’s just you and me,” she said. 

[ateezscupid]

mingi smut 46,57

46. “can you feel how much I want you?”

57. “please, don’t ever stop!”

ATEEZ PROMPT FEST

seductive ✩ mingi 𝗑 f!𝗋𝖾𝖺𝖽𝖾𝗋

plot - mingi’s horny after work !!

genre + warnings - smut, fluff and overall crackhead energy, switch!mingi, switch!reader, oral, dirty talk(?), praise, mingi’s being a cute whiny baby in this one

wc - 1.28k

tags - @felixs-voice-makes-me-wanna check pinned post for tag list info!

“mingi!” you call out from your bedroom window. you just saw him leave his car and now he’s walking into the building. he heard your voice from down below and waved. seeing you made him feel better after going through hours of work.

you jump out of bed and run out of your shared bedroom, skipping to the door opening it. just as he turned the corner in the hallway, you were peeking your head out waiting for him. you squeal in excitement and dart out, running down the hallway and jumping into him. he dropped his bag and wrapped your arms around you.

“i guess you missed me?” mingi looks at you. “you haven’t run out and hugged in a long time.”

“i missed you so so so much, i was bored!” you pout. “but you’re home now so i feel better! how was work? was everyone annoying? did you get stuff done? did you guys have a pizza party?”

“y/n, we don’t really bring food into the studio. i mean, we had a few donuts and chips. and before you ask, yes, i did save you some.” mingi kissed your cheek.

he sets you down and picks his bag up again, putting his arm around your shoulder and walking back to your apartment. once you two went inside, he threw his bag on the couch then plopped down next to it. you were always confused to why mingi would come home worn out. all he did was stay in a studio? what could be he doing that makes him this tired?

“do you want a massage or something? you’re always so exhausted whenever you come home. now that i think about it, why are you so tired when you come home?”

“i have to repeat the same lines over and over again, baby.” he groans as he sat up. “and i go there early in the morning. i cant sleep while i’m there, and if i do, it’s only for ten minutes.”

“aw,” you coo, strolling over to the couch and sitting next to him. “poor min. do you want something to eat? will that make you feel better?”

“no,” mingi looked you up and down, leaning into you and pushing his face into your chest.

“mingi, no.” you tilt your head. “you’re always horny whenever you come back from work, can’t you take a break?”

“how the hell did you know i was horny?” his eyebrows raise.

“you always push your face into my tits when you’re horny.”

“no i don’t!” he scoffs sarcastically. “i grab your thigh when i’m horny. they’re two completely different actions, i don’t know how you messed that up. and i thought you loved me!”

“mingi, shut up, i do love you! but you need a break, my legs are still worn out from yesterday.” you okay with his hair gently.

“they didn’t seem worn out when you ran up and tackled me like a quarterback in the hallway.” he muttered as he glared at you. you roll your eyes playfully.

“why are you glaring at me?” your head tilts.

“i’m hoping you’ll spontaneously combust.” mingi says jokingly. you push his chest and stand up, but he pulled you back down onto the couch. though this time, you were on his lap.

“okay, let’s make a deal.” you turn to face him. “if we do have sex, i wanna be in charge.”

“what? you cant even get on top of me without being embarrassed, so how are you gonna take charge?”

you narrow your eyes and place your hands on his shoulders, turning around completely and straddling him. you push him back against the couch cushions and bring your hand down to his sweatpants, which were tightening around him because of his boner. you chuckle slightly and rub slowly, earning a hushed moan from him.

“dude, how are you moaning and i just touched you?” you smile, leaning forward and kissing his cheek. “i just wanna try topping for once.”

“can you feel how much i want you?” he whispers, thighs shaking slightly. “oh fuck me,”

“shush, that’s what i’m trying to do.” you felt his raging boner through his pants, and it almost made you want to drool. his size never really intimidated you, it only excited you, and he was aware of it. you’d always be excited to suck him off or jerk him off when he asked you to. it was fun hearing him groan knowing you were the one bringing him pleasure.

you pulled his pants and boxers down just enough for his cock to come out. you didn’t expect it to be all red and veiny; pulsing, in need of someone to touch it. he was in the studio all day, so to see him this hard kind of surprised you. you grabbed onto it with your palm, causing mingi to flinch and throw his head back.

“eyes on me.” you demand, using your free hand to grab his chin and pull his head back down. you gently start to stroke him, squeezing whenever you got to the top to play with his tip.

“fuuck,” mingi groans, hands grabbing onto your backside. “please, i’m so hard. it hurt so fucking much to walk.”

“i bet it did, huh?” you bring your hand down, now using both hands to stroke him. you twist and turn your hands, looking down for a moment to spit on it and continue your movements. mingi didn’t know where to put his hands. he was grabbing onto you, then the couch, then your thighs, he was everywhere.

“oh fuck, shit shit shit, where the hell did you learn to do this!” he looks at you, eyes puffy and lips swollen, aching for you to kiss them. you lean forward and peck him on the lips.

“i watched a few videos to prepare for this very moment.” you say as you scoot off his lap and get down on your knees in front of him, now shoving his cock into your mouth.

“good fucking go—fuck, i feel like cumming!” mingi whined as his hips bucked up a few times. he was falling apart and struggling to hold himself together in front of you, which made you want to keep going. you continue to stroke and suck him off at the same time, earning all types of pornographic sounds to come from mingi’s mouth.

“y/n—y/n, slow down,” he sucks in a breath. the urge to cum was gradually increasing and it was bubbling in his stomach, like butterflies flying all over the place.

“y-y/n, i’m—“ he stammers, chest heaving up and down. “f-fuck, please, don’t ever stop! don’t fucking stop, ah—“

mingi’s hand goes to grab a handful of your hair, pulling like his life depended on it. your nails dug into his thigh but he could care less. all he was thinking about was cumming into your mouth.

“please, please, please,” he begged. mingi begged. that was the most attractive thing you’ve ever heard him do. you bobbed your head faster, which helped him reach his breaking point.

“oh god, oh fucking hell, stop stop stop, shit, i’m cumming—i’m-“ his body twitches as he dumped his load in your mouth, shameless moans leaving him. you help him ride out his orgasm as you slowed your movements, slightly overstimulating him and making him whine. you take your mouth off and let go, swallowing everything and not leaving a drop.

“that was fun, right?” you giggle. “you did so good, you sound so adorable when you moan! you should do it more often!”

“oh, shut up.” he blushed from your words. “but, it was…nice. thank you, love.”

[lonely-lost-soul]

Dawn over the Horizon

(Diluc x Bartender Reader) MINOR DNI

Angel’s Share was a beautiful bar owned by one of the fiercest men in Mondstadt, Diluc Ragnvindr. However, many of the inhabitants of Mondstadt dubbed the true owner of the bar (y/n), completely denying that Diluc owned the bar. Not because you were a frequent patron or a drunkard but because you were one of the oldest bartenders and just so happened to be Mondstadt’s biggest fan. Since Diluc had decided to take some time away from the city to go on a needed quest with Aether, he had placed you in charge of taking care of his creation. You grinned fondly at Venti, a bard and a regular at the bar, who was currently face down on the counter.

“Please, just one more round! It’ll be on me!” 

“One, we both know you can’t afford it, and two, I shouldn’t have let you have one drink, let alone three, considering what your tab looks like,” You scolded, ruffling his hair as he whined softly, looking up at you with his sweet baby blues, you remained unphased. “I’ll get you a blanket and water and set you at one of the tables,” You said softly, reaching under the bar to grab the blanket you made specifically for the bard. “Before Diluc kills me,” your voice entered a soft, teasing tone as you led Venti to one of the chairs in the back and wrapped him with a teal and white knitted blanket. He whined about not needing to be babied before promptly falling asleep, holding a half-empty bottle of dandelion wine like a teddy bear. You let him rest as you locked the door and began to officially clean up for the night, stacking the chairs not occupied by a slumbering bard and mopping up the floor. All tasks you hated doing, but they were all necessary to ensure the cleanliness standard Diluc held. You jumped, hearing the bell chime, your grip tightening on your mop. You could’ve sworn you locked the door. The dagger you carry around for protection was left uselessly under the bar, “We’re closed-”

“It’s still messy in here. I hope you haven’t done the closing duties yet, Spitfire.” 

“Diluc,” You breathed a sigh of relief, turning to your “boss” with a small smile, “Welcome back home.” When you greeted him, he scanned the bar for typical patrons before his walls broke. You watched the tension drain from his shoulders; his steely eyes melted into the simmering warmth he reserved for you. Diluc crossed the bar floor in only a few broad steps and wrapped you in his arms. You laughed against his chest as he rested his chin on top of your head. He mumbled something into the crown of your head, and you moved to look up at him, “What was that?”

“I’ve missed you.” Your heart melted at the genuine love in his tone, 

“I’ve missed you too, Firebrand.” His large hands rested gently on your hips as he moved his forehead to your shoulder. Being a pyro vision holder, he always ran on the warmer side, while his brother ran colder. You always joked that he was your heater, especially on the colder days in Mondstadt; the constant breeze always made it feel colder than it was. His knuckles moved to graze at your side, sliding slowly under your dress shirt, causing you to hum and lean into him. “Hm…’luc… I’m still at work, you know.” 

“We’re closed. The boss won’t mind.” His voice was teasing as he nipped softly at the flesh on your neck. 

“Oh? Do you know him? I’ve never met the man himself.” You felt him chuckle, his chest vibrating against your back. 

“Believe it or not, I’m the owner, and I think it’s okay for you to slack off.” 

“You? No way you seem too old to run a bar.” 

He barked a sound that was a mix between a huff and a scoff, “Old? Watch your tongue, Spitfire.”

“Yeah, old,” you prodded, “taking advantage of your bartender who’s meek and helpless and wasn’t blessed with a big scary pyro vision.”

“Meek and helpless, my ass. You keep a dagger under the bar, and I’ve personally seen you kick people stronger than me out of the bar.” 

“You spying on me, Mr. Ragnvindr?” You gasped in mock surprise and could practically feel him rolling his eyes at the comment. “How scandalous of you,” You let out a squeak, feeling his teeth bite at your neck, 

“Stop being a brat.” He commanded his tone stern and commanding; the authority in his voice warmed you from the inside out, “I haven’t been gone for that long. Did you forget your place in such a short time?” His other hand came to cup your jaw, his fingers drumming against your cheek tauntingly, challenging you to say something he disapproved and you loved how it made you squirm with need. “I wanted to be sweet to you, pamper you since I’ve been gone. But your sharp tongue makes me want to rethink that plan,” You felt the hand on your hip travel higher until your shirt rested just above your breasts. “Oh, that’s new,” He traces his gloved fingers over the red lace of your bra, causing you to shiver as his palm ghosted over your nipples. Your breathing hitched as your eyes fluttered back in your skill, and Diluc hummed pleasantly against your neck, “I like it. Did you have them made just for me?”

“Yes.” You whimpered, feeling his hand dip below the cups and roll your pert nipple between his fingers, causing you to whine out his name, “Only for you.” 

“That’s my good girl,” his lips kissed your neck too tenderly as your legs rubbed together with need. You felt his hand on your breast grow warm, causing you to moan as he sucked marks into the skin on your neck. You let out a small yelp as his other hand skillfully unbuttoned your pants and slipped beneath your matching underwear. “That’s my girl. Make some noise for me,” his pointer finger found your clit with the precision of a man who knew your body like he knew how to wield his claymore. You sucked in a breath through your teeth as his finger skillfully teased the spot, causing you to slump against his chest,

“Diluc!” you whined, “Don’t tease me, put them inside. Wanna be full,” You looked up at him through your lashes, cheeks flushed, looking destroyed by his simple touches. He hummed, his tongue sliding up your neck to nip at your ear,

“Not yet. You haven’t earned it. You’re going to need to beg.”

“That’s not fair!” 

“Is that backtalk I hear?” He pinched your bud between his two fingers, causing tears to well up in your eyes. You whimpered, needily shaking your head, causing your hair to bounce, and you heard him snicker in your ear. “Good girl. Get up on the bartop bitch,” he commanded, unbuttoning his shirt as you scrambled up on the counter, skillfully removing your top and sliding your pants down to your ankles. Diluc hummed, taking your chin between his fingers now that you were at eye level with him; he noted how blown out your pupils were and how you were practically buzzing with need and restless energy. “Look at you, practically drooling for me,” he purred, rubbing his thumb against the bottom of your lip; your eyes flickered down to see just how hard he was, just how pent up he was from your reactions. 

Pride swelled up in you as you took his thumb in your mouth, rolling it between your tongue, and his entire body shivered at the sensation. 

“I’m gonna fuck you so hard I'm gonna splinter the bartop-” Both of you heard glass shattering, and your blood froze in your veins. Both of your eyes darted to the sound, Dilucs’ claymore materializing in his hand, ready to defend your honor. 

“Don’t stop now; it was just getting good.” Venti slurred, still very drunk, if the wine bottle shattered at his feet was any indication. “Nice tits (y/n),” He winked, and your face turned red. Diluc snarled at the man throwing his coat over your body, 

“Venti. Out. Now.” 

“Can’t I join in the fun?” 

“OUT!"

[unhingedangstaddict]

I'll Hold Onto You While We Run Chap 14 Sneak Peak

(Another Tommy and Lucy scene seeing as so many people enjoy their friendship in this fic!!!)

Tommy pulled open the door, inviting Lucy in. “Hey, wasn’t expecting you. Everything okay?”

“Got some info for ya on the creep from the bar.” Lucy explained as she stepped inside. “Figured you might wanna chat too.”

Tommy nodded. “Alright. You hungry?” Tommy asked as he shut the door behind Lucy.

“Starved actually.” Lucy headed into the house and sat down at the kitchen table.

“Well lucky for you we’ve got a ton of Chinese leftovers. Wasn’t expecting such large portions and Evan didn’t seem too hungry.” Tommy began pulling out containers from the fridge and making up a plate for Lucy, skipping the things she didn’t like and piling on her favourites.

“I could kiss you.” Lucy professed dramatically.

“I still don’t get how you enjoy the leftovers cold, but if it makes you happy.” Tommy shrugged.

“It does.” Lucy confirmed with a grin as she moved one knee to her chest, foot on the seat of the chair. “Lauren always acted like I was committing a crime. But I like it cold, so if I can’t have it fresh-hot I’m not going to the extra effort to reheat it.”

“How are things going on the divorce front anyway? I’d imagine you being here isn’t exactly helping.” Tommy wondered.

“It’s definitely not making things easier, that’s for sure.” Lucy sighed.

“I’m sorry things turned out so shitty in the end.” Tommy said sincerely as he set Lucy’s plate down in front of her.

“It is what it is I guess.” Lucy shrugged. After taking a bite she pulled out her phone. “So the creep from the bar isn’t anyone we should have to worry about. He does have a rap sheet with local PD for harassment, one charge of indecent exposure-”

“Typical creep things.” Tommy nodded as he sat across from her.

“Yeah, but nothing to raise any real red flags that he could be a threat to Evan’s safety. He’s been banned from the bar and if he shows up again he’ll be leaving in cuffs.” Lucy told Tommy.

“Well that’s a relief.” Tommy decided. “Evan didn’t really tell me how he felt about the whole thing, but he looked so uncomfortable when I got to the bar.” Tommy shook his head.

“I wish I’d noticed it before you got there. We were just so busy.” Lucy frowned.

“It’s not your fault. It’s the creep who was harassing Evan’s fault.” Tommy reassured her. “I can’t help but feel guilty though.”

“Why do you feel guilty?” Lucy frowned.

Tommy was silent for a moment, before speaking in a hushed tone. “When Cameron proposed the cover story I didn’t like it. I should’ve fought harder, proposed something else instead. Because if the cover story wasn’t what it is, he never would’ve had ‘bisexual’ on that name tag and he wouldn’t have been harassed and I wouldn't have kissed him.”

“Tommy, you had no way of knowing that was going to happen.” Lucy started. “And I’m not at all saying it was Evan’s fault, but he didn’t write ‘bisexual’ on his name tag because he felt like he had to. He could’ve skipped it altogether, or written ‘taken’ on it instead. He wears a wedding ring and the guy harassed him anyway. It’s in no way your fault or Evan’s.”

Tommy nodded slightly. “Still feel bad about the kiss. We haven’t done anything like that before- I mean we haven’t needed to in order to keep our cover or anything. Never even discussed it.”

“Did he say he had a problem with it?” Lucy asked.

“Well no-”

“Was he mad at you for it?”

“No, but-”

“Did he tell you that you crossed a boundary?” Lucy wondered.

“No.” Tommy admitted.

[leggerefiore]

Nsfw hcs for Maxie and Archie, if you haven’t done them before? 👉👈

I actually already did Archie a while ago... but I might redo a few of my older posts at some point.

cw: 18+ content, afab reader

☀️Maxie General NSFW HCs🌋

🪨 The Great Maxie would never admit it aloud, but he truly has not had that many sexual encounters. Whether he has even had one before you is truly up in there because he gets far too flustered talking about it. There is little understanding of his previous proclivities, needless to say. Rather, his skills are quite a bit lacking, too, and he feels embarrassed further if you comment on them. He does have a vague understanding of everything, at least. There is a nervousness present in the air, however.

🪨 Maxie does like sex, despite his apparent jittery nature towards it. When he gets himself so wound up with stress and worries about his team and plans and whatever else, taking a moment to just let out some pent-up feelings in bed calms him down. Pleasure rushes through his veins as his disappears into you. Whatever stress was plaguing all his thoughts simply vanish when your hands tug at his red strands. Nothing exists in those moments, but the two of you – gone is the strict Magma Boss. Instead, lies a flustered Maxie who can only groan from the feeling of your bodies connected.

🪨 The places you can usually find the man open for sex are nothing overly odd from him. Obviously, your home is preferred as he simply feels as though he can let go of whatever pretences that bind him. Though, he is not above admitting his office has been a common theme for you both. Having you against his desk or pinning him to his couch is something that he lets himself simply enjoy. Taunting moments of you hidden under his desk as he tries to work. It is all to no avail, but he will not lie and say that being in his office gives him more of a sense of authority than he feels at home. The riskiest option he ever did was probably in Fiery Path during an expedition or on Mt Chimney while camping with you. Those times always strangely make him feel so agitated – in both a good and bad way. Something about the heat in the air mixed in with the heat of your bodies makes his heart race.

🪨 Quite inexperienced at giving head and relatively disinterest in doing it at first due to how intimidating the thought seems. He would never admit that the reason was that, but once he becomes more confident in his sexual relationship with you, he comes to be pretty into it. His technique still might be lacking… yet, he still is a perfectionist so he dutifully throws himself into finding out whatever pleases you and relishes in the pride of actually making moan and clutch his hair to pull him deeper in. As for receiving, he is quite weak. His face almost becomes a similar shade of colour to his hair as your tongue licks a stripe up his cock. Loud moans and cries come from him as you take the head into your mouth. He certainly will not ever stop you if you want to give him head.

🪨 Maxie can be a switch, but he leans towards bottoming. He… just is not very dominant most of the time. Most of the time in his office, he tries to keep some control. You may be pressed against his desk as he ruts into you from behind, back against your own as the frame of the surface digs into your body. His groans and breaths tickle your neck. Something in him wants to remind you he is the Magma Leader. But… He also obviously is not opposed to letting you take over. Many times you will have the redhead under you while pressing your hands into his chest for traction and bouncing on his cock. He is completely under your orders in these situations. You can even get him to agree to certain other activities, even.

🪨 Kinks… Well, he almost certainly has a power play kink. Except, it reverses between who is in charge depending on his mood. He would never admit how much he enjoys getting ordered around a bit by you. Though, it might make him feel an urge to prove himself and suddenly take charge. He also has a slight leaning towards seeing you dressed in Magma uniforms. The sight of you with his emblem on you makes his mind race with various thoughts. Especially when you opt to clearly tease him in it. He is truthfully not overly kinky, but he is willing to try a few things with his partner. (Introducing him to bondage may just awake something in him…)

🪨 Maxie's libido does skew towards the lower side. He is not some horn dog... Not like that Archie. But he does still have a sex drive that rears his head and makes him want to share intimate moments with you. Even if they occur at inopportune moments… He grumbles horribly if you are unavailable and has to get himself off. Though, a session later makes up for his whining. Seducing him is as simple as leaning over in front of him. He is effortless to arouse, despite how rarely it happens on its own. He might even break for a moment if you wear some knitted lingerie. Quickies can happen, but his preference leans towards taking time to do everything right.

🪨 His dirty talk will likely make you laugh more than anything. Maxie is trying his best, but he simply has a certain manner of speaking that is… not exactly sexy. A “hrmph” before compliment might make you burst out laughing. Granted, his pleasured sounds do make up his lacking ability in that department. He is vocal in bed, at least. Some might say it is difficult to shut him up. A geological reference may even get tossed in. “You… You are hotter than the average temperature of Mt. Chimney,” he manages to get out while buried to the hilt onside you. You must forgive his efforts.

🪨 He hates a reoccurring fantasy he has involving you and Archie. The Magma Leader swears that he does not want anything to do with that ocean obsessed wannabe pirate, yet the idea of a threesome involving him makes his heart race. You wedged between him and the pirate – (or the much more ignored scenario of him between you and the pirate) – makes his face somehow pale then flush red. He hates that this occupies his mind at all. Maxie keeps this to himself and hopes it never comes out.

🪨 His “no 's” are quite plain. Choking makes him feel ill not matter who is doing what, calling him daddy might make him spiral into a panic attack over his age, public sex just not blend with his worries over his image, and he is not one for degrading you. He feels open to most other things.

🪨 Aftercare from him can vary on a few things. First of all, he will draw a hot bath to clean up and unwind after most sessions, and he does not mind you joining him. Cuddling is also much appreciated (especially after a more intense one). He might need a moment to collect himself – he just feels temporarily consumed. You may have to comfort him a little, too, but he will awkwardly try to return the favour.

[schrijverr]

I Didn’t Mean to Say I Do, but I Do. I Do. 42

Chapter 42 out of 50

Secret marriage of convenience buddie slow burn AU, where Buck and Eddie have been married for years so Buck could adopt Chris and no one at the 118 knows.

In this chapter, across town from one another, both Eddie and Buck try to deal with Eddie’s decision not to come home, wondering where the future will take them. If they’ll ever be home together again.

On AO3.

Ships: Buddie

Warnings: referenced ableism, internalized misogyny, internalized homophobia, insecurity

~~~

Chapter 42: Two Worlds Apart

The next morning, Eddie isn’t there. Buck checks about three times, but Eddie’s bed is still empty and perfectly made, his truck isn’t outside, his jacket and shoes are not by the door, and his bag is nowhere to be found.

Eddie didn’t come last night.

That reality sinks in and Buck looks to Chris’s closed door. He’s still asleep, the exhaustion of the emotions from yesterday having sunk in. Buck doesn’t know how he’s going to explain that daddy still isn’t there when he wakes up, when Buck all but promised that he would be.

He grabs his phone and dials Eddie’s number again. He gets send to voicemail immediately, as if Eddie turned his phone off or let it die. It’s not something Eddie usually allows to happen, always wanting Chris to be able to reach him.

Something is wrong and Buck doesn’t know what. Doesn’t know if something is wrong with Eddie himself, between him and Eddie, or if Chris did something, which is practically impossible. Or maybe it’s with someone Buck doesn’t even know. The possibility of it being an affair is still very much alive in Buck’s mind, however, he also hasn’t forgotten the possibility of Eddie having an addiction, he doesn’t care that Hen and Bobby aren’t worrying yet, they haven’t been there and Buck has been trying to minimize what it’s like.

Buck is almost dialing Athena’s number before he stops himself. Eddie hasn’t been missing for 24 hours yet, he can’t file a report. He thinks. Plus, Buck is his emergency contact. If Eddie was wrapped around a tree somewhere, Buck would have known already.

Most likely scenario is that he is somewhere without a charged phone. No need to worry anyone else. Not yet. Buck can figure this out on his own, they’ve already leaned so much on the others, he can’t keep dragging them into their issues.

So, he doesn’t call Athena, instead calling Eddie twice. Both go to voicemail.

He collapses on a seat at the table, trying to think of what to do now. He sits there for at least thirty minutes, before he hears Chris’s bedroom door open, the sound of crutches going up the hall, before another door opens. “Papi, daddy’s not in his bed.”

Buck remembers a second too late that Chris likes waking Eddie up by clambering on his bed and now he’s already seen it empty. Chris comes down the hall, frowning in confusion. “Is he awake already? He always sleeps in after shift.”

Right now Buck wishes Eddie would get over himself and come home. Buck can deal with whatever fucked up thing he’s doing, so long as Eddie stops leaving him in the dark and comes home to his family. If not for Buck, then for Chris.

“Daddy’s not home yet, Superman. I’m sorry,” Buck says, deciding to just be honest and rip the band aid off instead of lying to Chris. He’s done enough of that already.

“You’d said he’d be home,” Chris accuses, angry, hurt and confused.

“I know I did,” Buck says helplessly. “Maybe he’s stuck in traffic, I’ll call him, yeah? You want pancakes for breakfast?”

Chris eyes him suspiciously at that. He normally won’t hesitate to agree to pancakes, but it seems like he’s catching on to Buck’s desperate attempt to mollify him with a nice breakfast, because he has no clue if he can keep any other promise. “Yes,” Chris finally decides.

“Okay, I’ll do that while I call. Why don’t you brush your teeth,” Buck suggests, pulling out the ingredients and his phone.

After one last look to the phone, Chris nods and leaves. He’s more quiet than he usually is when he goes and Buck hopes Eddie will come and fix this. Chris is starting to remind him of those first weeks after Eddie was deployed. He doesn’t know if he can go through that again, especially if Eddie doesn’t even call.

Or doesn’t pick up the phone, as he does all throughout the pancake making process. He also doesn’t come home all morning, the portion of pancakes made for him goes into the fridge next to the snack Buck left him for when he would come home after shift yesterday. Buck’s insides feel the same as how Chris’s face looks.

It’s confusing to miss someone and be angry at them. To have always known this was coming and be surprised anyway.

Buck misses Eddie like crazy. He’s his best friend, the one person Buck has let in wholly. Eddie is the love of his life and he’s pretty sure he’s never going to love anyone else like he loves Eddie. He loves his company, his face, his jokes and even his bad days.

He loves being the person Eddie can come to and, despite it all, he is so worried about him. Wants to make it better, to fix whatever is wrong. But Eddie isn’t letting him in anymore, isn’t letting him try and fix it like he did when Shannon left.

And Buck always knew this day would come. Always knew that one day he’d wake up and Eddie would turn to someone else and leave him behind. That no matter how much he loves Eddie, he will never be loved back and one day he’s going to have to let Eddie go.

However, now that the moment is there, it’s still taking him by surprise. Because it’s not supposed to go like this. It’s supposed to be a slow process, one he’s a part of. Not this. Not being abandoned again. Not Eddie running.

It fucking hurts to be left again. Out of the blue. No warning in sight. Buck didn’t think Eddie would do that, but here he is and if it was just Buck, he’d be heartbroken, but he can’t be heartbroken, because it’s not just Buck.

Eddie is leaving Chris too.

Chris isn’t supposed to be caught up in this. The plan has always been to be divorced, but it was supposed to be an amicable divorce, one that would allow Chris to keep both of them in his life without being surrounded by thinly veiled hostility or outright anger at each other. He was never supposed to feel their divorce.

Yet here Chris is, feeling abandoned by his own father, much like he’s already been abandoned by his mother. It pisses Buck off. Eddie knows Chris has been through more than enough already, does he not realize what he’s doing to his own son?

Buck can’t believe that. He refuses. He knows Eddie. He wouldn’t just abandon Chris like this unless there was a reason. Yet he doesn’t know that reason, he’s groping in the dark with worry and anger clinging to him.

Still alone, still abandoned, still responsible for Chris.

He calls Eddie again, heart making an excited jump when the phone actually rings. It rings, and rings and… nothing.

His shoulder sag in disappointment, but he tries again. This time he gets send to voicemail again, but there is something interesting about it. The phone doesn’t ring all the way through, Eddie must have clicked reject.

Buck must call Eddie about a hundred times after that, but he gets send to voicemail every time. He knows Eddie must be somewhat okay, because he’ll cancel the call. The timing is different, so he’s likely out there somewhere, contemplating whether he should pick up, then deciding not to.

Chris is refusing to go to his sleep over. Buck tries to convince him to go, hoping that being among his friends will cheer him up, but Chris refuses to go, wanting to stay until daddy gets home. Last night Buck said Eddie would be there to bring him to the sleepover and it becomes clear that Chris isn’t going unless that’s true.

Across town, Eddie is indeed getting the phone calls. That morning, more like afternoon, he’s on the couch with a blanket messily spread over him and a crick in the neck as a cat sits on his face until the suffocation wakes him up.

He must have fallen asleep before Bosko came home. The door to her bedroom is closed, but Eddie doesn’t feel like waking her. He’s still out of sorts after yesterday and he needs time alone to center himself.

Eddie makes himself coffee and steals some bread from the freezer to eat as breakfast. Then he sits quietly on the couch, staring at the wall.

What is he going to do?

Last night, he panicked and ran. He always runs, he ran with Shannon, he ran with Chris, he ran with his parents, and now he’s running from his family. From Buck and from Chris. The two people that mean the world to him. The two people he has never wanted to run from.

And stupidly he thought it had been going well, that he was coping. That his life wasn’t falling apart, but that he was holding on and making it through. He should have known better than to think he wouldn’t fuck this up. His plan was so simple too, just bridge the gap. And he can’t even do that, can’t stop himself from letting Chris down, letting Buck down. Dragging both of them down with him.

Chris misses him, Chris wants him home. Buck practically begged him to come home for Chris’s sake.

Eddie misses Chris too. He’s been so focused on getting his next fight in, on getting that fix so he can continue on, that he hadn’t even realized how much he was missing him until it was already too late. Because it is too late.

If he’d heard that voicemail before that fateful fight, it might have been different. It might have been enough for him to go, or enough to calm him down so much that he wouldn’t have bashed that guy’s skull in. However, he didn’t hear it before that fight and he did bash that guy’s skull in. He did that. Him.

How can he trust himself around Chris? Around Buck? Buck’s been pissing him off ever since he found out he- Ever since he found out.

The way Eddie keeps liking everything he does makes him feel things and he hates feeling those things, so he gets mad, because anger makes him feel in control. What if that doesn’t disappear? What if he keeps being mad at Buck, but now without an outlet? What if he hurts him?

Eddie can’t live with himself if he hurts Buck. Or Chris, but he thinks that chance is smaller. Chris always makes him feel better, but the chance isn’t zero. He snapped at Chris. He got angry. He never wants to be angry at Chris.

Of course, he probably is going to be angry at Chris at some point. He’s a kid, but he’s going to be a teen. He’s going to rebel and break rules and Eddie will have to enforce rules, but that is completely different than being angry the way he is now. He doesn’t want to risk getting angry at Chris with the head space he’s in.

But is having that risk enough to not come home? To stay away without as much as a goodbye when he knows Chris has gotten that enough already?

With guilt churning in his chest, he grabs his phone, wanting to see if there is a manhunt after him yet. He didn’t come home last night, he won’t think it too out of place if Athena comes kicking in this door sometime soon.

However, when he tries his phone, he finds it empty. He curses and looks around the apartment, trying to see if Bosko has a charger lying around. Mayo is still hissing at him as he looks around, but Butter is trying to trip him up during his search, apparently finding joy in weaving between his legs as he walks. In the end, he does find a charger that fits his phone near the couch, plugging it in and waiting for it to charge.

When it’s charged enough, he turns it on, getting jump scared when it starts to ring. Not wanting to wake Bosko, he turns off the sound, before looking down to see who it is. It’s Buck. The contact photo of Buck and Chris smiling at the camera together from a trip to the zoo is staring up at him accusingly.

Suddenly, picking up seems like a Herculean task. Words have never been his thing and he doesn’t even know where to begin this conversation. Doesn’t know what to expect or what to prepare for, what expectations he has to fulfill.

Before he can figure himself out, the phone stops ringing and he lets out a sigh of relief. Only for it to immediately start ringing again. On instinct, he rejects it, before he wonders if that was the right move.

All day Buck keeps calling and every time he does, Eddie finds himself spiraling. He doesn’t want to pick up, doesn’t want to face his own screw up. Doesn’t want to face Buck when his mind is still one big fucked up place and he has no clue what he’s feeling or what he wants. He’s just scared, terrified really. Picking up will make it all real. He doesn’t want it to be real yet.

Buck hasn’t left another voicemail yet. Probably deciding it’s not worth the effort. Eddie feels hurt by that and guilty about being hurt.

As he hangs up for what must be the hundredth time that day, Bosko’s voice startles him. “You know you can’t avoid him forever, right?”

“What?” he asks – though it might be more of a surprised shout – as he turns around to find Bosko, holding Mayo in her arms while the big white fluffy cat purrs gently, instead of the hissing Eddie has endured from the little monster.

“I’ve been watching you looking constipated at your phone and then hanging up for a few minutes now. It’s getting sad,” she informs him bluntly. “At some point, you have to pick up. Or call him back.”

Eddie glares at her. “I know that.”

“You do? Oh, my bad, I thought you confused the red and green button,” Bosko shrugs.

While Bosko puts Mayo on the ground, so she can start rummaging around in her kitchen, Eddie clenches his fist at her tone. His hackles are rising and he can’t reach back to the memory of last night to ground him because of how it ended.

Bosko notices the clenched fists and quirks a brow as she challenges: “What are you gonna do, Diaz? You gonna punch me?”

“No,” he grits out, trying to force his hackles down. He’s not doing violence as an outlet anymore, he needs to quit.

“Good start,” Bosko grins brightly. Before continuing: “I got Ronnie of your back. He recognized you too, wanted to go to Captain Nash about it. I told him I was the one that got you in and if he’s disciplining you, he’s disciplining me. So, you’re clear there. Off the record. Anyway, pasta for breakfast-dinner?”

“Sure,” Eddie says, not really having an opinion. He is grateful to her for saving his job, two suspension is quick succession would have been bad. Still, his heart isn’t in it and he feels as if he’s floating outside his body as he turns back to his phone, seeing another missed call from Buck. He sighs, then puts the silenced phone in his pocket.

Contrary to his prediction, Bosko doesn’t push more, instead telling him about her shift – the guy he punched made it to the hospital okay and likely isn’t going to press charges – and updates him on Kelsy and Heather, who are going on a trip this week and have roped her into cat sitting Tubs.

The pasta is good and Eddie finds himself unclenching as they talk. So, it feels a bit like she built up a false sense of security by the time they’re done with dinner, when she suddenly asks: “So why are you dodging Buck’s calls? I get that going home after yesterday was a lot, but I half thought you’d be out of here by the time I woke up and I had to go chase you down to finish our conversation.”

Eddie looks away, not meeting her eyes as he crosses his arms. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t know what to say?” Bosko repeats incredulously.

“Yeah,” Eddie exclaims defensively. “It’s not like I can say: ‘Hey, Buck, sorry I’ve accidentally abandoned you and Chris, because I’ve been running away from my problems and I can’t act like a normal person, so I’ve been bashing people’s skulls in to cope and now I might snap and punch either of you, because I’m quitting cold turkey after I nearly killed a guy. Anyway, what’s for dinner?’ Like what do you think?”

“And letting him think you’ve driven off the road somewhere or fled the state, is better how? You can at least let him know you’re alive.”

“Buck isn’t worried, he’s probably mad at me,” Eddie insists, a little petulantly, even though he knows Buck well enough to realize that he’s likely still worried about Eddie, no matter how pissed off he has the right to be. Buck is good like that.

“He’ll probably get more mad if you keep ignoring him,” Bosko rightfully points out. “And I don’t think you’re scared of the anger. What are you really afraid of, Diaz?”

“I’m not afraid,” Eddie says hotly. He’s a man, he doesn’t do scared and he doesn’t do panic, he doesn’t care how rapidly his heart is beating at the thought of facing Buck.

“Then why aren’t you picking up the phone?” Bosko counters.

Suddenly he is really interested in anything but her face. Butter and Mayo are napping in some bits of sunlight, that’s interesting.

“Eddie,” Bosko prompts.

“I already told you, I don’t know what to say.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t fucking know, Bosko. What do you want me to say?”

“What do you think?”

“I said I don’t fucking know,” Eddie yells, slamming his hand on the table, before startling back at his own outburst. Shocked he looks down at the hand, then back at Bosko, before stammering: “I- I am so sorry, I didn’t- I didn’t mean to do that.”

“I know.”

He rubs his hands over his face, before thunking his head on the kitchen table. With his face smushed against the wood, he says: “I need to get my head on straight. I can’t answer the phone until I’m normal again.”

“You keep using normal, what do you mean with that?” Bosko asks curiously, but also like she already knows the answer and is prodding him towards something.

Eddie looks up from the table and glares at her as he huffs: “Just normal, you know. Not needing to punch people all the time, not being able to live my life like I used to. Normal.”

“Okay, so normal is going to work and going home without feeling the need to punch people,” Bosko summarizes. Eddie nods. She then cheerfully asks: “So, when did you want to start punching people?”

“You know that,” Eddie says, not wanting to get into it, because that means having to talk about the- the… revelation. “You bailed me out the first time.”

“I bailed you out after you punched your first guy, we’re talking about why you wanted to punch that guy,” Bosko says annoyingly not letting Eddie get away with it.

Deflecting, Eddie puts his nose up and says: “I wanted to punch that guy because he was being an asshole.”

“You’ve always punched every asshole you encountered?”

“No?”

“So what made this asshole different?”

“He insulted Chris.”

“He’s the first asshole to ever insult Chris?”

“No.”

“So why punch him?”

“Because he was there and I was angry,” Eddie yells at the onslaught of rapid fire questions.

“What made you angry?” Bosko asks, leveling him a look, completely unimpressed by Eddie’s outburst. “Really think, Eddie. What made you mad?”

Eddie looks away, jaw squared and gritted teeth. He knows what actually made him mad, but he doesn’t want to admit to it.

But Bosko keeps looking at him and a part of him knows he has to do this if he ever wants to go home. He can’t go home like this, he’ll have to get through this conversation with Bosko. Actually work through his shit. So, he lets out a breath and admits: “It all got too much.”

“What did?”

“Just everything,” he throws his hands up. “Buck was injured, so everything was on me. I had to do the driving, the grocery shopping, the housework, the bills, the maintenance. Everything. It’s like drowning on land. I tried so hard, but it was so much and I couldn’t do it. Buck did it when I was injured, but I couldn’t even do that for him. I mean, what kind of man am I that I can’t even provide for my own family without falling apart? Buck can do it. Buck isn’t like me. He’s good and capable and not- not-”

“Not what?” Bosko asks pointedly.

“Not me,” Eddie manages to get out, despite nearly strangling it in his throat. Buck is a man. He’s a man. It’s a shameful fact that Eddie feels every time he thinks about it. How Buck could do it like Eddie couldn’t, how Eddie feels a pull towards him, even though he shouldn’t.

“Not you how?” Bosko pulls him ever closer to crossing a line he can’t cross back. He knows that once he’s said it out loud, he can’t put the skeleton back in the closet so to speak.

He bites his lip and shakes his head, not wanting to say it. Not wanting to admit it. Not wanting to make it real.

“Come on, Eddie. Just tell me. What’s different about Buck?”

“He’s normal and good. So good,” Eddie wobbles. “Too good for me and I- I just- I just wanted to- to give that to him too. Take care of him, like- like he takes care of me, but I- but I can’t. All I did was trap him. I trapped him. I- I- I took advantage of his kindness and I trapped him. I tricked him into marrying me and now I can’t even let him go, even if I’m failing him, because- because-”

Bosko moves to sit on the chair next to him, scooting closer so she can rub his back as she assures him: “It’s okay, you know. You can say it, there’s nothing wrong with it.”

Eddie chokes on a sob, then quietly cries: “I love him. God, I love him so fucking much and I’m not supposed to do that. I’m not allowed to do that.”

He’s crying so hard, he can’t even see the heartbreak on Bosko’s face as she pulls him into her side so he can cry on her shoulder.

This is the first time he’s admitted out loud, the first time he has let himself feel it since he realized it. I mean, truly feel it without immediately stuffing it down. It’s overwhelming. Buck is such a big part of him. Of his life. His family. Buck is everything to him, together with Chris. The three of them are a unit and he has put so much of himself in that. As has Buck.

The two have put in the work like he and Shannon didn’t. Like he didn’t want to with her. She’s always been right, saying he couldn’t love her and deep down he knew that too, deep down that’s why he ran, why he didn’t try to stay like he’s doing now with Buck. He just pushed it down so far that he forgot she was right, but now he remembered. He remembered and he can’t forget.

He wants to stay here with Buck forever. When he thinks of spending forever with Buck, it feels like a balloon in his chest that expands without anywhere to go, filling him up and making him feel light, making him float. It feels so good, even though it’s not supposed to.

Eddie hasn’t wanted to acknowledge it, because it’s not what he is supposed to feel. He’s not allowed to feel good. He’s not allowed to feel happy at the thought of being married to Buck. He’s not supposed to pretend their marriage is real and the family they have is permanent. He’s not supposed to want to stay married, instead of divorcing Buck like he should.

If he is honest with himself, he can admit that that’s why he didn’t let himself feel it. Because if he felt it, he knew he couldn’t let himself have it and then he’d have to let it go.

But now he’s managed to let it slip through his fingers anyway. Clinging on too hard until it flew from his grasp, like wet soap in the shower. And he knows that if he picks up that phone, that is what Buck will tell him.

Buck will tell him that it’s over. He’ll tell Eddie he’s done and that is worse than living in this constant state of hurt. Of feeling like he’s wrong and broken and not good enough. Feeling like he has to run continuously, like he has to pretend, like he has to try so hard to be normal, despite knowing he’ll never be able to.

It’s so selfish and unfair to Buck and it only serves to make Eddie feel more horrible. He’s always been so dependent, asking more than anyone should have ever had to give. Always asking for help instead of doing it alone. Buck never let him do it alone, Buck always gives and gives as Eddie takes and takes. It’s time to give now, it’s time to let Buck go, even if it will destroy him.

~~

A/N:

I got to be honest with y’all, I’m hurting my own feelings here omg

[startrekfangirl2233-writes]

Spring, 2020 - North Island Naval Base

Chapter 5 Part 1 of You Are My Soulmate

Bradley 'Rooster' Bradshaw x Reader

Description: Two months. You've been back to work for just about two months now and it feels even more like you're under a microscope than before. It feels like all eyes are on you, all the time and you hate it. You hate more that you haven't seen Bradley even once since that day. Add to that the fact that you haven't been able to go home and the added pressures of possibly being court martialed and you just want this all to be done.

Disclaimers: Misogynistic speech. Mentioned Homosexual Relationships. Angst. Flagrant disregard for protocols or Authority. Angst. Anguish.

This content presented in this story is for audiences age 18 and over only. MINORS DNI. I will not be accepting tag-list requests from Blank or Ageless Blogs for this story.

Warnings: Female!Reader

Word Count: 3056

A/N: Here’s Chapter 5 of YAMS! We're going to continue to see the far-reaching ripples of Hawk's actions. We're also going to get some cute Macheresin and IceMav because I couldn't help myself. As always, your reblogs and comments make me so happy! Feel free to drop me an ask if you want to chat about this chapter or any of my other works!

AO3: Cross-posted Here!

Wattpad: Cross-posted Here!

My Masterlist

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Tinkerbell

It's been three months since Bradley Bradshaw's accident. You only had your medical leave to prepare yourself for what would unfold once you were back on base. It wasn't enough. You knew the rumors would be floating around, that there would be sharks in the chum infested water, waiting for you to show any sign of weakness, a single cut even, to attack. Hawk's interviews, exposes, and tell-alls exacerbated that. You hadn’t even parked before everyone was looking at you with curious eyes. Everyone seemed to want to know why you’d actually been out for so long and if Hawk was right or just full of shit. But your lips are sealed. Under orders from Admirals Bates, Simpson and Mitchell you couldn’t say a word.

The scrutiny is nothing like you’ve ever faced before and you hate every minute of it. The worst part seems to be how you no longer have any credibility as an AMDO. Your first day back on base, you’d been introduced to Commander Grayson. He’s in charge of your team while you’re under investigation. Everything you do is immediately automatically examined by him, and logically you know why. He’s brilliant - your team is under extremely competent leadership under him. Were it under other circumstances you would love to learn from and work with him. But right now, you hate it. The drone project? That’s out of your hands and right into his. The inspections and adjustments occurring on North Island? Those are out of your hands as well. All you’re trusted to do, it seems, is work on paperwork and avoid the chatter that seems to spring up every time you walk into a room.

But the worst part of it all is how you’ve been blocked from seeing Bradley at every turn. You know he’s awake. Admiral Mitchell had been kind enough to tell you as much, that first day you were back on base, something the bond between you had hinted to as well. But Commander Grayson dogs your every move while you’re on base, even going so far as to have lunch with you, while  Jake and Javy dog your every move off base. You haven’t slept in your own bed once in those three months either. With the paparazzi still camping out on your front lawn, you’re still sleeping in Jake and Javy’s spare room. 

You haven’t had the chance to see how Bradley’s doing at all, and it hurts. The ache in your chest that you’d felt when Bradley’s jet exploded still throbs dully under your skin. That particular pain hasn’t faded even a little. The only time it had was the one night you’d managed to slip out of Jake and Javy’s house under the cover of night and sneak away to the hospital. You’d sweet talked a nurse into letting you up into Bradley’s room by mentioning he was your soulmate and held one of his big hands between your own. That night was the first in which you felt your heart beating in its rhythm again. It had been so easy, to press kisses against his knuckles and pray that he’d be okay, that he’d wake up again. You’d spoken to him until your voice was gone and snuck out at dawn with an exhausted body but a mostly settled mind. That one night felt far too short. Even knowing that Bradley is okay isn't enough. A part of you isn't sure that your mind will be at ease until you speak to him.

Your worry for Bradley is one of the only things fueling you as you trudge through base one bright morning. It's not quite so hot just yet, and you'd normally be ecstatic, making plans to drive out of the city for some fun. But just because the weather is better doesn't mean that your mood is. And then you walk into the AMDO hangar to see Commander Grayson, Admirals Mitchell and Simpson as well as two people in full khakis with JAG insignias pinned to their shoulders and on their chests. They’re introduced to you as Commanders Marks and Greybank.

"Lieutenant Commander, if you'd come with us? We have a few questions about the incidents that happened right here on North Island." It's the female JAG Commander, Marks, who speaks to you first. Her expressionless face rivals Commander Grayson's as he stands at a textbook perfect parade rest with one eyebrow cocked behind her.

You half expect to be locked up in a tiny windowless room with hot lights shining into your face and mercilessly interrogated. But maybe you've been watching too many movies and tv shows recently. What you get instead is a conference room, one of the nice ones where visiting Admirals have their meetings. Through the broad windows, you can see planes taking off from the tarmac. But you feel rather like you have a spotlight shining down on you regardless.

"Tinkerbell?" Lieutenant Marks' voice takes you by surprise. "Can I call you, Tinkerbell?" At her surprisingly gentle question, you nod.

"Alright, then. Tinkerbell," She sips carefully on her coffee before straightening out the notebook and pen in front of her. "What happened this year in Hangar Three during your first AMDO inspection on base?"

You’re more than a little taken aback by the question, expecting all of the questions they have for you to be ones about Bradley’s accident and your collapse during it. It must show on your face as well, since you’re asked to sit and once you do so, are asked the question again. Your voice is nearly too quiet as you start relaying the events of that day, including as many details as you remember, noting how they have your paperwork from that day in front of them. They’re cross referencing everything you say with the accounts in the reports, and it surprises you to see they have more than just your reports in front of them. They have statements from the Dagger Squad, the Admirals and even members of the Top Gun class in front of them. If your theory is right, they seem to want little to do with you at all and instead want all of the information they can get on Hawk. You finally ask why after the recess they allow you for lunch.

“Commanders, if I could ask a question?” Your voice is hesitant. They’ve already taken far too many notes about Bradley’s accident and your own subsequent hospitalization. You’ve had to disclose your suspicions that you’re his soulmate as well. Things already don’t look good for you, but you just have to know.

“Why are you focusing so much on Lieutenant Junior Grade Taylor’s movements and actions over the past few months?” The question spills out of you in a deluge of sound. Your ears feel like they’re ringing as the Commanders look at each other before looking at you.

“Lieutenant Commander,” Commander Greybank’s voice sounds incredibly gentle, “Tinkerbell. Did nobody tell you why we were here?”

“No.” You’re quiet, your eyes focused on the way your hands clutch at each other, the knuckles white from the force of your grip.

“We’re your defense team.” Your head jolts up fast, shock parting your lips in disbelief. "Admiral Simpson called us as a special favor."

Marks picks up where her co-counsel leaves off. "Admiral Simpson believes you're innocent. We have evidence of that as well. We have video footage of your hangar, showing exactly who was around Lieutenant Bradshaw's jet while it was supposed to be under repair. We have, of course, footage of the maintenance crew and footage of you, Lieutenants Seresin and Bradshaw early that morning. But we also have footage of Lieutenant Junior Grade Taylor lurking about the jet. We have footage of him removing a part from the engines and walking away."

“I knew he didn’t like me, but why would he do that?” You’re reeling, your hands shaking as they drag the laptop forward so you can view the footage. Your chest aches as you try desperately to breathe despite the panic taking over your body.

“He nearly killed my soulmate.” You’re not sure if the Commanders hear you as tears drip down your cheeks. “He made me believe that I’d killed my soulmate.”

“How sure are you that Lieutenant Bradshaw is your soulmate?” It’s a question you should have expected, though it does give you pause.

You swallow harshly, trying to order your flurried thoughts. “I’ve had all my soulmarks fulfilled by him. We have five.” At the shocked look on Commander Marks’ face, you have to grin, the action grim and small. “I’m sure that all five point to him. But I’m even more sure that he doesn’t know, or if he suspects, has convinced himself of something different.”

“We can use this information, if you’d like, to build your defense. We’d keep it as a last resort in case Taylor or his counsel try to bring it up. Does anybody else know your suspicions?” Commander Greybank looks rather overprotective as he spits out Hawk’s last name like it’s poison.

“Yes, my best friend and his soulmate.” It doesn’t surprise you at all that they want Jake and Javy’s contact info. “And there’s a Doctor on base too? Their name should be in my medical file from when I collapsed. Admirals Simpson and Bates are aware as well.”

“And what about Admiral Mitchell?” 

“I’m afraid I’m not sure if he’s aware or not. He wasn’t by my bedside when I collapsed, and I was put on medical leave immediately afterward.” You sip on your water, wetting your parched throat before continuing. “It is possible that either Admiral Simpson or Admiral Bates told Admiral Mitchell about my suspicions.”

“We’ll have to get in touch with Admiral Mitchell and his husband then.” You blink at the words. Since when is Admiral Mitchell married?

“Tink, there is going to be a lot of media attention surrounding this trial. Especially when the reporters come to know that you and Lieutenant Bradshaw are soulmates.” You’re well aware of that fact, sadly. “Is there someplace safe you can go when you’re not on base?”

“With Lieutenants Seresin and Machado. Reporters have been camped out on my front lawn since Taylor’s first interview.” The anger in the Commanders’ faces has you shrinking a little. “And nobody from the Navy has even offered to protect you?” 

At your nod, they share a glance and then dismiss you for the day. Your mind is still reeling as you meet Jake and Javy at their pick-up truck a couple of hours later. They’re content to talk to each other and leave you to your brooding as you glance out of the window. In the reflections on the window, you can see Jake and Javy, the ease in how they act with each other. Their love reminds you of your parents, sitting in the backseat of your family’s station wagon as a small girl and witnessing how they were always together, no matter how difficult life was. It's been far too long since you've called home, you realize, aching suddenly for your mom's home cooking and to hear your dad's terrible jokes.

But you can't call home. Not yet. They don't need to know about the disaster that has been your soulmate search. Not now. And so long as this thing stays out of the national news, you have time to tell them. Time to find the words. But more than your parents you need to talk to Bradley Bradshaw. You need to apologize. You need to hug him close. You need to tell him how sorry you are for not telling him your suspicions before you nearly lost him.

Jake and Javy help you forget your worries, just a little bit once you're home. They make you smile and laugh as Jake whips up dinner and all three of you dig into the sumptuous meal with a glass of red nearby. But your mind keeps straying back to the question of you and Bradley Bradshaw, over and over again. You’re being a bad friend, you’re sure, and an even worse guest, but you can’t seem to get out of your own head.

You come back to yourself lying on the sofa with Jake wrapped around you. 

“Hey Tinky-Tink. You back with us, pretty girl?” You nod robotically, your mind spinning but your voice locked up behind chains that you can’t seem to break even if you tried. 

“What’s going on, pretty girl? You’re scaring us, sweetheart. We’re your family, aren’t we? Then how come you can’t tell us, tell me, what’s going on in your head?” You curl in closer, reveling in the heat of Jake’s embrace, in the knowledge that your brother, though not in blood, will always protect you.

When your mouth opens, long after Javy joins the two of you and settles on the floor by the sofa, it’s to ask a question you’ve never asked of your friends before.

“How did you know, Jake?” It’s a whisper, barely audible over the rustle of your clothing. “How did you know that Javy was your soulmate?”

“What do you mean, sweetheart?” Jake sounds bemused, even as he pulls you closer. “You know we met when we were 14 and 15.”

Javy’s baritone picks up the story where Jake leaves off.  “Yeah, pretty girl. I was the new guy in class, the only one who looked different from all the others. And your boy here was the only one who introduced himself and asked for my name. Those are our marks, you know? His name, in that travesty of a chicken scratch that he calls handwriting on my thigh and my cursive over his heart.” 

“You’re right, sweetheart. We found each other early. But we didn’t know what we’d found. Not so easily. Not at all.” The weight of past memories is in Javy’s every word.

“It was Texas in the early two-thousands. Homosexuality was accepted even less than it is today. What choice did we have but to be each other’s best friend? To be like the brother we’ve never had? We couldn’t get too close to each other. We could barely sit in class next to each other without getting harrassed.”

There’s an impotent rage building in Jake’s voice, rumbling in his chest as he continues speaking. “We’ve heard it all you know, sweetheart. All the invectives, the rage just because the universe decided we belonged together.”

“But,” You can almost feel Javy’s gently chiding tone as he covers Jake’s hand on your back with his own. “I wouldn’t change anything in the world. The minute we were at the Naval Academy, I felt like I could finally breathe. Jake was thriving, I was thriving. But we were still too hesitant to take the leap. My mama wouldn’t have cared so long as I was happy. But Jake’s parents.”

“My dad would’ve killed me himself if he knew.” You clutch at Jake tighter, your ears hearing the words but your mind unable to compute a world where you never met Jake. “So we kept hiding it. Ignoring the tug in our chests, pulling us to each other. We kept ignoring how we orbited around each other. I kept ignoring how a single word from Javy would make me light up from within, and how it hurt when I took a girl home.”

“I never would’ve stopped if it wasn’t for that disastrous date we went on, Tinky.” You have to chuckle as you remember, Javy’s words making you smile despite your swirling emotions.

It had been one of your first assignments after fully certifying as an AMDO. You were just an ensign and it was your first time in Mississippi. You’d been introduced to the aviator squadrons on base and Javy had taken your breath away, quite literally. He was hot, you remember thinking, and more telling, he never seemed to go home with any of the girls always swarming around khakis at the bars on base. 

So you’d take a chance and asked him out for dinner. You’re not sure who had been more surprised, you or Javy, when he said yes to your stumbling, stuttered dinner invitation. But you remember how it had made your whole week. That had been at the beginning of your search for your soulmate, and well, Javy flew planes for a living, had brown hair (which was a stretch, since his hair is closer to obsidian than brown, you know), and dark-chocolate colored eyes. With nearly three of your soulmarks covered, what did you have to lose?

As it turns out, not a lot. There wasn’t any chemistry between you and Javy at all. He was easy on the eyes, and equally easy to have fun with, but there just wasn’t any spark between the two of you. And then there was the fact that he never shut up about Jake. You’d made it through the whole night before stopping him as he swooped down to kiss you goodnight and told him, “I don’t think this is going to work between us, Javy. There isn’t any electricity between the two of us. I like you, I do. I just think that the Jake you’ve been talking about? I think he might be who you really love.”

That had been the end of that. You’d opened the door a week later to Jake and Javy holding hands on your doorstep and subsequently been absorbed into their little family.

“Sweetheart, if you find that electricity, that spark with someone, then that’s the universe telling you who your soulmate is.” Javy sounds so in love, and you don’t even have to face him to know by his tone alone that he’s looking at Jake.

That’s when you break down, telling Jake and Javy your suspicions, fears and worries. When your mind finally quiets and your shoulders feel a bit lighter, you’re being held tight - this time, by Javy.

“It’s going to be alright, sweetheart. You’ll get the chance to talk to Bradshaw and get this all straightened out. He loves you, sweetheart. He was meant to love you. It’ll be alright.”

You wish with all your heart that Javy is right. You’re not sure you can handle it if he isn’t.

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[flyinghome-againstthewind]

Beside the Seaside: Ch 7

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Jamie might have called Murtagh in a desperate panic when he asked him to locate Murtagh’s cousin, Mrs. Fitz, and bring her to the inn, but he had done so knowing Murtagh was equal to the task. Still, when they arrived at The Fairy Hill’s doorstep in just a matter of days, Jamie couldn’t say he wasn’t startled by the haste at which Murtagh had brought her there.

“Mrs. Fitz!” he hailed in greeting, feeling his heart lift unexpectedly at the sight of the older woman’s beaming face. It had been nearly eight years since he’d seen her, but it felt like memories of another lifetime when they had both been at Leoch. “Welcome!”

“Och, Jamie lad, it’s good to see ye!”

He came around the front desk to embrace her and felt his throat swell when she uttered joyously, “You haven’t changed a bit.” He knew he had changed from the nineteen-year-old lad that she had known working at his uncle’s hotel. He was a father, for one, and… well, as much as he’d wished it hadn’t, the war had left him permanently marked in more ways than one.

“It’s good to see ye, Mrs. Fitz. Thank you for coming.” He met his godfather’s gaze over the woman’s shoulder, and while Murtagh did not look particularly pleased at the moment, the man had still shown up when Jamie had called. He had always counted on that with Murtagh.

“And who’s this wee yin?”

Jamie looked back to see Faith peering curiously at the three of them. He smiled and held out a hand to her, beckoning. “This is my wee Faith.” His hand rested lightly on her head once she was near. “Come say hello to our new cook, Mrs. Fitzgibbons. She’s an old friend of mine.”

“Ye can call me Mrs. Fitz — or Grannie Fitz if it suits ye.”

Jamie watched any hesitancy in his daughter melt at that. For all that she was a puir motherless thing, she had a habit of collecting parental figures, and he could practically see the moment she decided she would keep Mrs. Fitz held in her heart. “D’ye want to see the kitchen?” Faith asked her.

“Faith, I’m sure Mrs. Fitz wants to get settled first—”

“I can get settled after I see the kitchen,” Mrs. Fitz insisted, taking Faith’s hand in her own. “I’ll need to know what I’m working with, after all.”

He watched Faith lead the woman past the stairs to the doors they had always kept closed to the guests — but wouldn’t need to for much longer. The kitchen was modest, he knew, but he didn’t doubt Mrs. Fitz would be able to make it work, and there was a dining area for the guests, with small round tables and chairs. He’d already seen Mrs. Fitz in charge of a kitchen before, and he’d promised her the freedom to run this one as she saw fit.

Murtagh’s hand clapped his shoulder, snapping him out of his reverie. “Are ye gonna tell me why I had to race here wi’ Mrs. Fitz because yer business depended on it?” his godfather asked, parroting Jamie’s own words from their telephone call back at him. Murtagh’s arm swept out in front of him, gesturing to the space around them. “The place doesnae seem to be on the verge of collapse.”

Jamie let out a measured breath, and patted Murtagh’s upper arm. “Thank ye for bringing Mrs. Fitz,” he said, ignoring that last comment. “I was having a devil of a time trying to sort out where she went and which grandchild she had gone to visit.”

“She was wi’ Laoghaire in Inverness,” Murtagh answered baldly and, seeing Jamie’s momentary puzzlement, added, “the blonde wee lassie ye met at Leoch.”

“Oh aye,” Jamie murmured, remembering vaguely the young girl who helped Mrs. Fitz in the kitchen and sometimes worked as a maid at the hotel as well. “She won’t still be a wee lassie now though, I suppose.”

“That girl will be a lassie until she's fifty,” Murtagh muttered dryly. “Now are ye going to tell me why I rushed the woman here, or do I have to beat it out of ye.”

Jamie arched one brow at that. Murtagh was scrappy in a fight, to be sure, but Jamie had the stronger build. But Murtagh had known him since he was wee and was immune to any of the natural intimidation that came with Jamie’s size. “The inn is doing well enough, I suppose, but I’m losing business every day when my own guests cannae even eat here.”

Murtagh grunted at that, but still eyed Jamie a little too keenly. “I’ll stay for a bit. Just a few days. Ye owe me that at least.”

Perhaps he did, and there was a chance Murtagh truly needed the respite, but Jamie suspected the time would be used to keep an eye on him. None of his family had come to stay since he and Faith had moved here, but Jamie hadn’t exactly extended an invitation either.

“Aye, alright, I have an extra bed in the spare room next to Faith’s. It’s all yours.”

  ----------

  Claire had been hoping to find Jamie alone when she descended the stairs, but she instead found him behind the front desk with a tall and lean dour-faced man.

“Sassenach,” he called to her before she had much of a chance to decide if she should change course or not. He was grinning broadly and she felt the pull to go to him, to bask in that light for a bit. “This is my godfather, Murtagh. Murtagh, this is Claire.”

Claire extended her hand to the man, wondering if Jamie realized he hadn’t said anything further as to who she was — no this is Claire, one of my guests here, or this is Claire, she stays on the third floor and occasionally patches me up. Just Claire, as if she needed no further introduction.

Murtagh shook her hand, eyeing her acutely. “Wee Faith had a lot to say about ye when she was at Lallybroch.”

And apparently, she hadn’t needed any further introduction. That revelation not only startled Claire, but Jamie as well, she noticed. “Oh,” she said, “All good things, I hope?”

“Oh aye,” Murtagh said immediately, but something in his tone seemed to indicate a layer of… was it curiosity? Claire glossed a smile over her face and looked at Jamie, unsure how to proceed from there.

“Go and check on Mrs. Fitz, will ye? See if she needs anything?”

Murtagh’s expression changed to something even more surly, realizing he was being dismissed. “Just to remind ye, in case ye’ve fallen on yer heid lately, I’m no’ yer errand boy,” he said, but still turned and went out of the room.

Claire turned wide eyes to Jamie.

“Aye, that’s just Murtagh for ye. A wee bit rough around the edges, but more loyal than anyone I’ve ever known.”

“He, uh—” she stopped herself from saying that the man seemed lovely, because in the few moments that she’d known him, she couldn’t say that was exactly true, but she could tell, even with just a glimpse of it, that Murtagh was protective of Jamie, and that was certainly a credit to him. “Is he staying?” she asked instead.

“Aye, for a few days.” Jamie grinned then and leaned forward against the counter, inching closer to her. “He brought my cook here — Mrs. Fitz. I cannae wait for ye to meet her.”

“Oh, Jamie, that’s wonderful!”

“Faith is giving her the tour just now, we can go and introduce ye now, if ye’d like.”

“Yes, but first,” she said, suddenly feeling a breathless flutter in her chest to seize the moment while it was just the two of them. “I’d like to extend our stay here. That is, if you still have room,” she added quickly, and hoped her nervousness that he might already be booked didn’t show as plainly as she felt it.

“Aye, I do have room,” Jamie said immediately, without so much as a glance at his booking calendar, though he did fumble for it after giving his answer. “For how long?”

“For three more weeks.” It was impossible to miss the unrestrained smile that those words brought to Jamie, and Claire felt her heart flutter again in her chest. “If you can bear the sight of us for that much longer,” she teased. “It’s been… so good for Fergus here. I was actually thinking—”

“Miss Claire!” Faith’s voice rang out from the other side of the room, and Claire turned to see the girl followed by Murtagh and the woman she supposed was Mrs. Fitz. Jamie came around the desk to join them.

“This is Claire Beauchamp, she’s staying here for a few more weeks wi’ her son Fergus.” Jamie’s smile was rapturous as he said this, never taking his gaze from her face even as he spoke to Mrs. Fitz. “So I’m sure you’ll get to see them plenty.”

   ----------

The days of their summer in Nairn began to change shape by inches, first with the arrival of Mrs. Fitz and the opening of the kitchen at Fairy Hill. Unsurprisingly, Fergus was quickly charmed by the inn’s grandmotherly cook almost as much as he was by her cooking. And though she didn’t speak a word of French, Claire watched with her heart in her throat as Mrs. Fitz fussed over the two of them and was never put off by Fergus’s silence.

It was during this time that Fergus had decided he wanted to return to the beach. Claire had begun inviting Faith to join them in their afternoon excursions, at first to be a playfellow for Fergus, and then because something had begun to resonate with Claire where young Faith was concerned; there was no doubt that Jamie loved the child with everything he had, but there was still a hunger — a longing — in that small girl that Claire knew all too well.

So on a bright day in late June, Claire took both children to the beach. Fergus sighed and squirmed while Claire covered him in sun lotion, but he didn’t slip out of her grasp until she pressed a kiss to his greasy forehead in silent permission to go. “You too, Faith,” she called as both children moved toward the water. When the girl looked back at her, brows drawn together in confusion, Claire crooked a finger at her.

“My da never puts that stuff on me,” Faith said bluntly, even as she flopped down onto the blanket in front of Claire and sat perfectly still.

“Most people don’t put it on, unfortunately,” Claire sighed. “But you are even more fair-skinned than Fergus, and I don’t want you to burn.” She carefully rubbed in the lotion over the smattering of freckles along Faith’s nose and cheeks. Where Fergus behaved as though Claire was torturing him, Faith seemed to relish the attention and care. Poor love-starved little thing, Claire thought, with no ire directed towards Jamie. She knew, after all. She’d had Uncle Lamb and loved him dearly, but there was nothing to be done to fix the yawning emptiness where one or both parents had been. Driven by sudden impulse when she was finished, Claire took the girl’s face in her hands and kissed her forehead. “Now go and play.”

  ----------

“You know that you could speak English here, if you wanted to… don’t you?” She said this in French when Fergus had collapsed onto the blanket in the shade of a beach umbrella. Claire had watched him and Faith run ragged in the water and then work side-by-side on a sandcastle, and it was during that latter activity that the language barrier between the two had indeed turned into a barrier, with Fergus giving instructions in French to a blank-faced Faith and none of the work truly being done together.

Claire reached over and brushed Fergus’s curls back from his face. Faith was nearby, still working steadily on a moat around their castle, but even if she heard them, there was a sense of privacy in speaking in French. “Frank was wrong for what he said to you. And none of our friends here would mock you for having an accent or saying the wrong words. You know that, don’t you?”

“I do know, Maman.” His voice was soft and unconvincing.

“I am happy to speak with you in whatever language you prefer, but even I know my French is atrocious.” That got a smile out of Fergus — yes, she did know her pronunciations were that terrible. “But you’ve never belittled me for it, and you still know what I’m saying to you just the same. And I don’t want you to… to not have certain friendships in your life because of something that a very selfish person said to you.”

Fergus’s gaze turned contemplative, and he tilted his face up, staring at the underside of the umbrella, fingers laced together over his bare stomach. She brushed his cheek with the backs of her fingers and struggled to tamp down on the sudden swell of guilt that still had a foothold in her.

   ----------

“—Ye could hire more workers here is all I’m saying. The place seems to be doing just fine.”

Claire looked up from her breakfast as Jamie entered the dining room, Murtagh hot on his heels. Fergus had scarfed his food down already and gone out to the front with Faith and her chalk — some things didn’t require the ability to communicate, and the children were finding those spaces all on their own, in a way that made Claire’s tender heart ache to see.

“I don’t recall sharing the inn’s finances with ye,” Jamie shot back.

“I just mean that ye never take a moment’s rest for yerself, and ye dinnae need to be doing it all by yerself. I suspect ye can afford at least another staff person.”

“I have another staff person already — Hugh Monroe.”

Murtagh grunted at that, though what the noise was supposed to imply, Claire wasn’t sure. She dropped her gaze to her meal, unable to give them the privacy of not eavesdropping while they were conversing right in front of her, but the least she could do was make it seem like she wasn’t trying to listen in. “And what if ye wanted to take a day off every now and then, huh? Ye could go home and see yer family then.”

It was Jamie’s turn for a Scottish noise of displeasure, though Claire had far less trouble interpreting his frustration from that. “I’m no’ going to take time away from the inn in the middle of my busy season. Also, I dinnae recall ye being this much of a mother hen with either Willie or Rob,” Jamie said pointedly.

“Aye well I wasnae their godfather, was I? Just yours. Lot o’ good having Colum and Dougal for their godfathers did them, though, god rest their souls.” Claire couldn’t help looking up at that, and caught Murtagh crossing himself.

Jamie was stone-faced, and turned for the kitchen, disappearing through the swinging door that separated it from the dining area.

“Who are Willie and Rob?” she asked, and found Murtagh’s surprised gaze on her. She was rather sure her own surprise reflected back at him, that she had even asked the question out loud.

“He doesn’t talk about them?”

She shook her head.

Murtagh considered that with a quiet sigh. “His brothers. Willie was the oldest, then their sister Janet, then Jamie, and wee Rob was the youngest.” She had a suspicion, from seeing Jamie, that “Wee Rob” was more of an affectionate family name for the youngest, for surely any brother of Jamie couldn’t be small in stature.

“That’s a big family,” she murmured, a little dazed by the thought. It was only ever just her growing up.

“Aye,” Murtagh sighed, his expression darkening. “Then the three o’ them went to war, and only Jamie came back. Now it’s just him and Jenny.”

She sat with that news, feeling a cold damp fist around her heart. After all he went through at the hands of Jack Randall, and losing his entire unit, and then… his brothers, too. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because he’s no’ doing well, and I ken ye’re the only other person besides me who sees that.” Murtagh cleared his throat and straightened. “I’m his godfather, so I’ll always have his back, but he pushed everyone away when he came home, except for Faith. He willnae let me help him. But I think…” the older man raised one eyebrow, “he might let you.”

“And… you trust me to help him? You don’t even really know me.”

“Trust is a bit of a stretch, aye, but it’s plain on yer face that ye want to help him. So.”

Claire felt her face flush at those words, at being so thoroughly seen by someone who’d only been here a few days. “Jamie has been incredibly kind to me and my son. He’s… he’s been a very good friend.”

Murtagh grunted at that, though she couldn’t for the life of her sort out what he meant by that, either. “So, that’s why I told ye. And I have to go, he doesn’t want me hanging about much longer, but I trust… ye’ll keep an eye on him for me, aye?”

“Of course,” she found herself saying. Perhaps more startling to her was the realization that she had meant it.

He studied her intently for a moment and, finding something there in her face that reassured him, he nodded once and followed Jamie through the swinging door.

Murtagh left the next day, returning to Lallybroch, but their brief conversation in the dining room stayed with Claire long after the man had gone.

  ----------

“Claire!”

Someone pounded on her door, making her heart jump to her throat. She had just been to Fergus’s room to tuck him in for the night and was halfway out of her blouse, which she quickly began to shrug back into, trying to button it as fast as she could.

“Claire!”

More pounding.

It was Jamie’s urgent voice, and she swore under her breath as her fingers fumbled with the last two buttons. “Yes, I’m coming! I’m—”

She yanked open the door and took in the sight of Jamie looking more unraveled than she’d ever seen him before.

“Faith is sick. Please—She’s—she has a fever. Please come.”

She turned for her medical kit without a word, and by the time she returned to the threshold, Fergus stood in the doorway of his own room, peeking out in mild concern.

“Go back to bed. Stay in your room,” she told him, and followed a panic-stricken Jamie down the stairs.

[gffa]

Hi!  This is an interesting question because there has been a fair amount of Jedha lore being expanded on in The High Republic, but the era that's doing it is set 350 years before the prequels (382 BBY, so almost 400 years if you're going by when the Republic fell and the Empire rose) and it's really contained to a handful of sources.  I would say the main ones exploring it are: - The Battle of Jedha audiobook - The High Republic 2022 ongoing comic book (issue #6 came out just this week, it's still pretty new) That's really about it for that era and the other book I would suggest if you want to catch up on things yourself is Guardians of the Whills by Greg Rucka, which is set not too long before Rogue One and has Baze and Chirrut running missions on Jedha and showing them trying to protect the people of the city while the Empire encroaches on more and more of them. Which means there's not a ton about it yet, most of which is just setting the stage and introducing various religious groups and their basic dynamics--which is pretty much "the Jedi are still the big kids on the playground, some love them, some resent them, but generally they try to do their best to respect everyone and let people do their thing, it's just that by dint of being the strongest Force-users in the galaxy, they're always going to be in the position of being the big kids on the playground", while other groups tend to squabble a lot, sometimes with, sometimes against the Jedi, and none of them have really stood out yet. You've got the Church of the Force, but it's just one group among many and they're probably the second biggest group, but they haven't really done much yet. Then there's the Path of the Open Hand which were introduced in Path of Deceit (the opening novel for this era of the High Republic) but all you really need to know is that they're benevolent seeming and their mission is that the Force must be "free" (ie, no one can use it) because their belief is, if you use the Force to save a person here, then over there the Force kills someone else, to bring "balance".  So they reeeeeeeeeally hate the Jedi, who actively use the Force, and they're lead by the Mother who is being set up to be a villain, who we don't know her full motivations yet, but likely she wants to grow them as a cult and give her all the power.  In The Battle for Jedha, they stir up chaos and then go help people by creating an alms house to heal them, get people to "safety", etc.  So, they look like heroes, their members genuinely believe in their cause, they seem very nice, but ultimately no good is going to come from there. They've recently arrived on Jedha (in the High Republic ongoing comic) and are demanding a seat at the Convocation of the Force's table, to be part of their Council, but they've been denied so far and are making a big racket about how they're being shunned just for ~dissenting~. The other major players so far are the Guardians of the Whills, which seem to be in their prime here.  It's not super clear what they believe or how they operate, they don't seem to be able to use the Force much (other groups do have Force abilities, but don't seem especially strong, either) and are kind of more like guardian monks who keep order on Jedha and protect it. Sometime previous to the set-up of this era, the Jedi were fully in charge of Jedha, but no longer are.  Whether they chose to step down, were asked to step down, others stepped up, or what, I'm not sure if we know yet, only that the Jedi used to rule the place, but haven't in some time and some people are fine with it, some seem like they might resent it.  (Par for the course with the Jedi, some love them, some resent them.) Ultimately, the set up is "a bunch of Force religions create a council to facilitate interactions between the different groups and organize festivals for everyone to come to" and there's some squabbling, but also some good work being done, the Jedi can't help but be the biggest player (in part because this is Star Wars and they're our main characters, but also because of their sheer history and ability) even as they deliberately try to step back. There's a large gap of history between the High Republic era and what Jedha looked like by the time of the Empire rising, but my impression is that it had been falling out of favor for awhile, that the Rogue One visual dictionary still described it as a place of pilgrimage and holy to a lot of religions, it still had a bustling city, but it wasn't the same central hub of religious organizations in the galaxy and hadn't been for a long time. A lot of interesting stuff is happening on Jedha at this time period (and you could probably just Google for where to find the 2022/2023 High Republic comics, that should tell you almost everything you might want to know) or just scroll through the "Sites of Interest" section on Wookieepedia to see if any of them sound like places Ahsoka might want to mention--as a Jedi, I think she'd probably know of a lot of the places, you can decide if she'd have visited at some point (Jedi did take their initiates on field trips, after all), and might want to visit the Kyber Mirrors, which held a lot of significance for Force-sensitives, even if the Empire had probably mined it for kyber by then. But you'd also be fine just ignoring all of it, because most of this is from 400 years before and would be interesting history, more than a direct involvement!  I would say the Guardians of the Whills book tells you more about the status of the planet in that era, but you can basically guess, it's a lot of orphanages because a lot of parents are dead and everyone is poor and struggling to eat or get medicine, even the local orphanage struggles despite Baze and Chirrut's help, because the Empire sucks. Other than that, it's mostly introductory stuff so far, so a skim over Wookieepedia or some judicious Googling should cover it!

[reddorkredemption]

My Blessed Son—Chapter 16

|| AO3 || Chapter List / Story Info ||  

Summary:

For years, Jack Marston dreamed of killing Edgar Ross, the man who had taken everything from him, who had ruined his life. His obsession with revenge had given him a reason to keep going. But now, after it was done, he was left lost, depressed and without purpose. He was left to navigate life alone with the unforgiving eyes of the law slowly narrowing in on him. Though he soon comes to realize that perhaps he isn't quite as alone as he thought he would be. A continuation from the end of Red Dead Redemption 1.

Word Count: ~4700

Chapter under the cut <3

Jack sat on his bed, an old bolt-action rifle resting in his lap. He was working on wiping away all of the dust and grime that had built up on the gun, preparing to go out hunting for elk in Tall Trees. He and Lilly were growing desperate for money, and the pelts would fetch a pretty price, especially with the weather cooling down.

Jack was also desperate to get away from the ranch for a while. He hadn’t left the property once since he had returned, unless standing on the other side of the fence while making repairs counted. Being cooped up was starting to make him restless, and that feeling was only amplified by his lingering fear of those bureau agents returning.

It had been several days since they came and went, and there had been no sign of them since. Lilly regularly walked the perimeter of the ranch to look out for them, but she never found anything out of the ordinary. This soothed him somewhat, but he knew that he’d still end up having to face them eventually. And the thought filled him with dread.

Still, he did his best to shove it away, burying it under his stubborn resolve to fix up the ranch.

Lifting the rifle out of his lap, Jack gave it a final once-over to ensure it was clean. Once he was satisfied, he slung the sling over his shoulder, got up, and left the room. Before heading to the front door, he stopped by the living room where Lilly had started working on cleaning the interior of the house. He found her standing on a stool, back turned to him as she dusted the area around the fireplace.

“Hey,” he said to her back. “I’m leavin’ now.”

She glanced over her shoulder and smiled at him. “Alright.” Pulling away from her chores and turning to face him, she twirled the duster in her hands and said, “You be careful out there.”

“I’ll try.”

“No.” She jabbed at his chest with the end of the duster's handle. “You will.”

He lowered his head and chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. There was that funny feeling again— the stirring in his chest, the subtle heat rising in his cheeks. “Okay. I will.”

“Good. That’s better,” she murmured, turning to resume cleaning. “I’ll see you later.”

A small smile now plastered on his face, he bid her goodbye and headed for the front door.

Lilly called after him, “Don’t forget I have to be in town for work by two!”

“I haven’t!” he shouted back as he opened the door.

Stepping outside, he rubbed his hands together as the crisp morning air enveloped him. He hopped off the porch, heading for the hitching post in front of the house where Ace was already saddled up and ready to go. He gave the horse a pat on the back before mounting up.

He chose to stray off the path and take a shortcut to the woods, passing by the ranch’s gazebo, which was now in much better shape since they’d cleaned it up. The brush around it had largely been cleared, aside from some vines snaking up the pillars. Lilly had opted to leave them because they gave the structure character— whatever that meant.

While they cleaned, he had also given her more context regarding the situation with Edgar Ross since his original explanation was a vague, emotionally charged mess. He wasn’t sure if the second explanation was all that better, but it was something.

Jack rode to the fence at the edge of the property, hopping over it before picking up his pace to the forest.

———

Winter always seemed to come earlier in Tall Trees. The deeper Jack got into the forest, the colder it became, and patches of snow began to dot the landscape. Wind whistled through the tops of the trees, rustling them and sending pine needles falling to the ground. Luckily, the brush surrounding him was thick enough to keep the air around him relatively still, so the wind’s chill didn’t reach him. 

He hadn’t done much hunting in the past few years— not like this. All of his efforts had gone towards preparing to hunt down Edgar Ross. Everything else fell by the wayside.

And his lack of experience was certainly showing as he rode aimlessly through the woods for hours. Tracking down elk was a lot harder than he remembered— a lot harder than when he first did it with his father all those years ago. Without Rufus’s keen nose to sniff them out and his father to guide him, Jack was utterly useless. Sure, he may have been a much better shot now, but that meant nothing if he couldn’t find anything to shoot.

The longer he rode around without finding anything, the more frustration built up inside of him. Until finally, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a line of indentations in a large patch of snow. He gave the reins a harsh tug, and his horse skidded to a halt.

Hopping out of the saddle, Jack knelt down to examine them and confirmed that they were animal tracks— more specifically, the large cloven hoof prints he had been searching for. He perked up and pulled the rifle off his shoulder, holding it firmly in both hands. Whistling for his horse to tag along, he slowly followed the tracks. 

The trail led him out of the snow, into a small patch of mud and then disappeared without a trace where the dirt hardened again. Furrowing his brows, he meticulously scanned the ground, trying to pick the trail back up. When that failed, he looked up and around at his surroundings. But all he saw were trees— trees and brush and squirrels that chittered as if they were laughing at him.

His grip on his rifle tightened as he began to grow enraged by his failure. In a fit, he threw the gun onto the ground and got down on his hands and knees. Leaning forward until he was inches from the ground, he swiped at the dirt in the hopes that some buried clue would reveal itself to him. But again, he came up with nothing.

Giving up, he plopped down on the ground next to his discarded rifle and rested his back against the thick trunk of a tree. He wiped the dirt off of his hands, now slightly numb from the cold, and clutched his temples. 

What was he missing? Why was he so terrible at this?

He didn’t have all day to stumble around out here until luck decided to take pity on him. But he couldn’t bear to return home empty-handed. They needed money. Their kitchen was empty, and they were living off of eggs and coffee. 

The rustling of bushes in the distance made him raise his head and then immediately lower it again when he found nothing of interest. It was likely just the squirrels.

Maybe he ought to settle for hunting down one of them. How wonderfully ridiculous and pathetic would that be?— coming home after hours of hunting and slamming one whole squirrel down onto the table. Somehow, that sounded worse than going back with nothing.

More rustling rang out, this time from the bushes right in front of him, and Ace whinnied. Jack glanced up disinterestedly, not expecting to see anything. Instead, he found himself staring down a massive, jet-black wolf. It was sitting down no more than a couple of feet in front of him and towering over him. 

He yelped and flailed his arm out, feeling around in the grass to grab his rifle. Once he secured a grip on the weapon, he raised the barrel in the wolf’s direction. He attempted to line up the shot, but the violent shaking of his hands made it impossible. So he simply shut his eyes and squeezed the trigger, praying the shot would hit— or at the least, scare the animal off.

The rifle gave an anticlimactic click, refusing to go off. Cursing, Jack desperately tried the trigger again, and then again, receiving nothing for his efforts besides more stubborn clicks. 

Then, it dawned on him: he never reloaded it after cleaning it. He had forgotten to. He had been trudging around the forest alone, carrying an unloaded gun. And now, he was about to pay for that stupidity.

He tossed the gun in the dirt and fumbled for his hunting knife, pulling it out and clumsily brandishing it at the wolf. He grit his teeth as he forced himself to finally take a good look at the animal.

It was then that he realized the wolf hadn’t moved. Hadn’t growled, hadn’t bared its teeth, hadn’t done anything at all. Its shrewd, smokey eyes stared back at him, appearing almost amused by the spectacle he was putting on.

Jack slowly lowered the knife but kept the tip of the blade trained on the animal’s face. It looked as if it’d been slashed before— multiple times, right across the muzzle. But that wasn’t all that surprising, considering its bizarre behavior. 

He glanced up at Ace, expecting him to be distressed, but the horse didn’t seem to have a care in the world. He was happily grazing on the grass at his feet.

“What’s wrong with you?” he hissed at the horse, unable to keep his voice from shaking. “Do something!”

Ace lifted his head, glanced at the wolf, and let out a soft nicker. He then turned to Jack and calmly stared at him as he ground a blade of grass between his teeth.

Puzzled, Jack looked back at the wolf, and it suddenly rose to its feet, causing him to flinch and flail his knife at it again. Unfazed by his threats, it approached him. 

He held his breath, the knife trembling in his hand, as the wolf circled him a few times. As it neared the end of its final lap around him, its tail brushed against him. The coldness of it pierced through his jacket and sent a violent shiver up his spine. 

It left his side and began stalking off in a random direction. Once it was a few yards away, it stopped short and looked back at him expectantly. Jack stayed frozen in place, staring at it in awe. 

The wolf then shifted its gaze up to Ace and held eye contact with the horse for a moment before turning around and walking away again. Suddenly, Ace left Jack’s side and began trotting after the wolf.

“Hey!” he shouted after the horse, breaking out of his stupor. “Woah!”

The horse ignored him.

Jack sheathed his knife, stumbled up to his knees, and shoved his fingers in his mouth, sending a piercing whistle echoing through the trees. But that too went ignored as Ace followed the wolf into the thick shrubbery. Cursing, he picked up his rifle and jumped to his feet.

He chased after the horse, stray tree branches and bushes thwacking against his limbs as he struggled to keep up. The wolf was several yards ahead of them, walking briskly with its nose to the ground. They ran him all the way down to the river and into an area of the forest he’d never been in before. 

It felt like forever before the horse finally ground to a sudden stop, allowing him to catch up. His chest was burning.

Panting, Jack grabbed onto the saddle and held it tightly in case the horse decided to take off again. “You idiot! What do you think you’re—” His voice caught in his throat when he glanced up. 

They were now standing at the outside of a large, out-of-the-way clearing. And at the center of the clearing was a small herd of elk mulling around and grazing. Jack took his hands off the saddle. He could hardly believe what he was seeing.

He then noticed that the wolf had stopped too. It was sat right at the edge of the clearing, swishing its tail and twitching its ears as it watched the herd. Against his better judgement, Jack tiptoed towards it.

It didn’t react when he approached, and Jack’s heart raced as he moved to stand by its side. Too afraid to look at the animal, he kept his eyes forward, gluing them to the herd of elk in the distance.

He observed them for a moment, letting his rifle slip off of his shoulder as he sized them up. There were four of them that he could see— one standing out as being particularly massive. Maybe he’d be leaving with a decent haul after all.

But only because of that wolf….

He gathered up the courage to glance down to where it was sitting, only to find that it was gone. Jack spun in a circle, trying to figure out where it had run off to— he didn’t even hear it move— but there was no sign of it. 

It had simply vanished.

———

He couldn’t stop thinking about it. Not while he took down and skinned a couple of the elk in the clearing. Not while he sold the pelts, antlers, and meat at Manzanita Post. Not now as he rode back home to Beecher’s Hope.

His mind was stuck on that wolf. Its gaze was so purposeful, as was its path to that clearing full of elk. It was almost as if it knew what Jack was looking for and was trying to help him. But that sounded ridiculous. 

It vaguely reminded him of the strange encounter he’d had with that buck before Bonnie found him. He had chosen to write that off as a drunken hallucination and push it out of his mind, despite evidence to the contrary. But he couldn’t even attempt to do that this time; he was stone-cold sober. 

He couldn’t explain any of it away, and that was frightening. All he could do was try to ignore it and hope that it wouldn’t happen again lest he be driven insane.

He arrived home right on time— no more than fifteen minutes before he needed to take Lilly into town— and headed straight for the door. He didn’t bother hitching his horse since he knew he’d be right back out. 

His footsteps were heavy against the wooden floor as he reentered the house. He immediately spotted Lilly in the dining room, wiping down the table. He walked over to her, and she glanced up and smiled at him. 

“There you are.” She chuckled and nodded at the clock on the wall. “Cuttin’ it a little close, aren’t you?”

He mumbled, “Sorry, it took a while.”

Her smile faltered, and she straightened up, tossing her rag over her shoulder. “Everything okay?” she asked, wiping her hands off on her skirt. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

He suppressed a sigh. Every damn time— she always knew when there was something wrong with him. Was he really that transparent? 

“Yeah,” he said with a tight-lipped smile. “Everything’s fine.”

She put a hand on her hip. “Are you sure? Last time you said that, the cops came bangin’ on the door.”

“Ain’t nothin’ like that,” he assured her. “I just… saw something creepy in the woods, and I’m being a baby about it.”

“What was it?”

He hesitated before answering, “Just a wolf that was actin’ kinda funny. I think it must’ve been… sick in the head or something.”

Her face sobered. “Did it try to hurt you?”

“No, it didn’t.”

She sighed in relief, and the smile returned to her face. “Good.”

“It was just weird. It ain’t really all that important.” Jack took his hat off and tossed it onto the table before pulling out a chair and sitting down. Running his fingers through his hair, he asked, “Anything happen here while I was gone?”

“No, not really,” Lilly said. “Though I did find something interesting while I was cleanin’….”

“What?”

She responded by turning around and making the short walk to the coffee table in the living room. There, she picked up a small stack of papers before spinning around and returning to him. She set the papers on the table and slid them towards him. 

Jack knew what it was the second he laid eyes on it, and his face burned with embarrassment. It was an unfinished short story that he had written a few years ago; its pages were wrinkled from when he had tried to throw it away after his father died. 

His mother had fished it out of the trash the following day and demanded that Jack read it to her, which he begrudgingly did. She loved it and scolded him for trying to throw it out, and then scolded him again when he insisted that it was terrible and deserved to be thrown out. 

Lilly tapped the corner of the front page, bringing him back to the present. “Did you write this?”

“No,” he lied, the defensiveness in his voice betraying him.

“But it’s your handwriting.”

“So? Doesn’t mean I wrote it.”

“Jack.” She sat down in the chair diagonal from him and leaned forward against the table, giving him a look of amused disbelief. “Really?”

He glanced away and groaned. “Fine, I wrote it,” he admitted. “But it was a long time ago— a few years ago. I know it’s terrible; you don’t have to—”

“Hey,” she cut him off and put a hand on his forearm. “Take it easy. I wasn’t tryin’ to rag on you for it. I’m not going to rag on you for it.”

“You’re not?”

“No. I thought it was good— minus the fact that it doesn’t have an ending.”

He tsked. “You got poor taste then.”

“Stop it, I do not.” She slapped her free hand down on the paper. “It’s good. It’s—”

“Silly,” he finished for her. “It’s silly.”

She shook her head, crossed her arms, and leaned back in her chair. Switching tactics, she asked, “When’s the last time you read through it?”

“I don’t need to read it to know it ain’t good. I wrote it. I spent more time starin’ at it than anyone.”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “If you would just—”

“Are we really gonna argue about this?” Jack asked, growing annoyed. “What do you want from me?”

Lilly put her palms up and in a lower voice said, “I’m not arguing.” She clasped her hands together and gave him a sheepish smile. “I was just hoping you’d want to finish it for me. Bad or not— which it’s not— I’d still like to know how it ends.”

He breathed out a sound somewhere in between a groan and a sigh. “Do you have a pen?”

She perked up, raising her eyebrows as if she were shocked that he was actually entertaining the idea. “I do,” she said as she reached into her pocket to pull the pen out.

Jack put his hand out for her to give it to him, and she placed it in his palm. He looked down at the stack of papers and flipped it over, honing in on the empty space at the bottom of the final page.

“Wait, you’re gonna do it right now?” Lilly asked.

He nodded.

“Why? I’m gettin’ kinda suspicious now.”

Shrugging, he pressed the pen to the page. He couldn’t remember how his sixteen-year-old self had intended for the story to end, but it didn’t matter. He’d already decided what he was going to write, and Lilly was right to be suspicious.

He scribbled down a ridiculous couple of sentences wherein the main character suddenly died in an outrageous way that didn’t fit the story at all. When he finished, he tossed the pen onto the table and slid the stack of papers over to her. Lilly narrowed her eyes at him before picking them up to read what he’d written. 

After reading it, she set the story down and stared blankly at it for a moment. Then, she broke out into a laugh, and the sweet sound melted away the last remnants of irritation he felt.

“Alright,” she said in between chuckles. “Well, that’s just rude.”

A smile tugged at the corners of his lips, and he put his hand over his mouth to cover it. “It’s finished,” he said. “We can stop talkin’ about it now.”

Her amusement dying down, Lilly sighed. “Well, at least it was a creative ending. Never would’ve seen that twist comin’. I think you did misspell ‘incinerated’ though.”

“Oh, shut up,” he mumbled, scooting away from the table and standing up. “What time is it? Don’t we need to leave?”

She frowned at the clock then moved to stand up herself. “Yes, I guess we do. We can continue this conversation later.”

“I’d prefer we didn’t,” he murmured, putting his hat back on.

Snickering, she pulled the rag off her shoulder and threw it on the table. “C’mon,” she said with a nod at the door. 

“Wait. Here.” Jack dug into his satchel and pulled out the folded-up cash that he’d gotten from selling the elk. Handing it to Lilly, he explained, “If you can find the time when you’re in town, it’d help if you could pick up some of the supplies we need.”

She took the money and stuffed it into her pocket. “What do we need?”

“I can tell you on the way.” He extended an arm towards the door, gesturing for her to go first.

Lilly nodded, and they made their way out of the house together. 

———

They stopped a short walk from the outskirts of Blackwater. Jack didn’t want to go any farther, given the recent developments with the bureau. It wouldn’t look good to show up in town just days after Lilly told them he was over a thousand miles away.

Lilly hugged him from behind, thanking him for the ride, before hopping off the back of his horse on her own.

“I’ll meet you back here tonight at two,” Jack said, watching as she smoothed out her wrinkled skirt.

She smiled at him and nodded. “Got it. I’ll see you then.”

She gave his horse a quick pat on the neck and waved goodbye to him before turning and starting her trek into town.

“You be careful out there,” he called after her, mimicking the exact tone she’d used when she said the same to him that morning.

Lilly paused then spun around on her heel. Visibly fighting back a grin, she narrowed her eyes at him and stuck her chin out. “I will.” 

“Good.”

She snickered and shook her head as she turned back around. “Bastard,” she mumbled, just loud enough for him to hear.

He laughed and watched her walk down the road, a slight skip in her step. 

———

Jack went straight back home after dropping her off and immediately buried himself in the remaining chores that needed to be done for the day. Most of his time was spent chopping firewood. He told himself that they needed it because it was getting cold, but really, he just enjoyed the opportunity to take all of the week’s frustration out on the wood.

He turned in when the sun set and sat down in the living room, looking around, twiddling his thumbs, and trying to keep his thoughts from wandering. 

The place was looking a lot nicer since it had been cleaned— a lot more like the home he remembered. The dust that had once coated everything was gone, and all of the little knick-knacks around the fireplace were straightened up. 

But what stood out to him above all else was his parents’ portrait. The gold-lined frame that encased it was shining like it was new— it was clear that Lilly had taken a great deal more care in cleaning it than the objects surrounding it. And that compassionate attention to detail warmed his heart. 

He stood up and approached it for a closer look. Without the dust obscuring the photograph, the smaller details in it became more apparent. There was a quirk in his mother’s lips, an expression she’d often make when holding back laughter. His father wore the ghost of a smirk, his shrewd, smokey eyes staring right into the camera— right at Jack. 

Jack furrowed his eyebrows. Those eyes. So eerily similar to the ones that had scrutinized him in the forest that morning, the ones attached to that wolf. He shivered and stepped backwards, nearly tumbling over the coffee table behind him.

After regaining his balance, he glanced back up at the photo and scoffed at his ridiculousness. His mind was so desperate to make sense of that sick, crazy wolf that he was seeing things that weren’t there. He shook his head. You’ve really lost it now, Marston.

Rubbing his eyes, he turned his back on the portrait and strolled into the dining room. He needed to get away from it— and more importantly, needed to find something to distract him before he started spiraling his way into a padded cell. 

He wished Lilly didn’t have to go to work; her absence reminded him how much he loathed being alone in that house. It was too quiet. 

He rested his palms on the dining room table and leaned against it, scowling when his eyes grazed the old stack of papers still sitting there. Speaking of Lilly, he ought to throw that stupid story out before she had the chance to torture him over it some more.

Jack grabbed the pages, wrinkling them in the middle, and swiped them off the table. He started for the trash can in the kitchen but stopped short when he remembered how well throwing it in there had worked out the first time. He certainly wouldn’t put it above Lilly to pull it out of the trash like his mother had.

So he shifted course and went into his bedroom, intending to toss it in a bucket in the corner and forget about it. He didn’t have to worry about it being found in there; Lilly never went into his room.

As far as he knew….

Upon further consideration, he opted to tear it into pieces— just to be sure that it was gone and would never resurface.

But as he made the first tear in the corner of the page, he was struck by a wave of guilt that made him freeze. He stared sadly at the disjointed scraps of paper in his hands, suddenly wishing he could fuse them back together.

As bad as that story was, his mother had loved it— enough that she had kept it safely tucked away for all those years. He could still remember the pride on her face as he read it aloud to her, though he’d refused to acknowledge it at the time. In fact, that moment may have been the only time he ever saw a genuine smile on her face after his father died.

His little story had meant so much to her, yet there he was, trying to destroy it. 

Sighing, he sat down at his desk and set the stack of papers down. He slid the torn corner back in place, carefully realigning the words so he could read them.

As he read through the first portion of the story, he was puzzled to find that he barely recognized it at all. It wasn’t as boring— or as silly— as he remembered. The phrasing wasn’t as awkward, the characters not as insufferable….

Who the hell wrote this?

Jack found it hard to believe that he had, despite his clear memory of the hours he’d spent hunched over that desk with a pen in his hand.

He continued to read, waiting for the story to morph into the terrible mess he’d convinced himself it was— waiting for his hatred of it to be justified. But it never was.

That was, until the very end. He frowned when the ridiculous couple of sentences he’d written earlier smacked him across the face. They left a bitter taste in his mouth, and he felt… incomplete as he stared at them. And he had misspelled incinerated….

Without hesitation, he shook his head, picked up a pen, and scratched the words out.

Surely he could come up with something better.

[thatbitchsimone]

Ok, so first world problems, but I’m doing a group assignment and we’re presenting tomorrow and we had four weeks to do it, but I’ve basically done 90% of the work because my group members just didn’t do it (like I asked them multiple times and they said they’d get on to it, and two days before they still haven’t done anything and I asked them again, so one of them literally did two slides, and the other absolutely nothing and it’s due tomorrow). And I hate to be that person, but I want to tell with my tutor that I literally did everything for the assignment because it seems unfair that they would get the same grades as me right??? I also think it’s important I advocate for myself, although I don’t want to rat them out you know. I’m at a crossroads.

i was one of those bitches that did zero of the work on group presentations but i at the very least had the decensy to always be the main speaker/do most of the talking since most ppl usually hate doing public speaking while for me its a piece of cake lol and usually i even made a deal with the others that they would do the work and id do the talking right from the beginning like if ur gonna be a lazy bitch u gotta at least be honest about it and throw in a compromise so ur laziness doesnt fuck everything up for the others

id also never take credit for the other ppls work like id straight up tell the teacher that so and so did most of the work and id lift them up and praise them for it bc why the fuck wouldnt i? see if ur gonna be a slacker u gotta be a slacker with heart like u gotta do it with some style and respect like thats the key to getting away with it

tbh i think u should straight up tell the others that ”ok so its very clear i did most of the work here since i had to do ur parts as well as my own so im gonna let the teacher know that bc im not ur chat gpt and u should honestly be grateful that i did the work for u in the first place” like ofc u dont have to be as harsh and blunt as that (thats just how i would personally say it) but u should give them a heads up about it and then let the teacher know. they rly dont have anything to say about it bc like.. they know they didnt do shit lol they know that was disrespectful of them like they clearly left u in charge by putting the whole workload on u so u should act accordingly and take charge over them like they basically put u in the leadership position and u should use that

[alyjojo]

July 🕶 2023 Monthly - Pisces

Whole of your energy: 8 Swords rev

You could have the opportunity to heal some family connections this month, but you’re having to release yourself from old perceptions, habits, methods of behavior, your Stuck Oracle refers to these things keeping you stuck. Something like shame, conflicts, whatever you’ve done that’s kept you away needs to be released so that you can come back into 10 Pentacles with people you care about. This can also be saying that you’ve grown considerably in the time you’ve been separated, it’s been the best thing for you to be around family again.

What’s going on in July:

Queen of Cups:

Two Queens together, this could be an lgbt relationship, your family are all coming up as pentacles, they could be more of the conservative type whereas you and your partner are full of flavor, FUN, colorful, successful and very happy. Could also be a friend, roommate, or some other person in your family that makes you feel excited and ready to take charge of your life & make it better than it was before. It could also be an aspect of your own personality, maybe you have heavy Aries/fire in your chart. So you are a very loving, sensitive, nurturing & kind sort of friend to everyone, while also being a bit of an impulsive wild child underneath, and that’s okay because you usually end up on top and love to win.

Ace of Pentacles rev:

You could have lost money, maybe borrowed money for something and it didn’t pan out or isn’t, it can involve alcohol or feeling “fuzzy”. A separation occurred between you and these family members due to possibly partying, alcohol, “recklessness” in their eyes, being generally irresponsible with money or some specific event that relates to that. There’s been a break period, you’ve needed to heal from whatever occurred and get your head on straight, which you seem to have done. I don’t see anything detrimental, more like “young” mistakes. Having too much fun sometimes. Pentacles sometimes don’t like to have fun, it goes against their whole “I’m better than you so I shall judge you for this reckless joy” demeanor 😆 Not always, but sometimes.

6 Cups:

You’re very nostalgic about these people and miss them, you think about them a lot and love them very much. I’m sure they love you too, I don’t get any mean or conflicting vibes from them. They are just them, and you are you, and you’re not necessarily compatible but, those are the best kinds of family relationships. You love them so you’re stuck with them, and you’ll learn the lessons from them you probably wouldn’t put up with from anyone else. Same for them. Acceptance is necessary on both sides. I just got a message that Queen of Cups wasn’t always a Queen, trans specific conflicts are being highlighted for someone. I don’t normally pick up on that specific energy, just if you are then you are, but in this case with the family, it could definitely apply and that was the issue. They may have opted to not help you financially and felt you were “confused, now drop it”…that won’t be for everyone, leave what doesn’t apply to you.

You’ve taken quite a bit of time away from these people, it could be an issue of money or the lack of acceptance on some level, there’s a need to forgive and push through your own resistance, with your Push Oracle. You’re waiting for an apology, they could be too, the last encounter may have been a doozy with 5 Swords and mean things may have been said on both sides. With 6 Cups, neither side has forgotten, especially you, it’s something you think about a lot and need to release.

10 Pentacles:

This is your family, they haven’t reached out or attempted to get back into contact with you, because you haven’t done it with them. You have stubbornness in common, and standing by your own personal values, but so much that you don’t even speak to each other and are now afraid to, probably because so much time has gone by and you don’t know what to expect. Someone’s birthday or a holiday could be in July for all of this to be at the forefront of your mind, maybe you‘ve skipped several of these occasions before…but you don’t want to miss this one, this time. It’s because you miss them.

Knight of Cups:

By the end of the month, you either will be taking loving action towards these people, or that’s your plan moving into next month. You’re still guarded, so are they, when I asked for further clarification I got The Hierophant, more earth energy. They could be religious, conservative, they do things “ye olde way” and it’s worked for them. You need to accept that. But I don’t see them as petty, mean, nothing like that. They probably aren’t immediately sure of your intentions, it’s like if you haven’t cared for so long, why now? Or you could feel that way if this is all switched. There is a “love conquers all” feeling about these connections, they may not agree with you, or understand you, but they do love you, and same for you. Bravo for taking the first step towards healing the connections, most of you are the initiators. It won’t be perfect, but it’s not the worst thing, and it’s only the first time…things could keep changing. And if they don’t, if they’re resistant and stuck so much that they can’t show you love correctly, you may need to release them. You tried, that’s all you can do. Then you move on, guilt free.

Signs you may be dealing with:

Gemini, Leo, Virgo, Capricorn, Aries, Scorpio & Cancer

Oracles: ✨

2 - Push

Don’t feel inadequate; forget how to quit. Push on, no matter how things look.

34 - Stuck

You may be stuck because you are overly attached to a method or piece.

7 Reunion of Souls 🫶

There is a school of thought that says before our souls come to earth, we make contracts, or agreements, with other souls. At one point in time, we appear in each other’s lives to assist in those involved in learning a lesson, being a catalyst for a needed change, or to share in profound joy. When a person comes into your life to teach you a lesson - no matter the human form, no matter the human experience - this agreement is based in love.

The human experience may have been painful and extremely challenging - acknowledge the depth of love needed for this contract to take place and then let them go. The experience may have been profoundly moving, but ended abruptly and without reason. Again - be grateful and move on - cherish the lessons and move forward into your life the way it was meant to be. Alternately, this card signifies a profound “soulmate” relationship, whether it is between lovers, friends, or parents and children. Cherish the gift given.

We enter into July as:

Final Sunset 🌅 :

“A life has come to its spectacular conclusion.”

This is a reminder to cherish all of the beauty in your life, including endings. Spirit embraces you and the loss you are aware of at this time. When we watch a day’s sunset, we can recognize the beauty of an ending. All things have a completion, even life. This is the end of a long journey. It is a time to reflect on your part of history, and discover what you value most. This could be a long emotional road ending, or simply a project at work that took a lot of effort and time. Too often we look to what is “next”, and miss the spectacular beauty of the finale. Do not fear the completion. Stay in the now, cry, laugh, reflect. Be with the fullness of your experience.

What is to be learned in July:

She Shaman 🧝🏾‍♀️

“I will guide you to your muse.”

She Shaman whispers to you “Do not be like the old birch and wait for anyone else to tell you of your muse. Connect with it!” This is your destiny calling. The path you have chosen is an artistic one. The universe is waiting for you to begin your dance and express your love in a tangible art form. The time is now, the moment has arrived, it is a time for decisions to be made. Dance! Rejoice! Do not seek council outside of yourself to confirm what you know to be true inside. Do not wait for permission to act. You must trust your instinct and act from the voice within. Let go of any need for approval, your answers are within. You will not be alone, Spirit is with you.

Purple/Wine may be a lucky color 💜

This song came on this random rock station I’m in, and I heard to add it. I actually love this one 😍