#i know some of you will make it better than me 😅
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firael ¡ 1 day ago
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20 years of waiting of twinship vs 20 years of waiting of romance 😅🥰.
“You are such a weak, sniveling fool, Caramon!” he snarled. Irritably he tried to shake off his twin’s grip. He might as well have tried to shake off death. “Surely you must know by now what I have done! The kender must have told you about the gnome. You know I betrayed you. I would have left you for dead in this wretched place. And still you cling to me!”
“I’m clinging to you because the waters are closing over your head, Raistlin,” Caramon said.
His gaze went down to his own, strong, sun-burned hand holding his brother’s thin wrist, its bones as fragile as the bones of a bird, its skin white, almost transparent. Caramon fancied he could see the blood pulse in the blue veins.
“My hand upon your arm. That’s all we have.” Caramon paused and drew a deep breath. Then, his voice deep with sorrow, he continued, “Nothing can erase what you have done, Raist. It can never be the same between us. My eyes have been opened. I now see you for what you are.”
“And yet you beg me to come with you!” Raistlin sneered.
“I could learn to live with the knowledge of what you are and what you have done.” Looking intently into his brother’s eyes, Caramon said softly, “But you have to live with yourself, Raistlin. And there are times in the night when that must be damn near unbearable.”
Raistlin did not respond. His face was a mask, impenetrable, unreadable.
Caramon swallowed a huskiness in his throat. His grip on his twin’s arm tightened. “Think of this, though. You have done good in your life, Raistlin—maybe better than most of us. Oh, I’ve helped people. It’s easy to help someone when that help is appreciated: But you helped those who only threw it back in your face. You helped those who didn’t deserve it. You helped even when you knew it was hopeless, thankless.” Caramon’s hand trembled. “There’s still good you could do… to make up for the evil. Leave this. Come home.”
Come home...come home...
Raistlin closed his eyes, the ache in his heart almost unendurable.
— Dragonlance.
Left a trail of red on every island
As I traded friends like objects I could use
Hurt more lives than I can count on my hands
But all of that was to bring me back to you
So tell me
Would you fall in love with me again
If you knew all l've done?
The things I can't undo
I am not the man you knew...
If that's true, could you do me a favor?
Just a moment of labor that would bring me some peace.
See that wedding bed? Could you carry it over?
Lift it high on your shoulders and take it far away from here.
How could you say this?I had built that wedding bed with my blood and sweat
Carved it into the olive tree where we first met.
A symbol of our love everlasting Do you realize what you have asked me?
The only way to move it is to cut it from its roots!
Only my husband knew that
So I guess that makes him you!
— EPIC the musical.
I would also add...
Palin stepped back to face his parents. “Mother, Father. Someone else is with me, someone you haven’t seen in a long, long time. He wanted me to tell you first. He ... wasn’t certain he’d be welcome. ...”
With a wild, pain-filled cry, Caramon rushed for the door, flung it wide.
A figure clad in black robes, dark against the darkness, stood on the stoop. At the sight of Caramon, the figure drew back the cowl covering his head. Light streaming out of the inn glistened on golden skin, shone in hourglass eyes.
“Raist!” Caramon cried, and swayed on his feet.
Raistlin looked long at his brother, did not move from his place outside the door.
“Caramon,” he said at last, softly, and the name seemed wet with his heart’s blood. “Caramon, can you . . . can you . . .” He began to cough, but he struggled to continue to talk. “Forgive . . .”
Caramon reached out, drew his brother inside. “Your room is ready for you, Raist. It always has been.”
— Dragonlance.
I will fall in love with you over and over again,
I don't care how, where, or when
No matter how long it's been, you're mine
Don't tell me you're not the same person
You're always my husband and l've been waiting, waiting...
— EPIC the musical.
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Family meeting ❤️ For the 2024 Dragonlance Reverse Bang at DL Writers Discord server. Family Meeting by The Wyrm Ouroboros and Family matter by Tellie were based on this illustration, feel free to check them here
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phantom-of-baker-street ¡ 10 months ago
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Spoilers movie 27! And please don't hit me I suck at making memes 😆😅
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I've been wheezing at my own meme for hours now (I suck and it took me way too long) 😆
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alchemiclee ¡ 1 year ago
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I hope someone writes a good fic about the high cloud quintet with all the messy pieces of lore we have because i'm very unsatisfied with what we got and I want MORE OF THEM. don't know why i'm so obsessed with this tragic group of friends but 😭 IM SO FEELINGS ABOUT THEM but also empty because they didn't satisfy me with what they gave us lmao I require more. but that was the end and i'll never get more....unless someone writes a great fic about them.....!
#hsr#lee text#one of the things that bothered me most was not seeing dan heng react to learning about blade/yingxing? hrm#everything in star rail seems super disconnected and rushed and i wish they could do the stories better#so i need someone to write a thing and fill in the gaps and add more and satisfy my need for a good story about these tragic losers#i want more baiheng because she seemed like the most adorable lovable thing 😭#i want more yingxing because i love him a lot for some reason i cant even figure out#i want jing yuan before he became a very sad and distant and lonely old man whose constant smile seems painfully fake.....#i want to see more of jing liu before she went crazy with mara#i want the gay and the lesbian hoyo cant give for legal reasons (xingyue/bailiu)#i want a story maybe starting with them meeting. becoming close and very good friends#maybe leading to their end dbdndnksksks it would hurt but im sure fandom writers can write it better than the game writers😅#im just rambling and reading makes me fall asleep and idk if anyone would ever write this but 😭#idk why my brain even clung onto them so much. theres other tragic friend stories this didnt happen with. why this one#i'd love a comic/manga about this group too but that even less likely than a fic. im sure other people like this group too#and maybe one is a fic writer. but an entire manga piece about them is unlikely 😅#its just easier for me to read when i can SEE it. thats just a preference tho#i feel like lore accurate fics arent as common tho? like taking all the lore you know and piecing it together into a whole story?#not that i read fics much so idk what im talking about but 99.9% if ones ive see are just ship fics only#what am i talking about i lost my train of thought lmao#anyway jingliu better come home. im at like 60 pity. where is she!!!!!!
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unriding ¡ 5 months ago
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very messy word dump below the cut + in tags :^) heh
okay it’s officially been a full day since reading this and i’m going to write down everything i remember feeling from day 1! and then in the tags im going to reread this (for the third time within 24 hours) and add thoughts that i didn’t put down here. SORRY FOR THE MESS & NO PRESSURE TO READ ALL THIS SJKDMF IT IS JUST A LOT OF WORD VOMIT BC IM INSANE OVER THIS FIC
okay i should start from the beginning. Wait I’ll use caps so it’s easier to read if you’re reading it bahahhaa OKAY. The way you write alpha / omega!!! It’s different from what I’m used to reading— and I mean it has a lot of a depth. The way you wrote reader being an alpha = being so protective over Aventurine fucked me up so bad /pos. Reader just wants him safe and they’re so real for that.
Going off on that, I LOVE HOW U WROTE THE READER. Understands Aventurine so well. Will literally do anything to keep him safe. Understands what sets him off and what he’s comfortable with. The part where Aventurine was talking about the next mission & reader seeing right through him ): are you serious /pos. WAIT I SKIPPED TOO FAR AHEAD. When Aventurine was trying to get reader to join the IPC? Dead. Evie DEAD. Reader saw right through him omg. Being able to notice the little changes in his scent, the way he tries to mask it etc etc. I love that so bad.
WHEN READER FOUND HIM IN HEAT FUUUCK. ARE YOU SERIOUS /pos. Fighting the urge to help him vs waiting to just make it better because reader has the power to ): I loved that so much. The struggle was so real. Literally bringing a doctor just to hear that he needs an alpha to help anyways omg. Lowkey when the doctor said that I was like PLEASE LET US HELP YOU PLEASEEEEEEE. But also. I didn’t want him to be scared either you know ):
I skipped over another scene sighs. THE part where reader said ‘I like your eyes because they’re yours” and then the end. Him saying he likes our scent because it’s ours. Are you serious /pos. Be so serious /pos.
Okay the scent gland scenes actually fucked me up so bad (I unfortunately did not dream about anything but maybe that is for the best because I’m still recovering from this scene). The part where he asks for just the wrist. Reader struggling when they FEEL HIS TEETH GRAZE THE WRIST IM GONNA EXPLODE OMFG. The immediate pulling away because we don’t want to scare him please. + the scent gland scene at the end. HE DIDN’T FEEL LIKE HE HAD TO BE ON TOP. We could lay side by side ): I was so happy that he was okay with that omg. Literally all giddy like aaaaa!!!!!! IM NOT A THREAT!! Actually that’s a lie I wasn’t giddy. I was literally in tears jejdkckckckk Aventurine 😭😭 ughhhhhhh /pos
I won’t comment on the actual scene (I am commenting on it right now actually) because I was literally so sad and my heart hurt so badly for him. I wanted him to see himself from our POV for just one moment so he can understand that we genuinely love him and treasure him & want to keep him safe. ):
ABOUT YOUR WRITING ITSELF : insanity. I will just say insanity. How should I put it in words….. just thinking about this fic again is taking all the words out of my mouth shejdjfjj (I say this as I type a 27738 page essay about it). I love how you write. I really do. Your writing style is so beautiful. I haven’t read the other tags under your fic but I’m sure many others have said the same thing!!! They word it better than me I’m sure bsjsjsjsjsk
I just love everything about it. How you add in little details (oh! Speaking of details— Aventurine’s reaction to reader cozying up to her husband in the other fic) HEJDJJDJDJ omg. But in this fic, the little signs of him being scared. Scared 24/7 actually ): I love how you conveyed his fear so much. And the way he tries so hard to hide it. HIM CRUMBLING DOWN TO HIS RAW SELF WHEN HES IN HEAT. AND THE FEAR THERE TOO. INSANE.
^^ How you wrote him so adamant about not needing help at first …. To him asking for the scent gland ….. to him agreeing to use reader. It was all so real. He didn’t just change his mind like oh okay! It took him a while to be okay with it and I love how real it all felt. You write dialogue & little details so well— it actually drives me nuts (/compliment /pos)
Oh this just reminded me. Your description of how Aventurine smells killed me /pos. And how you describe his scent as sweet. I’m really not okay /pos. It fits him so well. And … for reader…. the scent after rain ? Oh my god ???? I love that smell so much. It’s so comforting…. OMG. COMFORTING????????? BECAUSE. Oh wow. I’m really not okay now. I JUST LOVE ALL THE DETAILS LIKE THAT )))): it’s so clear you put so much thought into all these things because your fic has so much depth. I lowkey yanked out Notibility for your other Aventurine fic to highlight the parts I wanted to comment on ehdjdkkck I was annotating it like a book (I’m so sorry if this is creepy I promise I don’t do this on a regular basis. I don’t annotate fics normally. Actually please disregard this because I’m a bit red admitting this) (I just have the memory of a goldfish and can only remember feelings and not actual content) (That’s a lie because here I am remembering a lot of this fic MOST LIKELY BECAUSE I READ IT WITH MY EYES AN INCH FROM THE SCREEN PROBABLY I WAS LIKE O_O) /pos
NIGHT FLOWER: part i
Your place in the world was one of a tool. This was true of every slave: you were all things to be used. Kakavasha understood this about you, and he understood this about himself. It was how he survived all those years ago, and it’s how he survives now. And so, when Aventurine goes into his first heat in years and decides to suffer it alone, you can only think of one way to get him to accept your help: You offer to let him use you.
written for @/lorelune's spring fever collab & @ficsforgaza
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13.5k words of omegaverse, mutual pining, hurt/comfort, angst with an eventual happy ending. gn alpha reader + omega aventurine (they each have both amab and afab genitalia). explicit piv sex, reader bottoms, the sex is consensual but emotionally complicated and deeply sad. cw slavery, racism, gendered violence, including very brief and non-graphic (but direct) references to sexual abuse during slavery. the sa and slavery are not eroticized. dead dove do not eat, mdni.
thank you to @acerathia, @minnaci, @owlespresso for all your help with beta reading and to @kosmiccarma for brainstorming omega aventurine hcs!
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“I’ve alw███ l█ved ███, Ka██v█s███”
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You knew it from the moment you met him.
Gaunt, pallid, weighed down by heavy chains. Irises that glowed like the auroras back in your world. Delicate features that made every passerby in the market stop to read the description on the placard. (Sigonian, it said, although you couldn’t read at the time. Avgin. Male. Omega. Sixteen years old. Sixty Tanba, no tax.) He had an all-consuming scent that was impossible to ignore—one that possessed you, made your heels dig into the dirt, every atom in your body resisting the impatient jerk of the chains at your wrist. Even through your muzzle, through the perpetual stench of carbon-steel and blood, you could smell it: honey and wildflowers. A fragrance that settled deep within you, flooded you with a warmth that felt like home.
Aventurine is not a spiritual person. He once told you this, his smile cold in the glow of an artificial moon. He'd been deeply religious as a child, but hasn’t since cared for fairy tales about fortune and fate, three-eyed goddesses or merciful rainfalls. Hasn't thought about anything like a destined love. He thinks the idea of a true mate is laughable, that no such bond could ever be forged between an omega and an alpha. That nothing so unconditional could ever exist.
You know differently, of course. You've known it from the moment you met him, from the second you laid eyes on him and thought, I need to help you, and I need to protect you, and I need you to be safe, and you’d never once heard the word ‘love’ in your life—slaves are never loved by their masters, after all, and you'd always been nothing but a slave—but every atom of your being knew that you loved him, that you'd always love him.
And when your master cradled your face that night and crooned that he owned you, that you'd always be his obedient, alpha pet—for the first time in your life, you knew that he was wrong.
You didn't belong to your slaver.
You belonged to him.
To Kakavasha.
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These days, Aventurine does not smell like honey, and your jaw is not restrained.
Your muzzle was one of the first things that Aventurine threw away when he bought your freedom. According to the Amber Era system, it had been several months since the murder of your shared master. Ninety-five Star Calendar days after the Interastral Peace Corps had arrested Kakavasha. An entire rotation around the black hole at the centre of your wretched galaxy, all of which had been spent in the captivity of some new mistress. She picked you out because she liked your calming scent and the look of your face, but mostly she used you for the fighting pits just like your old master.
Aventurine had been sitting in the audience of your final match, then bought you out right after you won. “I’m in need of a fighter,” he’d said, smiling in his thick furs and jewels. He played the part of a slavemaster perfectly, his gloved hands wandering the span of your aching shoulders, touching the bloodied maw of your mask. “And I’d be willing to pay top credit for yours.”
She protested. You were her most prized possession, one of her greatest investments. Slaves from your planet were hard enough to come by—alphas capable of reproduction, nearly impossible. And you were so well-behaved, so poised, so endearing in a way that was rare for alphas. She was fond of you. Her omega slaves were fond of you too. They would be distraught if you left, and that would complicate her household affairs—and surely Aventurine, as a respectable owner of human capital like herself, could understand how inconvenient that would be?
Aventurine bared his teeth in a gracious smile. (You’d never seen Kakavasha make such an expression before—so disarming, so cunning, a crescent moon beneath snake eyes. He’d never smelt like this either, like an expensive cologne layered with bleach, and it left you feeling nauseous, wondering if he was ill.) He flirted his way into her good graces, made her an offer she couldn’t refuse, and then he brought you into the first-class ship on which he’d arrived. You were so stunned by its luxury—the handwoven carpets, the crushed velvet seats, the imported tea from several galaxies away and the custom-ordered outfit he had bought for you—that you nearly missed the tremble in his hands as he punched numbers into the remote control lock for your chains.
He had regained his composure by the time he pulled away your muzzle, though. He threw it carelessly to the ground—your titanium chains, too. Then kicked both away with his shined leather shoes.
“There,” Aventurine said, smiling cheerfully. “Much better, don’t you think?”
“Vasha—” you started, voice thick with wasted grief, and all you wanted to was reach for him, to double check that he was real, but he placed a finger to your lips and stopped you. You stiffened at the satin touch, but he seemed unbothered.
“‘Aventurine’,” he corrected.
You stared blankly. “What?”
“‘Aventurine’. Like the gemstone. That’s my name now.”
“You—” Your voice caught in your throat. You realized that you’d been holding your breath. You always had the habit of holding your breath in the luxurious, private rooms of very rich men, because you never liked what happened in them. Forcing yourself to breathe, you asked, “You gave yourself a new name?”
“No. The IPC gave me a new name. They gave me a job, too.”
“A job?” you asked, voice faint. Now that you were breathing again, you were noticing once more just how bizarre he smelled. Sterile and expensive and completely foreign. “You’re free now?”
“Well, I’m a freedman, but I don’t know if I’d call myself free. I’m a bit… indebted to the IPC, let’s say. But that’s fine. I can’t complain. I mean—look around. This beats the fighting pits, doesn’t it?” He gestured lazily at your surroundings, and you nodded.
“It’s nice here,” you replied, feeling absurd but not knowing what else to say. Once Kakavasha got talking, it was impossible to get a word in edgewise.
“You like it here? Good. This room’s yours. Mine is the next one over. You’ll live and work here, with me. I’ll make sure you’re paid well. Full benefits, vacation, salary, and overtime. The standard pay for your role is seventy-thousand credits per month, but I’ll see if I can get you more. HR is pretty strict about their hiring policies, but—”
“You’re hiring me?”
Aventurine went very still, his smile tightly controlled. His eyes remained fixed on you, but they seemed less snake-like, now. They looked more familiar. More afraid.
“I’m offering, yes,” he said neatly. “You’ll be part of my personal security detail. I don’t have the contract for you to review yet, unfortunately. I didn’t arrange one ahead of time because, well”—he laughed, as if this were polite conversation and he were making a joke about the weather—“I didn’t know if I’d find you alive. But things worked out in my favour. They always work out in my favour. I’ll make sure they’ll work out in your favour too, so long as you’re with me. So you’ll consider it, won’t you? Staying with—working for me, I mean.”
Your eyes went soft. Beneath the artificial fragrance, you finally caught a hint of his familiar scent—more wildflower than honey at that moment, the way it always is when he’s scared.
“Kakavasha—”
“Name your price,” he said loudly, “and I’ll match it.”
You sighed. “Vasha,” you said more gently, and his shoulders relaxed at the subvocal shift in your timbre, at the famed alpha Voice that necessitated your muzzle, “I don’t care about the money. Of course I’ll stay here. But—what happened? Why did you kill him yourself? Why didn't you let me do it? That was the plan. It was always supposed to be me.”
It was my job, you thought then, just as you had thought to yourself every night, curled up in your bed and trying to recall the scent of fresh honey, to keep you safe.
He shrugged and said, “It would have been too risky to involve you.”
“You were caught and sentenced to death. The risk was already too high.”
“But the stakes weren’t,” he replied simply, and before you could ask what he meant by that, he continued, “and it worked out, didn’t it? I work for the IPC. You work for me. We’re freedmen now. Whatever I've lost, it doesn't matter. Our gains far outweigh it.”
“And what have you lost, Vasha?”
He smiled at you, charming and distracting. A crescent moon beneath snake eyes. “Nothing of value,” he reassured you, and even though you could feel the calm of an omega’s voice washing over you, even though it released all the tension in your body, all you could smell was cologne and wildflowers, and you knew that he was lying.
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Vasha once told you, curled up and quiet on the basement floor, that he despised his eyes. They were supposed to be a sign of blessing from Gaiathra Triclops, but they'd never brought him anything but trouble. They were the first thing that the slavers always noticed about him, the feature that made him such an alluring commodity. Their aurora glow, their strange beauty, their promise of a rare opportunity: a chance at owning a specimen of an exotic, endangered species, possibly the last of its kind. These are all things that you've heard in the parlour of your master’s house as he entertained rich company, the crowd of them gawking at his human curios.
Avgin are said to make the most beautiful slaves, he'd often say. And Avgin omegas are said to be the most beautiful among them. What do you all think? They'd all hum, peering closely at Kakavasha’s features, and inevitably someone would joke, I think I'd like to borrow him sometime, and then they would all laugh while your pulse ticked up and you imagined tearing at their throats. Vasha would search for your gaze in these moments, giving you a long, pointed look: Don't do anything stupid.
He’d always been so blasé about it, the way people fixated on his Avgin blood. You'll never understand how. He didn't react to any of the comments, the groping, the innuendos. He was, however, distinctly unimpressed at the way that your master liked to play him up as a rare and expensive acquisition, as a sign of his own status. It's embarrassing to watch, Kakavasha had remarked. Everyone knows that Sigonian slaves are uncommon but cheap—people always think we’ll bring them more trouble than our worth. This was how Kakavasha had ended up in the market in the first place: because his last master had been robbed, and he'd been wrongly blamed for it.
The blame, to this day, has never stopped. People—powerful people, politicians, businessmen, socialites—look at Aventurine’s eyes and immediately reach for their pockets. You've seen it for yourself, these spineless despots and scammers feeling for their wallets. Sigonian, you know they're thinking. Liar, cheat, thief, whore, worthless, worthless, worthless. Your hands tighten around your blade each time, a loaded gun with a finger on the trigger.
Alphas are said to be violent by nature. Aventurine has often called you the one exception to this rule: the most docile, good-hearted alpha he's ever met. But this is a lie. You do have a predator instinct, and it comes out in full-force whenever you’re around these particular types of men. These types who notice Aventurine’s eyes and see a thief; these monsters who see his irises and imagine what it would be like to bed him. You’d kill them if you could. It would be so easy, especially now that you are an IPC dog. The Company is already such a violent force; what would be one more murder?
But Aventurine has never ordered you to punish anyone. (Don't do anything stupid, he always tells you with a glance, smiling through every humiliation.) Nor has he ever seemed bothered enough by these meetings to try concealing his heritage.
A fellow Asset Liquidation Specialist once asked why he didn't just hide his eye colour—it would likely be better for fostering relationships, negotiating deals—but Aventurine had shrugged it off. I'm a gambler working with the IPC, he'd said. Do you really think a pair of coloured contacts would make anyone trust me? He'd laughed, and his voice had carried a threatening edge, and his coworker had shifted visibly at it. Being an Avgin is the least threatening thing about me, wouldn't you say?
You think that Aventurine likes being seen as a threat. Sometimes you wonder if this is why he doesn't mind wearing his eyes so much, but abhors keeping his scent. He washes his clothes until they're free of his disarming sweetness and then masks himself with an unsettling blend of ambergris, jasmine, and wood. And he is on suppressants all the time—hasn’t had a single heat since the day he killed his master. Hasn't smelled like himself, either.
At the end of the day, it’s manageable being an Avgin in this business, he often comments, spraying half a bottle of masking cologne on himself, but you can't be an Avgin and an omega. Wouldn’t you agree?
You'd know better than me, you reply, noncommittally—and truthfully.
But you're an alpha, he observes. Don't you have an opinion?
You don't pay me to have opinions, you always remind him, stone-faced. You pay me to stand here and look scary. And Aventurine always laughs at this, and he always wires you money and calls it a bonus as he pesters you for an answer, and he always gets distracted and starts scrolling through all his shopping wishlists instead. I saw this thing the other day and thought of you. And this too. Would you like either of them? Would you like them both? I’m a very generous manager, you know. I'll buy you anything you like.
But even though he always gets distracted, Aventurine never forgets. Sooner or later, he inevitably circles back to these questions—these anxieties about his scent, about his eyes, about his blood. He never cares for anyone else’s opinions, but he's always been curious about yours. Even when he was Vasha, he wanted to know what you thought.
He’d been sixteen years old and delirious with heat the first time he asked you, face wrinkling with pain as he spilled his thoughts. It was so incoherent, so sad, you thought it must have been about a fever dream. Mama Fenge, he kept saying. Mama Fenge blessed me, She blessed me, I'm blessed, it rained when I was born—did you know that? My luck, I was lucky. The Katicans, they never caught me. They got everyone else, but not me. I was blessed by Her. I'm going to save my people. I will. I'll save my sister. My eyes are proof. My mistress liked them. Said they're beautiful. Worth sixty whole coppers. A blessing. He pulled you close, pressed his scalding face to your scent gland, and his whole body shuddered with relief. This was the first and only time he'd allowed you to hold him, and it was only out of desperation, out of his mind. Do you like them, alpha? Do you like my eyes? Why? Is it because they're beautiful? Because they're from Gaiathra?
“I like them because they're yours,” you'd replied, and Kakavasha had laughed deliriously.
This is when he told you he hated them: I'd close them forever, if I could.
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When you were younger—dumber—you had a habit of squirrelling away every spare coin you came across. You collected them in a little purse that one of the omega slaves had sewn for you—a thank-you for always keeping the other alphas away from her—and you hid it underneath a loose floorboard. By the time that Kakavasha was arrested, you'd saved up twenty-nine Tanba. You’d wanted enough to buy Kakavasha’s freedom and then to set him up for a comfortable life.
It had been a stupid plan. An embarrassing one. If you ever confessed it to Aventurine, he'd laugh at you. Slaves can't buy other slaves, he'd say. Leave the schemes to me next time. You’re too good-hearted for it.
You’d already known that, of course. You knew that you didn't have the status to buy him or mate him or even just provide for him, but you wanted to. God, did you want to—you spent every waking moment thinking about it, every sleeping moment dreaming of it. It wasn't even that you desired him, though he was beautiful and fragrant and more delicate than anything that had ever touched you in your life, which was only your master’s hands and your muzzle and your chains. Aventurine would feel so soft in comparison, you’d always figured. It made your heart ache, thinking about getting to hold something so lovely.
But really—that desire came second. What came first was how mated omegas feel safe around their alphas, and you so desperately wanted him to be safe. Kakavasha had looked so frail, so grim, as your master took his chains and led him home from the market, and you could smell the fear coming off him in waves. And you could do nothing to stop it. You had nothing you could use to stop it—nothing other than your hands that could kill for him and your pheromones that could soothe him and your useless heart that wanted to collect sixty Tanba for him. That was all you had.
So you failed in the end. Of course you did. You didn't have the status to buy him or mate him or even just provide for him. You couldn't even do for him the one thing you could have done—which was to kill. And Kakavasha suffered for your incompetence. He had to dirty his hands with blood and gamble his way into wealth and then suddenly he was freeing you, not the other way around.
And now you are comfortable. You'll lead an easy life from now, Aventurine reassured you when he brought you onto his ship all those years ago, and he's kept that promise. What about you? you'd asked him then. Will you lead an easy life with me, if you're working for the IPC? And he had smiled and lied to you: Yes.
It had been a painfully obvious lie. If you were a smarter person, you'd have never believed it in the first place. Aventurine has no interest in leading an easy life, because an easy life would be less profitable, and less profit would mean less safety. And he is always, always worried about being unsafe. It is indiscernible to everyone but you—an alpha (his alpha, always his, even if he doesn't want you) who has watched over him for so long that you can detect every shift in his scent. No matter how much cologne he drowns himself in and no matter how strong his suppressants are, you know when he is afraid.
And here is the bitter truth, the ultimate proof of your shortcomings:
Aventurine is always afraid.
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It is a beautiful day on Agnisahr, and you can tell that Aventurine is about to throw up from worry.
You're sitting in the middle of stunning wealth—Aventurine in his feathers and jewellery, you in your tailored jacket—in a lobby made from marble and pale sandstone, with a view of palm trees and rolling, scarlet sand dunes beyond the window. The waitstaff addresses him as Honoured Guest and they keep his crystal chalice filled constantly with water—one of the most expensive commodities on the planet. Aventurine has been drinking from it religiously, which is strange as he typically has the habit of forgetting to hydrate. A faint wildflower scent is drifting from his slender form. These are the only giveaway to his mood: he's otherwise as pokerfaced as ever, smiling calmly as he discusses his plans to sabotage the local government and acquire the planet for the IPC.
“This is a very dangerous mission,” you state flatly.
“All my missions are dangerous.” He takes a sip, one pinky up. “The IPC pays me well for a reason. As they say—”
“‘High risk, high reward.’ I know.” You try not to sound bitter, though you allow yourself to sound tired. “I still do not think the risk is worth the reward in this case.”
“I think over 5.6 million in credits is a great reward, actually. We could do a lot with that kind of money.”
You raise a brow. “What could an extra 5.6 million get you that you can't already buy?” It is—as Topaz would say—‘chump change’ in comparison to his current wealth, which sums to a number so vast that you can't wrap your head around it.
Aventurine pretends to miss the point. “Tons! We could buy a new spacecraft. Get another mansion. Or—we could take a vacation to Penacony. I hear it's quite nice there.” A playful smile. “I could get us a penthouse unit. With a featherbed.”
You frown. Sometimes Aventurine likes to flirt when you're being stubborn—not out of interest, but as a ploy to distract you. He’d developed the habit after he joined the IPC. It used to fluster you, but now it only makes you cross your arms.
“You could die,” you point out.
“You'll protect me.”
“No, I won't. You always find a way to get rid of me when things are most dangerous.” You give him an accusatory stare. “You never let me do my job.”
He's too shameless to deny it. “And it's worked out fine, hasn't it? I haven't died so far.”
“Yes. Just by dumb luck.”
“I beg to differ. My luck is quite reliable.” He sets down his glass. Glances back outside. A microexpression, brows knotting for the briefest second as he studies the sky. “I'm not worried.”
“You're a shit liar.”
That gets him to look at you, letting a small frown pass over his face. “No, I'm actually a great liar. You're just too good at reading me. It's very inconvenient, you know.”
“I can't help it.” You lean toward him, making a show of it as you sniff. An orchid-like scent—faint but unmistakable—has seeped into artificial ambergris and wood. “It's hard to ignore.”
He hums. He isn't frowning anymore—but doesn't look happy, either. “I should change suppressants.” He taps the side of his empty glass, fidgeting. Aventurine never fidgets: it's an amateur giveaway. “These ones clearly don't work well enough.”
“That won't help. I know you too well.” Your eyes soften. He's looking outside again, the blues of his irises distant. “You're worried, Aventurine. More than usual. Let’s back out of this—let Jade handle it.”
“The mission isn't what's bothering me,” he says patiently. “I just don't like this planet.”
“Because you can tell it's dangerous.”
“No. Well—it is, but nothing I can't handle.” He leans back. “I just dislike the weather here.”
You arch a brow. “...the weather?”
“Yes,” he says neatly, “it's too dry here. I'll break out.”
You open your mouth. Close it. It is possibly the most absurd thing you've ever heard, and certainly the worst lie that's ever come from him. For as long as you've known him, Aventurine has had flawless skin, marble-smooth, and ever since being freed, he’s never really cared much for looking handsome so much as looking rich. But he maintains his serious expression: all-in on the farce. “Did you know that outside the capital, this planet hasn't had any natural rain in a quarter of an Amber Era? And the stellar winds are terrible. I don't know how people live on a planet like this.” His eyes narrow at the cloudless sky. “The IPC is going to need to do a lot of terraforming if they want to make this into a merchant hub.”
“Aventurine.”
“It'll be a pain crossing the desert—the elements will ruin my clothes, you know,” he continues. “It won't be so bad while we're on the ships, but we’ve got to go outside from time to time. Can't make any friends otherwise.”
“Aventurine.”
“And there's nothing to do for fun when we’re not working.” He sighs dramatically. “I can't wait to get our 5.6 billion and leave for someplace else. I'm being serious about Penacony, by the way—”
“Aventurine.”
“—though not about the featherbed. I'll get you your own room, obviously. And I'll buy whatever dream experience you’d like. What kind would you want?”
Finally allowed a chance to speak, you say, “One where you retire.”
“Retire? Why would I ever do that?”
“I don't know. Maybe you decide you've made enough money.”
“No such thing.”
“Then you can settle down with someone.”
That makes him smile. It feels mocking. “Me? Settling down? With who?”
“Who knows. Someone who will treat you better than the IPC, I hope.”
“Anyone that nice would run in the other direction. But never mind me. This would be your dream experience. What happens to you in it?”
“I stop chasing after you and get to live out the rest of my days in peace,” you say dryly, and Aventurine blinks. “Please stop deflecting. The IPC gave you a suicide mission. We will both die if we stay here.”
He looks serious now. “I wouldn't let you die.”
“You can't know that.”
“Well, I do. And I've got decent chances at surviving too—at least one in ten.”
You feel like sighing—a deep, aggravated noise is heavy in your throat—but Aventurine doesn't enjoy it when you show anger around him. It's the one omega instinct that he can't ignore, you suppose: unease around an aggressive alpha. Voice tightly controlled, you say, “You’re going to bet your life on one in ten?”
  “Sure. My chances were worse on the last planet, and things worked out great. It'll be the same on Agnisahr.” Aventurine raises a hand, calls for the bill. The conversation is over. You lean back in your seat, watching sourly as he pays tens of thousands of credits just for water.
“You know, they say the royal family is backed by an Aeon,” you can't help but point out, once the waiter is gone. A last-ditch effort. Aventurine smiles at it, amused. Like you're a child.
“So what?” He glances outside, at the desolate landscape beyond the oasis—nothing but red sand, a blue, rainless sky, and two radiant suns shining above it all. “The protection of a god is nothing compared to the schemes of human beings. And gods abandon their people all the time, anyway.”
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During your tenth day on Agnisahr, you realise that something is deeply wrong.
It takes you some time to understand what’s happening. At first you think that whatever political danger you’ve intuited is much worse than you thought, and that’s why Aventurine has been so pale, so discomforted, so exhausted. Then his scent starts changing—he switches clothes two, three times a day (because of all this heat during Agnisahran days, he tells his new business associates) and spritzes his nape with his cologne almost religiously—and you wonder if he is sick with something. If the food in this planet has something that disagrees with his Sigonian biology, or if he has picked up one of the local filoviruses, or if someone’s poisoned one of his meals because they’ve correctly identified him as a threat. Aventurine dismisses every single one of these theories when you bring it up, and—as if in denial—only attributes it to the weather. (I’ve never done well in deserts, he tells you, his eyes on his phone screen. I'm not used to them. It is above 300 Kelvin, and you do not see a single bead of sweat on his neck, and his cheeks are not even a little flushed.)
You only figure it out when he is too ill to get out of bed one morning and forbids all the IPC staff from coming near his hotel room. It sets off alarms immediately—Aventurine, no matter how sick, will work and see through meetings as long as he is mentally capable of it—and so you naturally ignore his orders and check on him, using the spare key to his sleeping quarters that you're given as a policy. And as soon as the door cracks open—as soon as you step inside only to be hit with a violent, cloying sweetness—you realise what’s happening and slam the door shut behind you.
“You’re in heat,” you blurt out, and Aventurine—a shivering, panting mess on the bed—groans in response.
“Why are you here?” He turns toward you, still lucid enough to glare at you through the tangled mess of his hair. His voice is weak, but no less self-possessed: “I was very clear—no company today.”
“I am your personal bodyguard,” you remind him mildly. Your voice is calm—both non-threatening and non-condescending. “Those orders don’t apply to me. If things feel suspicious, I look into it. And they felt very suspicious.” Your brow knits as you study his clothes. Mulberry silk clings to his form, soaked through with sweat. Thin, eucalyptus sheets are tangled up around him. There are only two pillows. No water bottles. No knotting toys.
Nothing.
“You didn't know you'd be in heat,” you realise. “What happened to your suppressants?”
“I don't know.” There’s a quiet, frustrated edge to his voice. Vulnerable too. It makes you think of when you were both still slaves, and Aventurine was confined to the basement of the manor—the one that all omega slaves were made to ride out their heats in. Either they would do it alone or were ordered to spend it with some alpha, usually either a friend of the master or an alpha slave he wished to reward. That's when they're most pliable, he'd tell his guests, or sometimes even you. They get so desperate they'll present themselves to anyone. Then amused laughter from the other party—How obscene!—as you looked away, blood hammering in your ears.
You had been your master’s favourite. His most obedient, most profitable pet—striking enough for his guests to admire, deadly enough for his audiences to bet on, docile enough for him to enjoy. Good enough for him to reward, and he often rewarded you with his most beautiful slave: his Avgin omega. Just don't mark him, he’d said, fastening the muzzle around your mouth. It'll ruin his market value. Who knows if someday he'd sell Kakavasha off to some alpha master who wished to claim him, he said. Though I don't think there's anyone in this star system who'd want a Sigonian for a mate, let alone a Sigonian slave. Then he’d paused, eyes scanning over you. As if contemplating. But maybe they'd try to get Avgin whelps out of him, he added, and you felt like throwing up.
You'd never mate him in those moments, your muzzle always prevented you from saying. You didn't even want to think about touching him, and he didn't want to think about it either. Even in the cruel grip of his heats, with nothing but the thin mat beneath him and his slave’s rags around him, Kakavasha hadn't wanted any kind of contact from you, rejecting any chance of solace. Don't, don't—not again, not again, he'd begged. Then as the nights marched on and his mind grew hazier, he’d start whimpering too: It hurts, alpha. It hurts. Help me. It hurts. Don't touch me. Not again. It hurts. It hurts. Stop it, please stop it.
It gutted you.
It went against every instinct, not to touch him. To let him lie there, in scorching, lonely pain, when all you wanted to do was to dispel it. It would be so easy to press yourself against him and let his skin cool against yours, do the one thing that your body was good at other than killing. But not again, not again, I can't anymore, I don't want it, I never wanted it, and all you could do was sit there, unmoving. Watch as the most delicate, precious thing you had in your life shatter.
And standing here now, watching Aventurine shatter before you once more—it is unbearable. He needs a nest, you keep thinking. He needs a nest and some water and some kind of touch, some kind of relief, but not again, not again, and you’re still a slave, still a worthless and stupid slave, and Kakavasha is still crying on a basement floor and you can't do anything for him.
“You need help, Aventurine,” you say, voice soft, and his whole body tenses. His scent dips, and the scent of florals overwhelms you.
“No,” he breathes, “I don't.”
“You do. You're sick.” You bite your lip. Your heart splits as you suggest it, but you say, “I can call a professional.”
“No,” he spits. The facade is gone. The poker face has cracked. The anger and the pain and the fear are all on full display, and his voice sharpens: “No strangers.”
No foreign scents, you realise he's demanding. A new scent would probably make him feel unsafe.
Then let me help you, you think of pleading, but not again, not again, and you're filled with so much shame at the thought that all you can do is look away.
“Then—can I do anything?” He goes still. “Not—not that, but something to make you more comfortable. I can build you a nest, at least—”
“No.” He takes a deep, shaking breath. “No nests. I don't need one—”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don't,” he says. His voice is wavering now, on the verge of crumbling with fever and pain. “I've never—I’ve never needed a nest, I don't—I don't want to—” He presses his face into his pillow. “I need—I need to be alone, fuck—”
He doesn't mean to whine. The cry for distress is instinct, something that all omegas are programmed to do in heat. You’ve heard that they’ve evolved to make this noise as a way of appealing to nearby alphas for help, but you think this must be a lie as you never once saw your alpha master giving mercy to any of his omega slaves. Still, whether it is your biology or not—the noise that Aventurine makes has your heart aching so much you can't help but step forward. But he shakes his head and inches away, shuddering violently, and then his voice echoes again in that cold basement—not again, not again, and don't touch it anymore, don't use it anymore, don't use me anymore, not again, and it's all you can do to back away until your spine is pressed against the door.
“I'm sorry, Vasha,” you say, strained. “I’m sorry. I'll leave you now.”
As the door shuts behind you, you catch a final glimpse him—face pressed into the pillows, shivering.
If you didn't know better, you'd think he was crying.
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When you were both slaves, Aventurine hated seeing you during his heats.
Kakavasha was normally calm around you. Most of the time, he was even friendly (he was friendly to everyone whom he thought could be useful), but he was different during his heats. Sometimes he was vicious; mostly he was withdrawn. Nearly always, he wanted to be left alone. In those moments, all he could register was your alpha scent and his memories of what other people had done to him during his heats. And while you'd have hated to leave him, despised the idea of him being offered to another alpha—even more than that, you hated violating this boundary of his. Hated that you were allowed to do whatever you wanted to him. Hated being the reason he felt so unsafe.
Hated being an alpha.
Now that you no longer have the orders of your slavemaster hanging over you, it is the least you can do to respect Aventurine’s wish of being left alone. He has every right to privacy, and you have every obligation to give it to him. But instead you have been standing here, outside his door, for a full system-hour.
Every time you try to leave, your body is wracked with anxiety. The thought of other people—other alphas���coming near him in this state makes you seethe, your hands flexing at your side. The predator instinct comes out, and the people around you notice it. Every person unlucky enough to walk down this hall scurries away under your glare, even the other IPC staff wandering about to look for Aventurine: Must be their mate on the other side, they remark to one another, and then they're gone.
It is a hard thing to hear. You are not his mate. You are not even a heat partner. If you were, then he wouldn't be in so much pain. Not now, and not back then.
Aventurine has never had easy heats. You keep replaying your memories of all his past ones, each one a wound in your heart: the aching sweetness of nectar and honey; his withering body as he clutched his abdomen and curled up; the tears and sweat staining the mat beneath him. And above all: the fear. The scent of it, the sight of it, the sound of it in his voice. Stronger today than any other day.
By instinct, you know that he cannot persist like this. That this time is somehow worse than all those other times, and that he will become seriously ill if left alone.
After nearly an hour and a half, you finally open the door, fearing the worst.
“Aventurine?” you say quietly, but there's no response, and your stomach drops as you see him.
His body is pale, listless. If it weren't for the fragrance washing over you or the sweat on his temple, you'd worry that he was dead.
Tentatively, you reach out. Rest a hand on his forehead, and it scorches you. He stirs at the touch, doesn't open his eyes—but the quiet sigh of relief is unmistakable. His fingers twitch, as if wanting to reach for you.
“Aventurine,” you say gently. “Aventurine, I'm going to take care of you. Is that alright?”
He doesn't respond. You grimace, pulling away to fetch things for him: several spare pillows from the closet, an extra blanket too. From his suitcase, you grab a few of his sweaters, all thick cotton and fleece. He’d had a sense that Agnisahr would be cold at night. Deserts always get cold after sundown, since sand doesn’t retain heat, he'd told you while he was packing. Or I think so, anyway. Don't know why. Must have read it somewhere. Then he’d given you a long, unreadable look before saying, Make sure to bring a jacket. The warmest one you have. The elements on a planet like Agnisahr can kill a person—even a person like you.
I’m sure I’ll be fine, you’d dismissed him. I can survive anything. Any kind of weather, any kind of illness, any kind of pain: these are all things your species is known for being able to endure, the trait that made you such a prized slave in your master’s eyes, such a useful agent at the IPC. You hadn’t given Aventurine’s warning any thought and hardly paid attention to what you’d thrown into your own suitcase.
It surprises you, then, that you find one of your sweaters in his luggage. Made from Sedanian cashmere and heat tech designed by the Intelligentsia Guild. Cloud-soft and warm to the touch. Aventurine had bought it for you before you were deployed to Jarilo-IV to collect intelligence for Topaz. Warmest thing in the known universe, he’d commented. One of a kind, too. Remember to wear it, alright? Don't let my money go to waste, now.
You stare at it, kneading the fleece between your fingers. You hadn’t mentioned wanting to bring this sweater. You’d lost it in your closet some months ago and forgot about it. Aventurine must have remembered and gone looking for it, because—why? You aren't sure. Probably because it’s warmer and softer than anything he owns, you guess. Of course he’d want to wear it.
You throw it into the pile of things you’ve collected for him.
You take it all to his bed, the mattress dipping as you sit next to Aventurine. One by one, you scent each item with your wrist, watching him carefully the whole time. You’re quiet as you lay them out around him, leaving him undisturbed as you build a nest. You order water and electrolyte drinks too, and you’re quick about going to the door when you hear room service knocking—with how feverish he is, he probably badly needs it.
Aventurine is awake when you come back. His breathing is still laboured, pained—but calm.
“I said I didn’t need a nest,” Aventurine says, though he doesn’t sound angry. You wonder if he’s too weak to be. His voice is faint, and his eyes are barely open—focused on the pile of blankets and clothing around him.
“You’re welcome.” You open a bottle of water, hold it out to him. “Drink.”
Aventurine pauses, stares at the offering like it's some kind of foreign object. But he accepts it eventually, sitting up and taking it from you. He winces with the movement, which he tries to hide. He ignores your frown as he drinks, and he doesn't stop until the bottle is empty.
“There are more,” you say, pointing at the several additional bottles on the nightstand. “And some food and some painkillers. I don't know how well they’ll work. This isn't a normal heat. If you're alright with it, I'll call a doctor and—”
“Everything smells like you,” he says quietly, and you stop.
“...yes. Unless they’re mated, nests usually feel most comforting to an omega when they smell like an alpha.” You swallow, looking away. “...you don't have a mate, and you didn't want a professional, so this was the only option I could think of. I'm sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he says. He picks out one of the sweaters that have made its way into the nest, the Sedanian one. “I don't mind it.”
“Oh.” You let out a breath. “Then—can I call a doctor?”
His grip on the sweater tightens. “No.”
You frown. “Aventurine—”
“I’ve never needed a doctor before,” he says. He sounds unbothered, but he's fidgeting with the sweater now. “I don't need one now.”
A lie. He almost certainly needed a doctor in some of his prior heats, but you don't push the matter. “Maybe you don't need one,” you say instead, “but it would help.”
“I don't need help,” he says, and you look at him in disbelief. He catches your expression, and the corner of his mouth lifts. “Not more than you've already done, I mean.”
“I’ve barely—”
“Contact Topaz. Tell her I'm incapacitated. Tell her…” He hums. “Tell her I have food poisoning. The personnel too. It's not time-sensitive, our business on Agnisahr, so it shouldn't matter if I need a few days off.”
“You really need—”
“Give my regrets to our Agnisahran friends. Deliver it in person. They see you as my right hand, so they’ll most appreciate it coming from you. Topaz can help you with the verbiage. And—try to socialise with them a little, won't you? I think that little omega princess of theirs likes you. Some of the courtesans too, and they have surprising influence.”
“I do not want to be around any omega other than you right now,” you say before you can stop yourself, and Aventurine stops, blinking. His expression is blank, if perhaps a little curious—but his scent shifts. You can't identify how. You add quickly, “I’m not leaving you alone when you’re this sick.”
“Ah. Right.” Aventurine looks away. His voice sounds strange, and his heat must be getting to him again, because it carries a hint of pain. “But you have to. The IPC’s goals take priority.”
You frown. “Your life is more important than the IPC,” you say, and he laughs. Loudly.
“What? This is just a heat. I’m not going to die.”
“You don’t know that without seeing a doctor.”
“I do. I’m willing to bet money that I won’t die.” He cuts you off before you can reply: yes, you're always willing to bet on your life. “And even if I do, that would still be less important than Agnisahr. Do you know how many resources are on this lifeless rock?” His mouth slants. “If we mess up here, I’m dead anyway.”
“I wouldn’t let them touch you.”
“Yes, you would—because they would kill you too.” Aventurine sighs. His eyes close, and his brow creases—a sign that whatever reprieve he was lucky enough to get is about to end. “Go do what I asked. Don’t do anything stupid. I’ll… see a doctor if you do.”
You stand immediately. “Alright. I’ll be back to check on you.”
“I know.”
You stop at the door, giving him a long look. Seeing him like this—lying on a proper bed, cradled in a warm nest, with water and food and medicine nearby—you feel a little better. This is leagues beyond what he’d been afforded in his days as a slave, at the very least. Even if he isn’t free, at least he isn’t trapped.
But it still doesn’t feel good, having to step away. The last thing you want to do is talk to other people, pretend to have interest in other omegas. There are an astonishing number of them who are interested in you on this planet—that princess, and some baron’s son, and one of the prince’s favourite paramours—but you can’t bring yourself to care even for business purposes when Aventurine is like this. You can't act as if you are enjoying yourself when you know he is in pain.
You wonder about telling Topaz the truth. You wonder if she’d be worried enough about Aventurine to let you neglect this mission and cover for you instead, without letting Jade or Diamond or anyone else dangerous know. Not that you think that anyone at the Company particularly cares about Kakavasha—it’s only that he’s valuable. Aventurine of Stratagems is valuable. How many worlds have fallen because of him?
But he seemed unwilling to bet on his worth to them. Which is startling, given how often he's bet on it in the past.
“What’s so important about this planet,” you can’t help but ask, “that the IPC would rather you die than lose it?”
He’s silent for a long moment. His eyes are closed—hidden—but you can see his knuckles whiten as he clutches the Sedanian sweater.
“Copper,” he says. “They want it for the copper.”
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When Kakavasha first suggested a friendship to you, it had felt like something in between a proposition and a threat:
Go ahead, he'd said. Use me as you wish. You can even stab me in the back if you want. Just be mindful of this: I don't make deals that don't pay off.
It might have been a strange way of making friends in any other circumstance, but in a house of slaves, it was a natural one. You had not been a clever person—still aren't—but you understood that your place in the world was one of a tool. This was the place of all slaves: you were all things to be used. Your body was a thing to be used. It was valuable for its strength, for its hardiness, for its threat in the arena and for its convenience in your master’s bed (or in a dark basement, or within a heat house, or inside whichever omega your mistress ordered you to calm down). It did not surprise you that Kakavasha wanted to use it as well. It did not surprise you that Kakavasha expected you to use him in return.
You never would have, of course. Kakavasha was not a thing to be used—he had always been a mate. Though you were happy to let him use you, because all you were was a tool anyway, so it was really all you could offer him: to be used.
None of this has changed for you. You don't think any of this has changed for Aventurine, either. With each new friendship he makes, he repeats those familiar words: Use me as you wish. And with each person who accepts, this is exactly what they do: they use him, and they use him, and they use him until suddenly they notice he's tricked them and they've got the losing hand.
You damned gambler, they always spit. You Sigonian wretch. All you know is how to manipulate people. Thief, liar, cheat, whore. Despite all these insults, Aventurine always smiles at them. Cry as they might, he’s won his bet and has their world in his palms.
Winner takes all, he sometimes gloats.
Winning and losing. Using and being used. Exploitation and treachery. This is all Aventurine knows; these are his great guiding principles in life. (He's told you this point blank, stacking up chips in his favourite gambling dens with a self-satisfied grin.) You often find yourself coming back to these conversations, particularly when you need to convince him of something.
And right now, you very badly need to convince him of something.
Aventurine is ignoring his doctor’s advice. His suppressants are unstable in extreme temperatures, he's been told. During travel on Agnisahr, they'd degraded, and now he’s experiencing his first heat in several years. Of course it's going to be painful, his doctor had said. I can prescribe you some medication to ease the symptoms, but really—nothing will work better than a heat partner. It doesn't need to be a mate. Any alpha will do.
The doctor had been an alpha. You had asked for a beta or omega, but alphas tend to dominate in Interastral Medical Schools, so they're in short supply. Aventurine had been still the whole time, face unreadable, but you could tell he wanted to throw up at the stench of an unfamiliar alpha. You had stepped between the two of them, not bothering to hide the animosity in your voice. We���ll take the medication, you had said, and the doctor had sniffed the air and nodded at you in approval.
Probably won't need it. An alpha like you could sort him out with just a few rounds, he told you, and both of you stayed quiet as he left.
You still aren't talking, or even looking at each other. Aventurine has lay down in his nest again, closing his eyes, while you stand as far away as physically possible—at the door where you'd just shown the doctor out. With the room shut off again, windows closed and door locked, Aventurine’s scent is starting to flood your senses once more. Out of the corner of your eye, you catch him shivering.
“What do you want to do?” you ask.
“Nothing.” He swallows. “I'll be fine.”
He's afraid. You can tell he's afraid. And you can tell he’ll be more afraid if you take even a single step closer to him, so you nod and say, “I'll go pick up your medication, then,” and Aventurine doesn't stop you. You can see him curling up in his nest, face pressed into the cashmere sweater.
But he still doesn't stop you.
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After a few more days, Aventurine finally breaks.
There is a rare sag to his shoulders when he calls you to the room, along with a taste of dread in the air. You haven't seen him so vulnerable in years. Aventurine is not an open person, so cunning and self-possessed in his wealth—but Kakavasha was more brittle, more powerless, flayed raw and open even though he didn't often get the whip. (It would ruin his value if he ever scarred—his looks were his greatest selling point, your master said.) He was especially defeated when forced to spend his heats with an alpha he didn't want. You wonder, a vice grip of pain around your heart, whether this entire situation is simply an extension of that. Whether he is calling you here against his will, this time compelled by his pain, rather than his master. Whether this luxury suite feels like that wretched basement to him.
He doesn't look at you when he talks, nor does he sit up. He remains curled in his nest, nearly clinging onto the blankets and clothes.
“That stupid medication,” he pants out, sharp even in his heat, “isn't working.”
“I can tell.” Your brow knots. He’s in so much pain, it is palpable. “I”—you hesitate, voice dropping. “Can I help you?”
He goes quiet. As both Aventurine and Kakavasha, he has always been disinclined to accept help from other people. There is no such thing as unconditional help in his mind—only leverage and weakness. He hates it when people have leverage over him, and he hates being weak. Both are things that can be exploited, and Aventurine always needs to be the one doing the exploiting. He always needs to be in control.
Even like this, the last threads of his sanity about to snap, with every circuit of his omega biology trying to drag him into insensible lust, he fights viciously to be in control.
Winning and losing. Using and being used. Exploitation and treachery. Control and being controlled. This is how he's always lived. This is how he's always survived.
This is the only way to let him maintain control when he is most afraid of losing it.
“I don't mind,” you say quietly, “if you use me.”
Even through the haze of heat, Aventurine’s eyes sharpen. “What?”
“I don't mind if you use me,” you repeat, voice neutral. Unfeeling. The proposal might sound cruel to someone else, but not you. After all—your place in the world is one of a tool, and this is what you've always done as an alpha and a slave: sleeping with people to take care of their needs, or sometimes just their desires. It did always make you feel strangely hollow, but you think it will feel just fine with Aventurine. All you've ever wanted to do is keep him safe, and surely, this will do that, but—
“I'll only help if you want. I don't want to force it.” You lower your eyes. “But if you do want it, I'll be careful with you. You can lead. I promise.”
“...I know.” Aventurine’s voice is weak, cracks with pain, but you can tell he's speaking with clarity. “I know you will be.”
You look up. “Then you'll let me help?”
Aventurine looks away—a sign that he cannot adopt his usual smile. He’s clutching that sweater again, pressed close to his chest.
“Just your wrist,” he says quietly.
You listen carefully. “What?”
“I just—I just want your wrist.” He looks away. “Your—your scent gland. Only that.”
“Okay.”
You get up, then falter. When it was your job to comfort your mistress’ omega slaves, you were told to enter their nests—no permission needed from them, no permission needed from you, because only her permission ever mattered for anything. The omegas were usually too delirious to care, often had even begged for it with the state of mind that they were in. But Aventurine is different. He's not like you, and he's not like them. He's never bent to any of his masters’ wills. And even if he did, you wouldn't want to have him bend to yours.
Instead of climbing into his nest, you ask, “Can I sit on the bed?” He doesn't answer. “Just the edge of it,” you add, and you hear him exhale.
“Fine,” he says, breathing measured.
“Thank you,” you say, and he gives you a confused look. But then you're reaching out with a hand, offering it, and he is quickly distracted.
Aventurine drops the sweater, grabs your hand almost immediately. He turns over your palms, fingers tracing your heartlines—as if testing you, as if mapping out territory. He runs his thumbs along the veins of your wrists, too, right over your scent gland, and you have to force yourself not to shudder at the feeling. You only stay still, letting him explore the contours of your hands, letting him acclimate to the feeling of your skin. He laces his fingers with your own, a latticework trap, and he finally drags his wrist along yours.
Both of you inhale sharply.
You can't react. You know it'll scare him if you do, but it's hard to keep still. The way his scent blossoms, the way it mingles with yours, the way it all washes over you—what you're doing can hardly be called touching, but you feel like you're going mad. Especially when he flushes like that, his vibrant eyes fluttering shut. Especially when the sweetness of honey overtakes your senses. Especially when you can smell the way his body is reacting, all that wetness and heat and slick dripping between his legs. You don't miss the way his thighs rub together, nor the hard outline of his cock straining against his pants.
Aventurine shudders. He brings your hand up to his face, rests his cheek in your palm. His skin is flushed and burning with fever, and it's no wonder that he's sighing with relief at your touch. You try not to stare at the way his mouth falls open. He looks at you for a moment, his gaze a hazy violet and blue—before he closes his eyes again and presses his lips into your wrist.
Fuck.
“Aventurine—” You have to stop, voice strangled, when you feel the full softness of his lips working against your skin. He’s panting now, laboured breaths sweeping over your veins. Then you feel his teeth catch, a gentle nip on your flesh, and when he groans into your racing pulse—deep, relieved, desperate, a noise that makes your gut flare with heat—you realise you can't do this.
You pull back your hand, and Aventurine startles.
“Aventurine,” you say, voice strained. Maybe we should stop, you want to say, but he cuts you off.
“I need”—a shaky breath—“I need more.”
You watch Aventurine carefully. His pupils are dilated, blue irises nearly eclipsed. His cheeks are rosy, and he can't stop panting. You can fully smell his arousal now, even through his silk clothes. He's desperate, needing to be filled.
But he also looks torn. His brows are knotted, and you can taste a faint hint of fear in the air now. His knuckles clutch at the sheets, almost white, and he stares at them. He can't look up. He can't look at you. His whole body is tense, like he wants to bolt—and if he weren't so weak, you think he might actually.
“Are you sure?” you ask.
He doesn't nod. He also doesn't shake his head. His arms clutch at his midsection as he winces. He doesn't look like Aventurine. He looks like Kakavasha. It makes your heart ache as you watch him give into his body’s demands, wearing the same expression he did on the day your master bought him.
“...don't use your Voice on me,” Aventurine—Kakavasha—says quietly.
It takes you a moment to realise what he's asking. “I won't.”
“And”—his eyes somehow grow even more evasive, hidden by his long lashes— “don’t touch my commodity code.”
His commodity code. His commodity code that is seared into his scent gland. His code that, if you kiss, will ease his agony instantly. His code that, if you bite—will chain him to you irreversibly.
“Of course I won't,” you say instantly.
He closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath.
“And—” Aventurine looks away, jaw tight. His voice is quiet but wrought with tension: “—I don't like when people put things inside me.”
Something claws the walls of your heart.
“That's fine too,” you reply. “I don't mind doing it the other way.”
Aventurine’s sigh is nearly inaudible, but unmistakable. His scent shifts a little bit, the wildflower fragrance fading ever so slightly. But he doesn't come to you. He merely sits there—waiting. Expecting. Maybe dreading. Even in the senseless daze of heat, he’s too anxious to move.
You approach slowly. Though you're overwhelmed by the bouquet of his scent, though you feel a curl of heat in your belly in response to it—you are slow. Alphas are supposedly victims of insatiable lust whenever around an omega in heat, absolved of every action they take, but you are convinced this is a lie. You have never once wanted to handle Aventurine with such cruelty. You think that inflicting violence on him, more than anything else, would go against your biology. Every molecule in your body would reject putting him in such pain or inciting such fear. So you are careful when you approach him, slow as you inch up to him—but you do not think it helps.
Aventurine lies down, his face turned away from yours. His eyes squeeze shut, like he's expecting this to hurt. Uncertainty gnaws at your gut as you lean over him, draping your body over his—the only position you've ever taken an omega in, other than mounting them from behind.
(You do not want to mount Aventurine. You never have. It is an impersonal position, a position that omega biology supposedly would force him to enjoy, a position that alphas have likely dictated him to enjoy. You think there is nothing you would hate more. In your weakest, most selfish moments, in your worst ruts, when you’ve allowed yourself to fantasise about mating Kakavasha—you are always facing each other, and he is always looking at you with his eyes you've always loved, and it always feels intimate. Never impersonal. Never dictated. Never forced.)
Aventurine is so honeysweet beneath you. More fragrant than any omega you’ve ever been with. You glance at his commodity code, trying to ignore the scent of his branded skin, then lean down to press your face against the other side of his neck, where a faint scar mars the otherwise flawless slope of his nape. Like every other omega slave you've ever slept with, the scent gland there has been excised: a precautionary measure to reduce the risk of an unwanted mating bite.
(Not unwanted by them—the wants of a slave never matter—but unwanted by their owners. A mating bite would ruin the code seared into their neck, claim an omega more deeply and permanently than any titanium collar or carbon steel chain. It would hurt their resale value. Only owners are allowed to claim slaves in such a permanent way—and the wants of a slave have no relevance there, either.)
It's a funny thing, this surgical scar. Even with their gland missing, you've noticed that most omegas like having their neck scented by you anyway, probably from some vestigial instinct. You guess that Aventurine won't be any different, that maybe it will comfort him. But when your lips skim the scar left on him by his owner, his entire body stiffens beneath you. His fragrance cuts into your lungs, sharp.
You recoil, as if burned by the touch of him.
“Sorry,” Aventurine is quick to say. He tries to glance at you, but his diamond pupils quickly avoid you again. “Don’t worry about me. Just do whatever you need to do.”
“But you're scared,” you point out, and you see his brow twitch. “You’re scared when I touch you.”
“Not scared,” he lies. “Just…”
When his eyes finally look at you—land on your lips—you understand.
A bite would claim an omega more deeply and permanently than any titanium collar or carbon steel chain. If you lost your mind—give into the insatiable lust of an alpha whenever around an omega in heat—you might bite him, and then you would own Aventurine.
And Aventurine would rather die than be owned by anyone again.
He doesn't need to finish his sentence. You already know what you need to do.
“It's okay,” you say gently, and his brow knots. “I have an idea.”
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Aventurine is always afraid.
This is a fact that has haunted you since the day you met him. You've wondered about how to fix it—the bare minimum as his mate (always his, even if he doesn't want you)—and you’ve never quite pinned down how. Because when someone has spent their life in perpetual fear, how do you make them feel safe? When their life is constantly at risk, how do you ever make them feel calm?
You still aren't sure of the answer. But after seeing Kakavasha become Aventurine, you now have a good guess.
It is clear from his scent that Aventurine does not feel remotely safe right now. Not when you leave to fetch something from your own room, and not when you return. The anxiety thickens when he sees, in your hands, a very familiar muzzle.
Aventurine stares. He is not smiling, but he also does not reveal his discomfort on his face, even as beads of sweat line his temple. But his voice is too controlled, too calm, when he asks, “You kept the mask.”
You nod.
“I told you to throw it out,” he points out, “when I freed you.”
“I know. Sorry. I don't know why I kept it.” You remember how tightly you clutched it before the incinerator, thinking about how strange it would feel, discarding something that you'd worn everyday since you presented—but you don't tell him this. Instead, you say, “But it’s convenient.”
Before Aventurine can say anything, you toss him the remote.
“You’re afraid of my bite and my Voice, but you don't have to be with this,” you explain. Your tone is gentle, soothing. Probably disarming coming from an alpha, with how he is in heat. Perhaps that's why he’s studying the remote rather than chucking it away. “You'll be in full control if I wear this.”
Control. Mere seconds after you say it, you can smell his fragrance change again, mellowing. It's only a brief moment of calm that fades when you latch the mask onto your face, but he doesn't smell as nearly as stressed before.
Aventurine watches you carefully as the carbon steel swallows your maw, its old and familiar edges biting into you. For the first time in years, you cannot tell what he is thinking—truly poker-faced even to you.
“You aren't bothered by wearing that thing while we do this,” he says—asks?—and you shake your head. The muzzle was part of you for years. You were wearing it when you killed someone for the first time. You were wearing it when you went into rut for the first time. You were wearing it when your master had sex with you for the first time. It doesn't bother you that you’ll wear it when you have sex with Aventurine.
If you could speak, you would ask him, Why do you think it would bother me? But all you do is gesture for him to sit up. To switch places with you. You lie down—something you've never done with an omega—and wait for him to get on top.
Aventurine stares at you for a long, quiet moment. It's followed by a sigh of relief. Disarmed, he—for the first time in any heat you've witnessed—finally relaxes. His scent wafts over you as he climbs between your legs, and you can feel the heat radiating from his hands as he parts your thighs, almost scalding.
He doesn't bother getting you ready, too needy to think rationally, but he doesn't have to anyway. You've been wet ever since you felt his mouth touch your wrist, hard ever since you heard him groan into it. You're equally desperate to get some relief as you feel his cockhead sliding against your opening, leaking all over your entrance as his slick drips onto your thighs. His breath shakes as he enters you, and he can't hear it with how you're muzzled—but you groan just as deeply as him at the tight stretch.
You hear him swear when you clench around him, watch him lean over you. His arms shake as he supports himself, refusing to succumb to his heat even as he chases his relief. You seek out his gaze (just as in your dreams, facing each other, intimate), and his neon eyes catch on your eyes for a brief, breathtaking second—
—before he looks away.
There's a flash of—you don't know what, maybe pain? Or fear?—in his irises as he does. A twitch of the brow, a tell he'd normally rather die than let slip. You have the realisation, as Aventurine moves inside you, that even while you're muzzled, even while he has complete control over you—he still can't stand having sex with you. Probably because he can't stand being in heat in general, you tell yourself. Don't touch me, don't touch me, don't use it anymore, don't use me anymore. He'd have this reaction to anyone.
Still—you didn't expect him to have this reaction to you.
Your hands twitch, possessed by an old instinct to cover your eyes. But you'd probably scare Aventurine if you moved your arms, so all you do is dig your fingers into the sheets and squeeze them shut. You tell yourself again and again that he'd hate having sex with anyone in these circumstances—not just you. And then you tell yourself, as a desperate, broken moan leaves his branded throat, that he would also come inside anyone in these circumstances, caught within the cruel grip of his heat.
Aventurine stills inside you as he finishes. He pants, sweat dripping down his temple as he shudders in his ecstasy, his spend hot and thick inside you. You can feel his fever break as he comes down from his high, the heat coming off his body easing into a manageable warmth.
Do you feel better, you try to say, but you can't move your mouth while your mask is on. So you wait patiently for Aventurine to come back to himself, watching him carefully as he pulls out and rolls onto the mattress beside you. He finally glances at you then. His eyes narrow once they land on you, confusion flicking through them. Then displeasure. He reaches for the remote.
To your surprise, he immediately punches in the code to unlock your muzzle. Aventurine has apparently remembered the numbers after all these years, as if the moment he freed you has been since seared into his memory.
“Are you okay?” is the first thing you say, and Aventurine gives you a confused look. He’s still panting, dazed, so you ask, “Can I check your temperature?” And when he nods, you confirm your suspicion: he's still much too warm.
There is an ache between your legs and a strange hollow in your gut (because you aren't very experienced with receiving, you think—your body likely just isn't used to the feeling of it), but you quickly forget them. All you can think of is Aventurine, and how he’s still unwell, and how you need to comfort him. The instinct is so strong that you don't even say anything as you get up, straightening out your clothes.
“Are you leaving?” Aventurine asks. His voice is neutral, completely unbothered, but the thought is so horrific to you that you turn back to him with wide eyes.
“Of course not. I'm going to get you water and medicine.” A beat. You stare at Aventurine’s eyes, then think about how he hid them from you during sex. The hollow feeling comes back, but it's mostly eclipsed by your anxiety at the next thought: “...do you want me to leave?”
“Do you want to?”
“I—” I'd rather die, you think. Being forced to leave him right now would feel like tearing out a piece of yourself. You don't know if there's an alpha in this world who could leave their mate in the middle of a heat. And even if he is unmarked, unattached to you—you still think of yourself as his mate. (His, always his, even if he doesn't want you.) “I would prefer not to. I am your heat partner. I'm supposed to take care of you.”
You hear a quiet breath. “Right. Of course. You're always so conscientious.” Aventurine nods, as if convincing himself of something. “Try not to take too long.”
“I’ll come back soon,” you promise, and the air sweetens. Encouraged, you add, voice gentle: “I’ll bring that medication, and then we can have sex as many times as you need after I come back. I'll make sure you're not in any pain anymore.” You pause, studying him. “Is there anything else you need to feel better?”
His fragrance changes once more, this time in a way you don't totally recognize. “No.” His voice sounds strange. His scent is still foreign, fluctuating, possibly hinting at some kind of pain. The heat must be getting to him again—and of course it wasn't enough, what you just did, what you can provide. He likely needs to be filled to get any kind of lasting relief, but you left him empty. “No, that's all I want.”
You nod, forcing yourself to look calm. Ignoring the emptiness in your gut. It didn't feel bad, but you hope it'll feel better next time you have sex. You think it will. Alphas are supposed to be filled with an insatiable lust near omegas in heat, after all. And even though you’ve never felt that before—never felt anything sleeping with all those omegas in your mistress’ house—you are sure you'll eventually feel it around Aventurine.
But the feeling never comes. Even though you can tell that his heat has returned by the time you're back—sweat beading his temples, laboured breaths at his lips, his bottoms now discarded, with full evidence of arousal between his legs—you don't feel much of anything as you reach for your mask again.
“Don't,” Aventurine says, before it can clasp around your face. You give him a curious look. He explains, “Don't. I don't want to have sex again. Not yet.”
You stare at him, shifting. Uncomfortable. Uncertain. Not knowing how he wants to use you. “What can I do?”
He gives you a long look. “Come here. I… I want your scent gland.”
It's a sensible request. If there's a way to seek relief without fucking someone—without fucking you, which he clearly hated doing—you're sure Aventurine would prefer it. So you climb into his nest, holding your wrist out for him, and—
“No.” His voice is quiet. “I want the one on your neck.”
“...oh.”
You stand there, not sure where to move. If he wants you in his nest again, or if he’d rather do this standing. You’re relieved when he demands, “Lie down.”
You expect him to get on top of you when you do. Assume that he wants complete control—but he instead lies down beside you. Presses his body into yours, and then his face into your neck. His nose and lips brush against your scent gland, a full-body shudder running through him, and—
—and now you know for a fact that it is a lie that alphas want nothing other than to fuck an omega when they're in heat. Because even like this, with his lips sweet on your neck, with the sheets soaked with his slick, with his spend leaking out of you—you do not want to have sex with Aventurine. You only want to hold him. You only want him to keep scenting you. You only want to scent him back.
You only want him to feel safe.
You breathe in deeply, lungs flooded by honey. You think of what it felt like to hold him in that cold basement, when he was delirious with fever and pain, and you think about how different his scent is now. How much sweeter it is. How much calmer he feels.
“Do you feel better?” you ask, and he doesn't respond, but you know the answer. His hands come up to dig into your shirt, and he presses into you like you're a sweater in his nest. Silence blankets over you both, calm and warm. His laboured breath starts to improve.
He does eventually speak.
“Has anyone ever told you,” he says, “what you smell like?”
You stare at him. Your master used to say that you smelled good, but he'd never elaborated, and you hadn't wanted him to. “No.”
Aventurine breathes in.
“You smell like—” A little sigh, shaking and feverish, leaves him. “You smell like rain.”
Your eyebrows tick up. “Rain?”
“Yes. Or not just rain, but”—he pauses, next words quiet—“more Iike after it rains. You smell like the desert after a rainfall.”
“Oh.” You don't know what to say to that. Feeling distinctly like it's a silly question, you ask, “Is that a good scent?”
“Some would think so. Especially to people from the desert. You probably smell like a blessing to them. Although…”
Aventurine goes quiet again. You stare at the chandelier above you, all crystal and white gold, and wait.
“Although?” you prompt.
“...although I wouldn't really know,” he says. “It’s just a hunch. I bet it's why so many omegas on this planet like you.”
You couldn't care less about those other omegas. All you care about is Aventurine. “And?” you say. “Do you like my scent?”
His reply never comes. He just breathes deeply again, seeking relief from your neck—not intimacy. Any alpha’s scent would work; that doctor told you so. Any alpha’s touch would work, too. There are no special feelings involved here. Your place in the world is one of a tool, and tools are never especially liked nor disliked. Their value exists only in how they can be used.
You don't know why you even bothered to ask the question.
But then something strange happens: Aventurine curls against you, pressing even further into you. His lashes flutter against your pulse again; it ticks up in response, beating fast against his lips.
“I do,” he says quietly. “I do like it.”
You swallow. “But I guess that's because you're in heat. Any alpha would smell good to you, wouldn’t they?”
“No.” His fingers dig into the fabric of your shirt. “No, I like it because it's yours.”
You know better than to read too much into his response. Aventurine had already said it earlier: No foreign scents. He's only tolerating this whole arrangement because you don't smell unfamiliar to him. Only able to use you because you are the least threatening option.
But the words break something in you—break the thing that made you unable to throw out that little pouch of copper coins that you were saving up for Kakavasha’s freedom, the part of you that made you wear that carbon-steel mask for him. It is this part of you that has your eyes squeezing shut and your arms wrapping around him. You know he’ll recoil, reject you, but just this once—you need to try.
Aventurine doesn't push you away.
He melts into you instead, inhaling deeply. Your scent gland tingles with the warmth of his breath, the feeling of his lips. He seems—comfortable.
You can't fathom why he’s staying in your arms. Perhaps he's simply desperate for some kind of relief from his heat, just like when you held him in the basement while he was delirious from pain. But Aventurine had spoken to you with clarity just now, and his skin doesn't feel scalding so much as warm, and his scent is so different than from that moment. So sweet and so gentle, without a trace of fear. It makes your heart squeeze. As much as you've always wanted Aventurine to feel safe, you'd never imagined that his scent would be so beautiful when he is.
It makes your heart ache. You've never held anything so lovely before, and you’ve never felt so warm before, and it all makes up for how badly it hurt to let Aventurine inside you. How hollow it made you feel to let him use you. How none of that matters as long as you can keep him safe like this, because you belong to Kakavasha. You'll always belong to Kakavasha, in a fate that was chosen for you on the day you met him.
You're his, always his—even if he’ll never want you.
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end part i
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thank you so much to lore for hosting a fantastic collab and to my sponsors who funded this fic and got it over the finish line! please go check out @ficsforgaza to find other amazing hsr writers you can sponsor in order to help fundraise! here is my own wip list, if you are interested in seeing more from me!
and thank you most of all to YOU! I appreciate you so much for reading this chapter. thank you so much for sticking it through.
additional end notes
#彡 favorites.#cw slavery#cw racism#cw violence#cw sa mention#the first sentence with the block letters ): it says I’ve always love you ??? gonna go cry now (I already did last night)#‘your eyes went soft. beneath the artificial fragrance / you finally caught a hint of his family scent’ ‘the way it always is when he’s#scared.’ THIS LINE BROKE MY HEART. his facade is not facading . WE KNOW. WE WILL ALWAYS KNOW#‘nothing of value’ god dammit aventurine i want to shake his shoulders so bad. this is killing me#OMG THE COIN PURSE PART. THE READER IS SO SWEET )))))): OMG. I remember the face I made at that part /pos and I did tear up quite a bit#‘you never let me do my job’ YEAH. what’s up with that ????????? aventurine u turd. I WANT HIM TO LET US LOVE HIM SOOOO BAD HGGGRRRRRRRRRRR#‘no im actually a great liar. you’re just too good at reading me. it’s very inconvenient you know.’ okay i don’t know how to explain how i#feel. but can I say I heard this perfectly in his voice ? and it made me react some way. like jaw fell open kind of way. your characteriza#UGH I HATE THE TAG LIMIT characterization** IS SO GOOD I CAN HEAR EVERYTHING IN MY HEAD it’s like a movie is playing in my brain mhm mhm!!!#also the part where we keep repeating aventurine over and over and he keeps talking about what he could buy ): LISTEN TO MMMMMEMEEEEEEEHHRH#‘it went against every instinct not to touch him’ THIS IS WHAT I MEANT in my word dump )): trying so hard but so conflicted because#as an alpha you can make it better for him. but he doesn’t want that so u respect it. but he’s in so much pain ): UGHHHHHHHHHH#the sweater part . are you serious /pos. this is such a cute little detail ): I’m gonna start sobbing again can we give him the world#‘everything smells like you’ im sorry 😭 we don’t have much to work with mr aventurine BUT HE SAID ‘I don’t mind it’ SO🥺🥺🥺#‘copper’ ‘they want it for the copper’ the way I started laughing because r u serious . I’m actually a little . brow twitched. BROW TWITCHE#oh okay the copper! right. the copper. (the table flips over) be so fr rn /pos#the entire wrist scene I read with one hand over an eye and also hidden under my blankets because I was so tense HEJDKCKJCKD#‘aventurine would rather die than be owned again’ my heart shattered into pieces at this btw#him still remembering the pass to the muzzle ): and the ‘are you leaving’ im literally gonna cry all over again /pos#the neck scent gland fucked me up so bad. and the rain scent. and he likes it because it’s ours . x _ x / T_T#i have thoughts about your other fic but I will probably write them tomorrow because now I would like to re-re-re-read this one 😅#I’ve always loved * for the first tag dammit I can’t imagine how many typos are in this whole thing#TLDR : great work !!! loved this > < <33
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adore-gregor ¡ 8 months ago
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my perception of grades totally changed since i started uni
#in school i just did the bare minimum a pass was fine and a 3 great#it's insane to think about it how little i did like for a lot of subjects not at all and if i did i'd study like 2 hrs the day before 😭#and i thought this was studying hard or if i studied 3 hrs at least whaaat#well for some subjects i did a bit more#but like it is no comparrison#at uni i also did study the day before a few times but then i did an 8hr session#(i might just need to do that tmrw but the thing is the exam is one you can't study for so literary idk what i'd study so long for??)#(or how to study... it's translation but how tf do you study translation it's highly subjective and there are no practice exercises)#(i will probably just look at the notes)#but anyway for my last exam i spent 5 hrs in the library a day and i already started 2 weeks before (altough just in smaller bits)#but bumped it up exam week i did like 2-3hrs on average a day#even if i start too late like i did for one of the hardest test of my studies i only studied for 2 days but like all day or 10hrs sth a day#it by far exceeds the 2hrs lmao and even that was very little for this exam many studied 2 weeks but like i got a good grade so it's okay#but my point is now that i get better grades good one's a C is a massive disappointment for me 😅#unless it was a really difficult one then i'd take it but like it upsets me#a teacher once told me when i got a c on an exam quite a few failed that many would be happy to have that grade well true tbh but i can't#and once i almost cried because i got a C because i thought it was an easy course but it was an oral exam and i'm worse in these#(because in written i often remember the answer later in the exam and then go back but in oral i can't do that)#well that was embarrassing😭 i'm trying to never do that again so if i get asked how i feel abt it say it's okay ig#but sometimes even a B is meh 😅 especially if an A was possible and it was an easy course/exam#i want more A's less B's tbh B's also because i really want to go abroad and raise my grade average for that#i want to go from a B average to an A something average to improve my chances#but yeah younger me wouldn't believe this 😂#i really want to study harder to make that step up to more A's than B's like uni does come quite easy to me#and while i study way more compared to others i still get away with less effort and good results but i could have excellent grades#on the one hand it's good that i improved so much on the other those expectations might not be because i'm almost never satisfied anymore 😅#and i know it's kind of really unimportant because there are real problems and also many uni students struggle to pass their classes#it's maybe even a bit disrespectful because they'd be happy to have these grades and i should be more grateful#but i swear i don't look down on anyone with worse grades i know how difficult it can be and also how outside factors play a role#some have it more difficult some have to work a lot next to uni or really suffer from mental illness besides no one's brain is the same
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cheapshrimpysheep ¡ 1 month ago
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Yuutsum 3
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SUMMARY: What if you also have a Tsum? Then your Tsum and the Tsum of the person you like keep giving signs that they like each other?
CHARACTERS: Twisted Tsumderland 3 Tsumsitters (Ace; Trey; Ruggie; Jamil; Vil; Idia; Malleus; Silver)
TAGS: Fluff; GN Reader 
WARNING: Spoilers for the Twisted Tsumderland 3 Event and the Tsumsitter cards Vignettes.
WORD COUNT: An average of 810 words per character.
COMMENTS: This was originally a request from @taruruchi for my 1k celebration. Which you can read here. And since so many readers liked it, I decided to do what I normally do when this happens: Do this for ALL the characters! Grouped by event in this case.
The request also includes Jamil's and Silver's tsums, but I wrote them before part 3 was even announced on the JP server. In other words, I had to pretty much guess what their tsums would be like, but now I could write them more accurately.
And I ended up get carried away writing Vil's and Idia's parts. 😅
I hope you enjoy 😉
Yuutsum 1 (Riddle; Cater; Leona; Jack; Floyd; Epel; Sebek)
Yuutsum 2 (Deuce; Azul; Jade; Kalim; Rook; Ortho; Lilia)
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CONTEXT: Like the original Twisted Tsumderland 3 event, this takes place after the events of the first and second Twisted Tsumderland. And, surprise, your Tsum is back! But it’s the only one, all the other Tsums that came with it are completely new visitors.
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Just like the other times, your Tsum seemed restless and wanted to leave Ramshackle Dorm, probably to go look for the other tsums. You decide to take a walk around the school building first and you notice a gathering in the cafeteria.
“If you give it devoted, loving care, I'm sure it'd be willing to show its gratitude!” You hear Ace's voice say from behind a wall of other students.
You come closer, with your tsum in your arms.
“So... Who wants to look after the tsum?!”
“I'll do it!” a Scarabia student offers.
“What are you talking about?” A Pomefiore student counterposes. “That's gonna be me!”
And an argue begins. You stand on your tiptoes and crane your neck to look over some students' shoulders and see an Ace-tsum on the table.
“Okay, easy, guys. You can all take turns trying your hand at looking after it.” Ace interrupts. “If things go well, you might get to see more tricks. And hey, if they don't do any, you can just return it tonight.”
Even though you know this is about Ace and his tsum, you can't help but feel a little sorry for the things Ace is saying. It's like he just wants to get rid of his tsum. Poor little guy. And your tsum agrees.
“I can take care of it!” Your voice rings out, Ace and Deuce recognizing it immediately.
The students in front of you turn and see that you have another tsum in your arms. They make way for you while commenting on how cute it is.
“(Y/N)?!” Ace and Deuce say in unison.
You lean over to look at Ace-tsum who is looking at you with bright, surprised eyes. You say you can take care of it since Ace doesn't want to. Your tsum jumps from your arms to Ace-tsum's side. You add that you have your tsum to help you supervise it and that you already have some experience with an Ace. He blushes a little.
“Wait (Y/N)!” Deuce says.“This is supposed to be Ace and my task. And you already have your tsum to take care of.”
“Don't worry, Deuce. We both can take care of it. Right, Tsum?” Your Tsum agrees and rubs its cheek against Ace-Tsum's cheek. “Better us than someone who treats it like a burden.” But Ace-tsum moves away from your tsum and Ace grabs your arm to pull you with him to talk to you alone.
“You dummy!” He tells you in a lower voice. “Listen, I'm not just trying to get rid of my tsum, okay?! I'm trying to find someone who adores it so much that they would love to fawn over it and take care of it. This will be better than being with someone who is only taking care of it out of obligation.”
You ask, then, why can't you take care of his tsum.
“Because I was trying to get some idiot to do it, not you!”
Then you hear and see that more students have joined the group that fawns over Ace-tsum. And it seemed like they were finding something cute?
You two go back to the table and see your tsums having fun with each other. Ace-tsum was showing magic tricks to your Tsum and seemed happier with your Tsum's surprised reaction than with the students' applause. Your tsum approached Ace-tsum and began to rub their cheeks against each other, like cuddling. Ace blushed again.
“Fine...” Ace gives up. “It seems like it wants to be with your tsum anyway.”
“Why don't we all take care of the tsums together again?” Deuce suggests, “Like we did when mine was here.”
You and your tsum agree.
“Yeah, I guess we can do that.” Ace says, then smirks. “At least now I can split the work between three.”
Surprisingly, Ace's Tsum is much calmer when it's around your Tsum. In addition to being extremely affectionate with your Tsum, it also seems to really enjoy impressing it with magic tricks and things like that. As if it loved having your tsum's attention and affection back, completely ignoring Ace's embarrassment.
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Your tsum wanted to go somewhere, so you pick it up and let it guide you out of Ramshackle Dorm. You pass the Botanical Garden and the Alchemy Workshop and arrive at the Hall of Mirrors. Your tsum wants you to cross the mirror to Heartslabyul.
You do so, enter the building and you end up crossing paths with Trey in the hallway. He was carrying a cake container. You feel your tsum move slightly in your arms when it sees him.
“Hello (Y/N).” Trey greets you. “I see your tsum is back.” He smiles at it and you feel it move again. “This time one similar to me showed up too, so I'm also tsumsitting. I assume you're here to see it.” He chuckles seeing you and your tsum nodding. “It is in the lounge. But before that.” He opens the cake container revealing a beautiful cake with icing and grapes decorating it, and some slices already missing. “Do you want to try a slice? Tsum decorated it.”
If you like grapes, he will be happy to see you eating a slice. If you don't like them and are sad because you would like to try the cake, He will suggest that you go to the kitchen and take out just one piece that doesn't have grapes for you to taste.
“Here.” He says taking just a forkful of the icing cake. “This one doesn't have grapes.” He holds out the fork with the piece of cake in your direction.
You can take the fork and eat it yourself or you can eat it while he holds the fork. If you do this last one, he will laugh and then smirk slightly. Independently of what you do, you'll feel your tsum moving in your arms again, but not enthusiastically.
Trey asks if everything is okay with your tsum and you answer that it might be sad because it can't taste the cake, after all tsum don't eat.
“Oh, don't worry.” He says to your tsum with a sweet smile. “You liking the way it looks is good enough already.”
Your tsum makes that happy tsum sound and suddenly jumps out of your arms towards Trey who catches it and you see it nestling in his arms.
“Ha ha ha. Your tsum is more cheeky than mine. No, that's not a bad thing. I find it quite cute actually.”
If you are more outgoing, your tsum will make that happy sound again and smile at him with its eyes. If you are shy, your tsum will shrink a little and hide its face in his arms.
He will, happily, carry your Tsum in his arms to the lounge where his Tsum and other students are, but when the three of you get there...
“Is everyone done? I'll get the dishes - uh...” Trey and you see what appears to be his tsum attacking students with a toothbrush. “What’s going on here?”
Cater explains the whole madness with Tsum wanting everyone to brush their teeth. Trey ends up taking his Tsum's side and the students run to brush their teeth. Cater tries to apologize by saying that it took him longer to eat and even tries to say that he wanted to spend some time with your tsum. But it's no use, both Treys look at him with a menacing smile.
“Ah, I'm sorry! I swear I'll brush therm! Don't come near me with that smile on your face!” And he leaves the lounge as well.
Only Riddle, you, Trey and your two tsums remain. Trey-tsum points his toothbrush at you with that smile.
“Let's give (Y/N) a pass this time.” Trey defends you. “They are from another dorm so their toothbrush and toothpaste are not here.”
Trey-tsum lowers the toothbrush in agreement. Your Tsum jumps out of Trey's arms and lands next to his Tsum. They both make a happy sound and the two begin to rub their cheeks against each other as if cuddling.
“Your tsum is very affectionate, isn't it?” Trey comments with a smile.
Trey-tsum jumps onto your shoulder, presses its face against your cheek as if it were giving you a kiss, and jumps back to your tsum’s side. Then the two jump onto one of the sofas and snuggle up together as if they were nesting.
“How cute.” Riddle comments with a slightly mocking smile seeing Trey blush.
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You were taking a walk around the school campus with your tsum in your arms when you heard Jack's voice calling you.
“Hey (Y/N), glad I found you.” Jack says. You turn around and he sees your Tsum in your arms who greets him smiling with its eyes. “Your tsum is back? So you should already know that other tsums have appeared too.”
You say you had already assumed that and ask if he was looking for you.
“More or less. The truth is that I was looking for someone who could help Ruggie with his tsum.”
You feel your tsum move in your arms when it hears Ruggie's name. Jack tells you that everything seemed to be going well between them until they started arguing, or rather fighting over the money they earned. Your tsum has the same reaction as you, probably an unsurprised sigh.
You agree to help and go with Jack to Savanaclaw. You find Ruggie and his tsum in the lounge fighting with each other. Riggie has an envelope in his outstretched hand trying to get it away from the tsum, while the tsum jumps at Ruggie to try to get to the envelope while hitting him.
Your tsum jumps out of your arms and sneaks up on them while they are focused on fighting each other. When it is close enough, it prepares itself and as soon as it sees an opening, it jumps and takes the envelope from Ruggie's hands. Then it runs to you with the envelope where its mouth would be and jumps back into your arms, handing you the envelope.
Ruggie looked at your tsum and you with the most threatening look you've ever seen on him, until he realized it was you and his expression changed drastically and his ears went down. His Tsum's reaction was the same. He even stutters your name in surprise.
“And h-hey, your tsum is back!” He tries to divert the conversation and ease the situation.
You don't fall for that and ask why they were fighting over the money. Ruggie explained to you that he still tried to give 20% to his Tsum since it doesn't need money to eat or things like that and that's why it seemed fair to him. But his tsum didn't like the idea and was trying to keep most of the money.
You ask your own tsum if that money is the same as in the tsum world, basically asking if it would be of any use to Ruggie-tsum, and your tsum shakes its head no.
“See?! It's not even any use to you. And I would be generous enough to give you twenty percent.”
Ruggie's tsum turns against him again, your tsum jumps out of your arms and throws itself at Ruggie-stum, hitting it. But it doesn't hit your tsum to retaliate, instead it tucks its tail between its legs and lowers its ears while your tsum seems to scold it.
Ruggie laughs at that situation and approaches you asking, also with his ears down and his tail between his legs, if you could give him back the envelope. But you reveal that, knowing him, you knew that he was not taking care of the tsum, but rather taking advantage of it to earn more money with its work.
“Hey, The tsum was the one who wanted to work for m- I mean with me. We earned that money by working together by choice.”
“So why not split it fifty-fifty?” You suggest.
“WHAT?! Are you cra-”
“If one of you worked as hard as the other then you deserve the same amount, don't you?”
He tries to bargain by reiterating that Tsums don't need to eat, but you continue the discussion saying that if it's not like that they won't stop fighting and it will never be resolved. If Ruggie keeps rejecting ot, your tsum will throw itself at his head to hit him. And then he will finally give in and split the money 50-50.
After that your tsum will convince Ruggie-tsum to just rest with it, trying to push it onto one of the lounge chairs. But instead Ruggie-tsum seemed to want to play with your tsum and the two of them started play fighting like two cubs. Which ends up looking more like they are hugging and cuddling.
Ruggie comments that despite what happened they seem to really like each other. After playing with each other for a while, Ruggie-tsum will come over to you to see if it can get some petting from you for being so cute. And if so, it'll turn over on its back so you can give it belly rubs. Ruggie will tell you that you're spoiling his tsum while trying not to show that he's jealous.
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You find out that a Tsum similar to Jamil has appeared and is with him in Scarabia by crossing paths with Kalim while you were taking a walk with your Tsum around the school campus. Needless to say, Kalim was super happy to see your tsum again.
On the way to Scarabia you could feel the enthusiasm of your tsum. When you arrive, Jamil and his tsum are in the lounge playing a card game.
The two Jamils realize that someone has entered the lounge. They look at whoever has entered just to greet them, but as soon as they see that it is you, they both smile.
“Hello (Y/N). I see your tsum is back.”
Your tsum jumps from your arms and approaches Jamil's tsum. When it gets close enough, they brush each other's cheeks. Jamil blushes and pulls his hood a little tighter.
They will finish the game they were playing and then invite you and your tsum to play with them. You will play against your tsum, Jamil will teach you and his tsum will teach your tsum while you both play. Jamil will try to make you win, while Jamil-tsum is trying to make your tsum win. And perhaps for this reason, he teaches you by whispering in your ear so that the tsums don't hear your plays. Even if you don't win, Jamil will say that you played well and will be happy that you understood how to play.
You play two or three more times. Whenever you or your tsum win, it's because Jamil and his tsum agreed to lose to see you both happy. But in the last round Jamil-tsum climbs onto your lap while your tsum goes onto Jamil's lap. Thus forming pairs for the last round.
While Jamil-tsum helps you with the best moves, Jamil asks your tsum for its opinion with a cute smile. They both know that your tsum can't help him win, but he enjoys interacting with it in the same way he enjoys interacting with you.
The two teams end up tied. There is a good chance that the bouth Jamils planned this result.
You were going to get up so Jamil could prepare something for the two of you to have a snack, when you heard something. The sound of an insect coming in and cetting closer to you. Jamil jumps and runs to the door leaving your tsum behind while his tsum uses you to hide. You feel it trembling against you. The insect lands on one of your cards and you see that it is a... little ladybug.
If your reaction is something like, ‘Aww, a cute ladybug.’ Jamil will complain, outraged.
You ask Jamil to bring you some jar with a lid with holes and leaves inside. When he asks you what for, you say that you're going to put the ladybug inside and release it in Ramshackle Dorm's garden. He thinks you're crazy but that's okay as long as you lock that thing up and take it away. He brings you an empty spice jar with two leaves inside. You ask if they are poisonous plants, he sighs and says no. You smell the leaves and they seem normal.
The ladybug was on your finger, you open the jar to put it inside but it flies back towards Jamil who screams and runs away again. When the ladybug returns, it goes after Jamil-tsum, who also starts to run away through the lounge. The ladybug finally lands on your tsum's head and the two of you put the insect in the jar and close it. You tell Jamil it's done.
When he comes back, you try your best to contain your laughter as you remember him running away from a ladybug, but he notices your little smile and looks at you sullenly, despite thanking you.
Something similar seems to happen with the tsums, but your tsum dosen't contain its laughter and Jamil-tsum attacks it with what appears to be tickles. After your tsum surrenders the two seem to start cuddling each other.
Jamil is embarrassed by this and pulls his hood even further to hide his blushing face.
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You were walking around the school campus with your tsum in your arms when you arrived at the Courtyard. A group of Pomefiore students focused on photographing something separated you from Vil and Rook on the other side. You and your tsum noticed that they were photographing Vil's tsum, and it seemed to be enjoying the photoshoot itself.
Your tsum jumps from your arms to the ground and tries to pass between the feet of some students to get closer to Vil-tsum. But those students notice something moving near them and look down at your tsum.
“Aw, it's another tsum.” One of the students says.
“Yeah, but this one doesn't look like anything special.” Another student comments.
“In fact, it looks so ordinary.” A third student agrees. “Could you please not interfere with Vil's Tsum photos?”
Your tsum still tried to advance a little further, but the students stopped it by putting their feet in its way. And even if you were complaining, they didn't care, they were in the middle of a photo shoot, the staff and spectators shouldn't interfere.
“Listen, if your tsum was half as beautiful as Vil's tsum we might still consider it, but I don't believe his tsum would even want to be seen with yours.”
With this, your tsum becomes too sad to keep trying and returns depressed to you. It doesn't even jump into your arms, you have to bend down and pick it up.
Meanwhile, the photo shoot stops abruptly and you hear some students say: “What's wrong?”, “Why do you want to stop suddenly?”, “Did we do something wrong?”, “Have we crossed boundaries?”
You see the students in front of you make way for Vil's tsum. When it sees you, its eyes shine, but when it sees your tsum, sad and curled up in your arms it gets upset and turns aggressively towards the students.
They realize that the tsum is upset with them for insulting your tsum, but it doesn't know which one was and they start saying it was the other one.
“You're the one who said it didn't look like anything special!”
“’In fact, it looks so ordinary.’ that's what YOU said”
“And who said their tsum wasn't even half as beautiful as Vil's tsum?”
“At least have the decency to admit your rudeness.” Vil appears, also unpleased, and with Rook beside him. “None of you have the right to decide who can or cannot approach the tsum. It is the one who decides who deserves such a privilege.”
“What a disappointment to have dormmates with such little tolerance for other unique types of beauty.” Rook says sadly. “And so insensitive too. ‘I don't believe his tsum would even want to be seen with yours.’ Which of you has the courage to claim such a phrase?” Rook looks at the three main suspects with an amused smile but a menacing look.
Both Vil and his tsum got angry upon hearing this.
“It was him!” The other two pointed to the culprit.
“It is also quite ugly to denounce someone so shamelessly.” Vil rebuked them and clapped his hands decisively twice. “The photo shoot is over. Go back to your duties. And the three of you have a meeting scheduled with me later in the Pomefiore dorm. Do I make myself clear?”
“Y-yes Housewarden. We regret our words.”
“I sure hope you do. But that won't lessen your punishment. You may go now.”
As the Pomefiore students leave, the others glaring at the three who insulted your tsum, Vil-tsum turns back to you and jumps into your arms, knowing that you would catch it. It cuddles up to your tsum as if it were comforting it, rubbing their cheeks and giving it kisses, or at least that's what it seemed like since tsum don't have mouths.
“How can they belittle such a demonstration of love and such a beautiful couple!” Rook says dramatically. “Je suis choqué!”
When you start having trouble holding two tsums at once, Vil approaches you and puts his arms around yours to help you.
“I am deeply sorry for the atrocities you heard.” He tells you in a soft voice but then smiled smugly. “You can help me think of an appropriate punishment if you like.”
Knowing that you were having difficulty holding them, your tsums end up jumping from your embrace to the ground. Your tsum still looks a little sad and Vil's tsum doesn't take its attention away from your tsum.
“Don't listen to them.” Vil says to your tsum. “Just because you don't fit their standards doesn't mean you're not beautiful. You should only care about the opinion of those who you really care about and who care about you.” He looks at you. “They are right about one thing, you two look ordinary.” He will smile in amusement if you look at him sulkily. “But who said that was ugly? The beauty of the ordinary is the most difficult to perceive, only those who truly recognize it deserve to appreciate it. And if you want to know my opinion, two extraordinary things become flashy, but one common thing brings balance and harmony. The kind of thing whose value and importance you only realize when it disappears.” He looks back at your tsum. “Don't listen to the opinions of ignorant people.”
Rook was crying with emotion and murmured how beautiful that moment had been. Your tsum, also moved by his words, jumps into Vil's arms. He almost got a fright, but he caught your tsum.
“*sigh* How cheeky.” Vil said, smiling softly. He holds your tsum as if he were holding a beloved baby.
Vil-tsum approaches you calmly, with an aura of dignity and sophistication. You lower yourself, kneeling on the ground and it climbs onto your lap. Like a cat demanding in the way you pet it.
Vil-tsum won't let anyone else take a picture of it unless they want to take a picture of it and your tsum together. If your tsum is too shy and doesn't want to take pictures, then Vil-tsum will also refuse.
Vil's tsum will try to convince him to give you and your tsum a beauty treatment. And if it doesn't succeed the first time, he'll steal Vil's cosmetics for your tsum. But since it's you, Vil ends up accepting.
Vil will have to keep an eye on Rook because he will become obsessed with your tsums together.
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Your tsum was restless in Ramshackle Dorm and seemed to want to go somewhere. You picked it up and let it lead you out of the dorm. Your tsum made you pass through the Botanical Garden and the Alchemy Workshop until you reached the Hall of Mirrors, where it made you pass through the mirror that lead to Ignihyde. Once inside it doesn't take long for Ortho to appear to greet you.
“Hi (Y/N)!” He looks at the tsum in your arms. “Oh! You're back too. It's great to see you again! Are you here because of my big brother's tsum?”
And now you know why your tsum wanted to go there. Your tsum nods its little head. Ortho doesn't even bother to tell you where they are because they can only be in one place, but he says he'll have to leave because of the meeting with the Film Research Club and wishes you luck in dealing with his brother and his tsum. You go to Idia's room and knock on the door.
“Ortho? Did you forget something?” Idea asks instead of opening the door.
“No. It's me, (Y/N).”
He stammers your name in surprise. “W-w-w-what are you doing here?!”
You explain that your tsum was the one who took you to Ignihyde and that Ortho told you that an Idia lookalike had also appeared. Suddenly you hear a commotion inside the room and Idia asking in panic what it was doing.
The bedroom door opens. You see Idia lying on the floor in the middle of the room and in front of you an Idia-tsum staring at you. When your eyes meet his, his own sparkle and the blue in his hair takes on pink hues at the tips.
Your tsum jumps out of your arms and lands right on top of Idia-tsum. What no one expected, not even your tsum, was that Idia-tsum's reflex would be to take advantage of this to take your tsum, as if kidnapping it, to a kind of fortress made of cardboard boxes in the corner of the room.
“Welcome to the club.” Idia tells you as he stands up. “It also kidnapped my tablet. Now it has two captives.”
As soon as you enter, the door closes behind you again. You go to the cardboard boxes, kneel down and look inside. You see, through a gap in the boxes, the two tsums very close together playing a co-op game on the tablet.
“S-sorry about that.” Idia tells you embarrassed. “I can't get along with this tsum. I've been trying to get my tablet back for hours but it is so stubborn. ...What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
You think about it and say that if they stay calm like that until it's time for them to go back to their world, there shouldn't be any problems, right?
“OF COURSE THERE IS! MY LOGIN BONUSES! Why do you think I'm trying to get my tablet back?! Listen, I don't care what the tsums do as long as they don't cause me any problems or interfere with my games. And this tsum manages to do both. My room wasn't this disorganized before, but it keeps fighting me. You're good with delinquents, help me!”
If your tsum is really like you, it wants to get Idia-tsum out of those cardboard boxes like you want to get Idia out of his room. Which means if you have an idea you know your tsum will help you. You think about that co-op games and how Idia can be competitive when he believes he have a good chance of winning. Aka: in video games.
So you have an idea, but to do so you have to whisper the idea in the Idia's ear so the tsums don't hear. When you get closer he gets flustered. You suggest playing a 2 vs 2 game and invite the tsums to play, and encourages him to be as provocative as possible to ensure that his tsum accepts the challenge.
“And then what?" He whispers back to you "We'll have to entertain it while I get the tablet back.”
“I can handle that part.” you guarantee him.
You both follow the plan, luckily Idia has 4 controllers, probably because they are all different models. At first, Idia-tsum doesn't fall into the trap, but soon Idia's smugness kicks in
“Of course you don't accept the challenge. You don't even have opposing thumbs, how could you beat us?” The boxes move. “Or is it because you're a noob?” The boxes move again and it looks like Idia has an idea for the ultimate strike. “Oh, I see, it’s because your teammate is a normie who sucks at games.”
One of the boxes jumps like a spring and almost hits Idia in the face, as if whatever was underneath it had exploded. Idia-tsum jumps towards one of the controls with an irritated look and his hair completely red. Idia himself gives one of those scared YEPs, but for some reason he smiles when he sees that reaction from his tsum.
Your tsum jumps to the other controller next to Idia-tsum who looks at it and waves like a true duo preparing for battle. Idia gets prepered beside you and gives you a similar determined smile before he starts the game.
During the fighting game, it was as if Idia had forgotten about his tablet and whenever it seemed like you were having trouble he would get upset on your behalf and defend your character with his. His tsum did the same to your tsum.
It was only at the end of the round that Idia suddenly remembered the tablet and jumped out of his chair to pick it up from the floor next to the cardboard boxes. His tsum did the same thing, but you managed to catch it in time and held it in your arms with a strong hug. It struggled at first, but when it remembered that it was you who was grabbing it, its hair turned completely pink and it covered its eyes with its little hands.
“I collected...”  Idia raises the tablet in his hands. “The Tablet!”
He looks at you with a triumphant smile, but if you are giving his tsum affection and kisses because it’s so cute, the tips of Idia's hair will also turn pink and he will be flustered.
Your tsum will jump right up to his face and give him some affection too, like rubbing its little face against his cheek.
“H-h-h-h-have you never heard of personal space?!”
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You were walking with your tsum in your arms around the school campus when Lilia suddenly appeared.
“You're back!” Lilia surprises you and your tsum by appearing upside down in front of you. “Hi (Y/N)-tsum. It's so good to see you again. This is actually perfect.” He turns around and puts his feet on the ground. “You see, a Malleus-like tsum also appeared.” You feel your tsum move happily in your arms. “And Malleus decided to throw a party for it. I was looking for you to invite you, but now that I see that your tsum is back I know that both Malleus would love to have both of you at the party.
Your tsum gets so excited that it almost falls out of your arms.
“Good thing you're excited, because we're already late. Come with me. The party has already started.”
Lilia accompanies you and your tsum to Diasomnia. The lounge is full of Diasomnia students paying attention to Malleus and his tsum. Lilia asks you to follow him down the stairs and when you reach the last step the students in front of you look at you and respectfully make way between you and the two Malleus. Like soldiers taking positions on both sides of the road.
The two Malleus look confused to see what the students were doing and when the two tsums' eyes meet your tsum jumps out of your arms and hops towards Malleus-tsum very quickly. Some of the students (Sebek included) took one step forward to stop your tsum from "attacking" Malleus' tsum, but stop immediately at Lilia's signal.
Malleus-tsum did not move, excitedly waiting for your tsum to reach it. Your tsum did indeed attack Malleus' tsum, but with love and affection. Your tsum gave it a lot of affection and Malleus' tsum simply accepted it with smiling eyes, only occasionally reciprocating the affection. Malleus also looked at your tsum with a special affection in his eyes.
You approached the tsums to get a better look at Malleus’s. It approached you with that dignity that Malleus himself also has, looked at you for a few seconds and bowed. All the other students at Diasmonia suddenly did the same. Even Sebek, although he did so a little reluctantly.
You bowed back and asked if you could pet it. The other students looked at you again with extreme attention and some held their breath. Malleus-tsum pondered, creating suspense in the lounge, but then it made that happy tsum sound and jumped into your arms, super happy. It accepts any and all affection coming from you and it doesn't matter how strong your hug is, just like Malleus his tsum is also extremely strong and resistant.
Meanwhile, your tsum also jumps into Malleus' arms without warning. Hence the students' gasps echoing through the lounge.
“So fearless, jumping towards me like that.” Malleus smiled smugly. “You really don't fear that I might crush you?”
The other students were wary, but your tsum didn't seem to care what he was saying and jumped onto the top of his head, nestling between his two horns. Once again the students gasped in fear. Only Lilia and Silver were calm. Lilia was laughing.
“My liege, please forgive this insulting-” Sebek said, but was quickly interrupted by Malleus's good-natured laughter.
“How cheeky. I wonder who gave you permission to go up there.” He raises his arm to bring his hand closer to your Tsum in his head, touching its little nose affectionately before patting its head.
While you were hugging Malleus-tsum, one of its horns stung your cheek. It immediately stopped and looked at you worriedly when it heard you say ‘ouch’. When it realized it had hurt you, its little eyes watered. You said it was okay, that it hadn't really hurt you, it was just a little sting, you were fine, you hadn't even gotten a mark. But even so, you had to keep comforting it.
After that, Malleus-tsum wanted to dance with you and Malleus with your tsum. You did so. And the next one, the two tsums wanted to dance together. Following this same logic, Malleus invited you to dance.
At the end of the party, when your tsum gets tired, Malleus-tsum will accompany it to you and Malleus who are sitting together. But your tsum will lie on Malleus' lap, and he will pet it lovingly. Likewise, Malleus-tsum will lie down on your lap, even if it is not tired. It is extremely happy for you to pet it.
Malleus laughs happily when your tsum turns over onto its back so he can give it belly rubs.
Malleus-tsum looks at you and Malleus and thinks you're not close enough. It jumps from your lap to your side and gives you a little nudge on the leg with one of its little horns. You jump and lean against Malleus. You apologize, but Malleus still puts an arm around you. And now satisfied, his tsum returns to your lap, which is so close to Malleus' lap that the two tsums can nestle together too.
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You were walking around the school campus with your tsum, but it got tired of always walking in your arms and now it was jumping around by your side.
You were crossing the bridge that led to the Mystery Shop grounds when your tsum, who was jumping on the edge of the bridge, slipped and fell into the water below you. The current took your tsum to the lake in front of the Hall of Mirrors building, you followed it running. Your tsum managed to grab onto a ledge in the rocks very close to the waterfall.
You didn't know what to do. You couldn't get down there and there was nothing to help you.
But at that moment something jumped into the water near your Tsum, grabbed onto it and grew so big that it was blocking the passage to the waterfall. It was Silver's tsum!
And speaking of him, Silver appears right after and uses his magic to make your tsum levitate and fly back into your arms. But what about his tsum? The water coming from the lake was accumulating and creating more pressure on the tsum.
But the two Silvers seemed to understand each other well and the Tsum quickly returned to its normal size and let itself fall down the waterfall, but Silver managed to use his magic to catch it in the middle of the fall and bring it back to land safe and sound.
Your tsum jumped out of your arms to hug Silver-tsum, who hugged it back, or at least the tsum version of a strong and affectionate hug.
If you do the same to Silver to thank him, he will be surprised at first, but will hug you back gently with a smile on his face.
“I'm glad you and your tsum are safe now.” Silver tells you. “My tsum and I fell asleep nearby. We both woke up to the sound of something falling into the water and your fright.”
Neither your tsum nor silver's tsum wanted to let go of each other.
“Were you heading back to your dorm? We will accompany you.”
He used his magic to dry your tsum and you for grabbing it right after it came out of the water. Your tsums seemed to agree on something and then your tsum jumped into Silver's arms while Silver-tsum jumped into yours. Your tsum was nestling in Silver's arms, while his tsum was on guard and alert to your surroundings.
“I think they want me to protect your tsum while my lookalike protects you.” Silver assumes, placing his arms protectively around your tsum.
You go to Ramshackle Dorm together and as soon as you arrive in the lounge, your two tsums go to the sofa and snuggle up very close. And now in a safe place and next to your tsum, Silver-tsum falls asleep very soundly. Both you and your tsum find it funny how soft he looks when he sleeps so deeply.
“There goes another attempt to stay awake for as long as possible.” Silver says smiling, also finding it funny. “But I can't blame it. I also feel very relaxed around you.”
You stay with your tsums in the lounge. There's a good chance Silver will fall asleep next to you. Or on your lap if you let him.
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If you would like to read more from me, you can find it in my pinned post: INDEX
2K notes ¡ View notes
kkalimarii ¡ 2 months ago
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leech parents when they were younger
blurbs down below!
so i started thinking about my headcanon that they were rivals when they were younger, which just made me start conceptualizing what they were like.
-i’ve heard that yana said jade was originally supposed to be more “punk-like”, and i was like… damn. it’s be fucking sick if mama leech was a punk. not sure if i had a great delivery of it, i’m not aware much of punk or goth or alternative fashion 😅 but i tried
-also, i know it logically doesn’t make sense for them to be in human form when they were young, they were likely just in the ocean all the time..but i just like drawing them in different clothes 🥹 its so fun
-mama leech used to be more openly terrifying, she’s just better at hiding it now ^^
-papa leech was a thot lol, playboy vibes
-bandages are from their fights, they got fucking into it. one glance of disdain and one of them immediately said, “you wanna fucking go?”
-if you told either of them back then that they’d be madly in love for the rest of their lives and have twins, they’d laugh at you hysterically and then jump you
-but if anyone else started talking shit about the other person near them, thinking it was alright… well, it’s an immediate reaction of, “who the hell do you think you are? you think you can talk shit now?” (they’ve been in love a long time ago, they just didn’t know it lol)
-they hated each other, but were still fairly respectful of each other. name calling never went too far
list of some of the names:
-baldy (“the silver is fucking genetic”)
-gwen-wannabe
-fishbrain (“it’s birdbrain you dumbass”)
-stinky (a classic)
———
-but of the two papa leech was definitely the kinder soul. he’s lost count of how many times she’s kicked him in the balls
-anything involving each other was a competition. chess? they currently have had 1069 matches with each other. running? they’re training everyday at 3 in the morning. boxing? they’ve each lost a couple of teeth that have grown back. baking? trey’s parents are tired of comparing 6 cakes a day
-they’re still fiercely competitive with each other to this day. however, nowadays, they’ll say “sorry, honey” while tripping the other person in a race
-papa leech knew that he’s fallen for her faster than she knew. after they’ve been 3 weeks in, cuddling, kissing, holding hands, they’re sitting at home (they had to sneak into the house) watching a movie together. she turned to him asking, “so…are we friends? is this what friends do?” to which he followed up by laughing himself to tears for 30 minutes straight
anywayys as always, sorry for the long tangent :,) i really love characterizing them, and i hope you guys enjoy the headcanons n blurbs <3
2K notes ¡ View notes
harrysfolklore ¡ 7 days ago
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albon pets - aa23
summary: alex moves to monaco and suddenly his cats need vet checkups all the time, or maybe he just wants to hang out with the pretty doc
folkie radio: MY FIRST ALEX FIC!!!! y’all said that albono didn’t very much appreciation so i decided to do something about it, enjoy!
MASTERLIST | MY PATREON
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liked by maxverstappen1, charles_leclerc and 48,936 others
yourinstagram Monday mood: When your favorite patients make your whole week better! 💕🐱 Special shoutout to Jimmy and Sassy who came in for their routine checkup. These two are literally the most well-behaved cats I've ever met (yes, I'm biased).
Their dad @/maxverstappen1 definitely knows how to raise the sweetest cats in Monaco. 🏎️🐈
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username1 aweeee jimmy and sassy are so big now!
username2 vet to the stars
username3 THATS MY BFF AND IM PROUD
maxverstappen1 They only behave for you 😅 At home Sassy keeps knocking everything off my shelves and Jimmy steals my socks. But at least they're healthy. Thanks doc!
↳ yourinstagram haha, that's because they know I'm the treat lady!
↳ landonorris Mate your cats have better healthcare than you do
↳ maxverstappen1 Shut up Lando
↳username4 i’m dying over this
alexandrasaintmleux Leo says he misses his favorite doc 😢
↳ yourinstagram My little Leo!!! please bring him in soon
username5 cutest patients ever
username6 the way max is a softie for his cats
kellypiquet Jimmy and Sassy have the best vet in Monaco
↳ yourinstagram They already have the best parents! Say hi to little P from me
username7 i love her vibe i bet she’s the sweetest person ever
username8 this is my dream job actually
username9 f1 pets favorite doc
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liked by landonorris, maxverstappen1 and 1,328,044 others
alex_albon Finally made the big move! 🇲🇨 Horsey has already claimed the best spot in the apartment: a shoe box. After years of everyone telling me to join the Monaco crew, here we are!
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username1 omggggg alex moved to monaco
username2 horsey is an icon tbh
username3 ALBON CATS TAKE OVER MONACO
charles_leclerc Finally!! Only took you 4 years 😂
↳ alex_albon Better late than never
maxverstappen1 Jimmy and Sassy have a new friend to judge from the balcony
↳ alex_albon As long as they don't teach him their sock-stealing habits
username4 they finally made him join the tax heaven crew
username5 monaco said ANOTHER ONE THANK YOU
username6 not me thinking that jimmy, sassy, roscoe, leo and the albon cats are now neighbors
williamsracing There goes our last UK-based driver 😢
username7 i can’t believe a man who radiates this much golden retriever boyfriend is single
username8 HE LOOKS SO CUUUUUTE
username9 alex do your pets need a mom? cuz i’m free
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monaco crew groupchat
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liked by alex_albon, maxverstappen1 and 50,439 others
yourinstagram Late night emergency turned into meeting this gorgeous new Monaco resident! Everyone say hi to Horsey 🖤
Poor baby had a rough first week in his new home (pro tip: cats and moving box debris don't mix well!), but he's already feeling much better after some treatment. Such a brave boy who purred through the whole examination despite feeling under the weather!
PS: His dad @/alex_albon gets extra points for being so attentive and calm during an emergency situation - exactly what we love to see! Always nice when pet parents take such good care of their fur babies 🏆
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username1 thank you for sharing your life as a vet! i love your posts
username2 such a cute boyyy horsey
maxverstappen1 The best 👊
↳ alex_albon You were right! Thanks for the recommendation 🙏
username3 you just got another f1 patient no biggie
georgerussell63 Good to see Horsey feeling better!
↳ yourinstagram He's such a sweet patient!
username4 she’s so popular among f1 drivers heeelp
charles_leclerc The Monaco pets collection grows
username5 ok but why is no one talking about how she called him attentive and calm?? ma'am we've seen him drive 😭
username6 ALEX GOT A VET ARC THIS IS NOT A DRILL
↳ username7 manifesting this storyline
↳ username4 y'all are too much omg 😭
username8 everyone in the comments being like 👀
↳ username5 THE DRIVERS ARE SO OBVIOUS I'M CRYING
username9 the group chat must be WILDING rn
username10 "his dad" MA'AM-
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liked by alex_albon, charles_leclerc and 1,604,948 others
f1 When your local vet becomes paddock royalty!
Spotted at the #MonacoGP: The woman responsible for keeping the grid's furry friends healthy and happy! From Max's mischievous cats to Charles' pup, Lewis’ bulldog, and Alex's newly-relocated cats - @/yourinstagram has become the unofficial F1 Pet Doctor! 🏎️🐾
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username1 THIS IS SO CUTE OMG???
username2 SHES SO BEAUTIFUL
username3 this is definitely the coolest job in the world
maxverstappen1 Jimmy and Sassy's favorite human
↳ lando more like their only well-behaved moments
↳ username1 JIMMY AND SASSY JUST LOVE HER
oscarpiastri The real paddock MVP 🏆
alex_albon ❤️
↳ lando very articulate there alex
↳ alex_albon shut up lando
↳ username2 OMGGGG WHAT DOES THIS MEAN
↳ username3the way alex just hearted it i-
↳ username4 we're watching a romance novel unfold in real time
username5 someone check on albon nation they're probably hospitalized
username6 the drivers exposing themselves in the comments 💀
username7 lando stirring the pot we love to see it
username8 not max immediately claiming her as his cats' favorite 😭
username9 THE HEART EMOJI???? ALEX???
username10 everyone in f1 moves to monaco for tax evasion and this vet
lewishamilton The best vet Roscoe's ever had! 🙌🏾
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liked by alex_albon, lando and 68,934 others
yourinstagram Still pinching myself! 🏎️ From late night emergency calls with your pets to watching you all race through the streets of Monaco - what a surreal experience! Thank you @/f1 for having me and huge thanks to @/williamsracing for the incredible hospitality (and the merch! 🤫).
Special shoutout to all my four-legged patients watching their dads race from home and from the paddock today! 🐾
PS: These cars are LOUD! Now I understand why @alex_albon's cats get scared during race replays!
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username1 im her fan now
username2 SHES SO COOL
alex_albon Thanks for coming! Dinner to celebrate? 🤔
↳ lando smooth
↳ alex_albon I will block you
↳ landonorris worth it
↳ username1 WTF DID WE WITNESS
↳ username3 ohhh my god alex albon you have no shame
maxverstappen1 Thank you for coming !
williamsracing You're welcome any time! 💙
username4 DINNER??? ALEX???
↳ username2 THE SMOOTHEST DRIVER ON THE GRID FR
↳ username5 SOMEONE HOLD ME
username6 SO SHE WAS ALEX’S GUEST???
username7 can we talk about how pretty she is tho
georgerussell63 Next time bring your vet skills, my ego needs healing after that race
↳ maxverstappen1 same here doc
↳ yourinstagram Sorry boys, I only treat actual puppies 😂
username8 i ship her with alex idc idc
username9 WE NEED TO KNOW IF SHE ACTUALLY GRABBED DINNER WITH ALEX
username10 this is my roman empire
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liked by username1, username2 and 14,033 others
f1gossip 🚨 BREAKING: Alex Albon spotted having dinner with Monaco's favorite vet at Le Petite Maison in Nice! Sources say they arrived together and have been there for over 2 hours.
Multiple fans confirm they looked "very cozy" and were "laughing all evening" 👀
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username1 OMFGGGG I DIDNT SEE THIS COMING
username2 i love this pair actually
username3 Max Verstappen was seen at the same restaurant last week... did someone play matchmaker? 👀
username4 EVERYBODY STAY CALM IT'S HAPPENING
username5 interesting timing right after her Monaco GP appearance 🤔
username6 I SHIP THIS SO HARD
username7 seriously guys? let them eat in peace
username8 THE WAY HE TOOK HER TO A NICE RESTAURANT NOT JUST ANY PLACE
username9 our boy got GAME
username10 manifesting worked girlies
username11 the way this isn't even a netflix script this is REAL
username12 ALEX BOYFRIEND ERA INCOMING
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liked by alexandrasaintmleux, alex_albon and 69,035 others
yourinstagram When your Monday morning turns into an impromptu F1 pets reunion!
Apparently EVERYONE needed an urgent check-up today... how convenient 🤔 (I'm looking at you @/lewishamilton @/maxverstappen1 @/charles_leclerc)
All patients are perfectly healthy, just as they were last week! Though Roscoe did get extra treats for being the most honest about this setup 😉🐾
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username1 this is too funny
username2 why are they planninggggg
lewishamilton Roscoe said he was feeling under the weather!
↳ yourinstagram He was sleeping and snoring when you carried him in Lewis 😂
↳ lewishamilton ... he was conserving energy
username3 THESE DRIVERS ISTH
maxverstappen1 Jimmy and Sassy needed their... annual... weekly checkup
↳ yourinstagram Max, I literally saw them yesterday
↳ maxverstappen1 They miss you already?
charles_leclerc Pure coincidence 😇
alex_albon guys...
↳ georgerussell63 👀
↳ alex_albon I can't with any of you
↳ username1 WHATS GOING ON
username4 THE WAY THEY'RE ALL TRYING TO HELP I'M CRYING
username5 not them all showing up at once 💀
username6 they’re as subtle as a brick through a window
username7 ARE THEY TRYING TO PLAY MATCHMAKER??
username8 sassy looks so adorable i cantttt
username9 coolest job ever ! thanks for sharing your life as a vet <3
username10 alex just kiss her
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liked by yourinstagram, georgerussell63 and 1,804,539 others
alex_albon Race week dumps 🏎️ Missing my troublemakers already #F1 #Cats #RaceWeek
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username1 HES SO BOYFRIEND CODED
username2 i love cat dad alex
yourinstagram Tell the babies their favorite vet misses them!
↳ alex_albon They knocked over their food bowl as soon as I showed them this comment
↳ yourinstagram Sounds about right 😂 Remember their anxiety meds before quali!
↳ alex_albon Already packed them! See, I can be responsible
↳ lando the cats or YN got you being responsible? 👀
↳ alex_albon blocked.
username3 WHAT JUST HAPPENED???
username4 did lando just exposed him?
username5 someone's cats getting a lot of vet attention lately 👀
maxverstappen1 Your cats have better race prep than you do
↳ alex_albon At least my cats like me
↳ maxverstappen1 Jimmy and Sassy said that's a lie
↳ yourinstagram Can confirm, all F1 cats talk about each other in their check-ups
↳ alex_albon et tu, doc? 😭
username6 ALEX SOOOO LIKES HER I CANT
username7 most wholesome grid dad
williamsracing Cat dad era > any other era
username8 ALEX IS PRETTY MUCH IN LOVE WITH THEIR VET I CANT
username9 crying he’s so obvious
username10 if the vet doesn’t want to be his girlfriend i volunteer just saying
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liked by yourinstagram, alex_albon and 102,549 others
albon_pets Guess who we saw today? 🤔 Our favorite doc @/yourinstagram! Dad said we needed vaccines but we think he's just bad at making excuses 😽
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username1 ALBON PETSSSS
username2 THE CAPTION 😭
yourinstagram My favorite trouble twins! ❤️ Horsey only knocked over ONE thing this time, we're making progress!
↳ alex_albon that's because you bribed them with treats
↳ yourinstagram Professional secret 😉
maxverstappen1 Jimmy and Sassy are offended they weren't invited
↳ albon_pets Tell them we'll see them at next week's "emergency" appointment 😸
username3 NOT ALEX’S OWN CATS DRAGGING HIM
williamsracing Our mascots looking purrfect 🐱
username4 those must be the most thoroughly examined cats in Monaco
username5 these cats getting more action than their dad
username6 whatever you do don’t picture alex trying to come up with excuses to take the cats to the clinic just so he can see doc yn
username7 alex stop using your cats as matchmakers
username8 THIS IS SO FUNNY
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liked by alex_albon, maxverstappen1 and 70,198 others
yourinstagram Long night at the clinic with this tiny fighter. Found abandoned in the rain, severe hypothermia and malnutrition, but pulling through like a champion. Sometimes the hardest nights remind me why I love this job. Will keep everyone updated on this little one's progress! 💕
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username1 oh shes the sweetest ever
username2 poor little thing 🥹
monacoanimalrescue Thank you for taking this baby in! Let us know if you need anything
↳ yourinstagram Will do! Already showing good signs 🙏
username3 Nothing hits harder than these late night rescue cases. You're doing amazing work! ❤️
↳ yourinstagram Thank you! Hour 16 and counting, but worth it
username4 need any supplies or volunteers?
↳ yourinstagram Actually yes! DMing you now
alex_albon Need any help? I can bring coffee or food or anything
↳ yourinstagram Actually could use both if you're up?
↳ alex_albon On my way!
↳ username1 OMG ALEXXXX
↳ username2 i see 👀👀
kellypiquet This is why you’re the best! 💘
username5 Those overnight kitten cases always get to me. Sending strength!
↳ yourinstagram The tiny ones are always the fighters!
username6 this is why we're in this field 🥺
username7 this is the perfect girl for alex
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texts between max and yn
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liked by alex_albon, maxverstappen1 and 98,736 others
yourinstagram First night off in ages! No emergencies, no sick pets (real or imaginary), just dinner with good company ❤️
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username1 OMFGGGGG
username2 am i dreaming???
lando FINALLY!!!!!
↳ georgerussell63 Only took 47 vet visits
↳ charles_leclerc And 3 house fires
↳ alex_albon guys please 😭
↳ username1 NO WAY
↳ username2 they’re so annoying oml
maxverstappen1 My cats send their congratulations
↳ yourinstagram Tell them thanks!
username3 THE WAY I JUST SCREAMED
username4 FINALLY HAPPENING
username5 the way the whole paddock was invested in this 😭
username6 best storyline of the season
username7 About time! Have fun you two!
username8 the slow burn we've been watching all season
alex_albon ❤️
↳ lando Look who learned how to use the heart emoji
↳ alex_albon I'm still blocking all of you
username9 ALEX BOYFRIEND ERA IS HEREEEEEEE
username10 i knew this was going to happen
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liked by lando, yourinstagram and 1,089,478 others
alex_albon Turns out I didn't need a sick cat excuse after all 😊❤️
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username1 AHHHHHH
username2 THIS IS SO CUTE
lando WHO HAD "ALEX POSTS FIRST" IN THE BETTING POOL
↳ georgerussell63 Pay up everyone
↳ charles_leclerc I lost 50€ 😭
↳ username1 NO WAY THIS IS REAL
↳ username2 THEY’RE SO ANNOYING
yourinstagram ❤️
↳ alex_albon ❤️
↳ username1 THE WAY I JUST DIED
↳ username2 they're using matching hearts I can't 😭
username3 local man discovers real dates better than fake emergencies
username4 CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
username5 Finally! You two are adorable ❤️
username6 ALEX FINALLY GOT HIS SHIT TOGETHER
maxverstappen1 My cats want to know if they're invited to the wedding
↳ alex_albon MAX !
username7 most wholesome character arc
username8 ALEX BOYFRIEND ERA IS REAL
username9 they make the cutest couple ever
username10 THE WAY THE ENTIRE GRID JUST WANTED THEM TOGETHER
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liked by username1, username2 and 19,736 others
f1gossip BREAKING: After months of "emergency vet visits" and mysterious cat illnesses, looks like @/alex_albon finally got the real thing 👀❤️
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username1 THE WAY I JUST SCREAMED IN PUBLIC
username2 SOMEONE HOLD ME
username3 the growth we've witnessed 😭
username4 the way the whole paddock was invested in this storyline
username5 the slow burn we deserved
username6 this is better than any romance novel
username7 ALBON NATION HOW ARE WE FEELING
username8 he way we watched this unfold all season
username9 ALEX DATING A VET FEELS SO RIGHT
username10 the clinic's security cameras probably have a whole romcom stored
username11 THE WAY HE'S SMILING 😭
username12 protect them at all costs
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liked by alex_albon, maxverstappen1 and 103,685 others
yourinstagram Trading my stethoscope for some racing earmuffs this weekend! Marie's handling the clinic while I watch someone who definitely doesn't have any more sick cats race around Silverstone 😉❤️
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username1 AWE THIS IS SO CUUUTE
username2 best couple ever i swear
clinicvet_marie Have fun! The clinic will survive 😊
username3 THE HELMETS IM CRYING
lando look who doesn't need to fake emergencies to see him anymore
↳ alex_albon I will crash this car into you
↳ landonorris worth it
username4 POWER COUPLE
username5 the most wholesome storyline ever
alexandrasaintmleux welcome to our crew 🥹🥹
williamsracing We can’t wait too see our favorite doc 😉
username6 i can’t believe alex got himself a girlfriend
alex_albon ❤️
↳ yourinstagram See you at the finish line ❤️
↳ username2 THIS IS TOO CUTE
↳ username3 I COULD CRY
username7 first race as girlfriend!
username8 she’s so supportive of him i’m sobbing
username9 this picture is so pinterest coded i’m crying
username10 I NEED THEM TO ADOPT ME
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liked by yourinstagram, lando and 1,308,577 others
alex_albon First race with my lucky charm in the paddock! Turns out having a real girlfriend is better than having sick cats 😉 Thank you everyone for the amazing support today ❤️ Special thanks to @/williamsracing for the incredible car
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username1 AWEEEEEE
username2 this is the cutest post ever
yourinstagram So proud of you ❤️
↳ alex_albon ❤️
↳ username1 STOP THIS IS TOO CUTE IM CRYING
username3 MY BF HAS A GF I CANT
maxverstappen1 Once again you’re welcome
↳ username2 HES SO ANNOYING
username4 driver finds success with real girlfriend instead of fake cat emergencies
username5 THE WAY THEY'RE BOTH GLOWING
williamsracing Petition to make the lucky charm permanent
↳ alex_albon Already planned 😊
↳ username1 IM SOBBING HES SO IN LOVE
lando so this is what happens when you stop inventing diseases
↳ alex_albon I should have tried this strategy sooner
↳ charles_leclerc Ya think? 🙄
↳ username3 lmfao they’re never going to let him live that down
username6 SOMEONE FRAME THIS PICTURE AND PUT IT IN THE LOUVRE
username7 they’re so aesthetically pleasing i could cry
username8 THEY NEED TO GET MARRIED
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liked by alex_albon, yourinstagram and 102,665 others
albon_pets We have a new brother! Meet Bruno Albon, the newest addition to our family! 🐾 Mom @/yourinstagram and Dad @/alex_albon adopted him together (and this time it wasn't an emergency visit excuse 😉). He's already best friends with us and loves watching F1 races!
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username1 MY HEARTTTTT
username2 oh my god bruno albon you sweet boy
f1 The family grows !
yourinstagram Our big boy ❤️
↳ alex_albon Family complete 🥰
↳ username1 STOP I'M SOBBING
username3 THE ALBON FAMILY HAS MY HEART
lando my cats demand a playdate
↳ alex_albon Your cats aren't even real Lando
↳ lando Neither were your emergencies 🤷‍♂️
↳ username1 IM WHEEZING
username4 they’re parents now what if i sob
username5 look at this beautiful family 😭
username6 the way they got a DOG together
username7 best F1 pet family
williamsracing Bruno already has his paddock pass
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liked by yourinstagram, lando and 1,098,447 others
alex_albon A year ago I moved to Monaco and started inventing the most ridiculous cat emergencies known to veterinary science. Today I have the most amazing girlfriend, a beautiful family (including a dog who actually exists!), and somehow @/yourinstagram still hasn't banned me from her clinic 😅❤️ Best decision I ever made, even if my cats supposedly had everything from fever to existential crisis
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username1 IM SOBBING
username2 this is what to precious i’m so parasocial about them
yourinstagram From "my cat has seasonal depression" to "I love you" ❤️
↳ alex_albon Best character development 🥰
↳ username1 THE WAY THEY FLIRT IN COMMENTS NOW
username3 im so happy they found each other
lando emember when he googled "can cats get jetlag"
↳ georgerussell63 While his cats were literally at home
↳ alex_albon It was a valid question
↳ username2 ALEX WAS IN THE TRENCHES
username4 the cutest butterfly effect ever
username5 I HEAR WEDDING BELLS TIME TO START PLANNING
albon_pets mom and dad 💘
username6 this is just too sweet
username7 THE WAY ALEX HAD FAKE CAT DISEASES AND A DREAM
username8 BRUNO IS SO CUTEE
username9 if they don’t get married istg
username10 this gives me hope i can find love too
977 notes ¡ View notes
starkeyisthelastname ¡ 8 months ago
Note
OHHH ANOTHER THOUGHT!!!!!!!
idk how the porn community works HALSJKS but if its a thing to like ….. ship them ig??? … how would rafe react to r’s video with another dude being posted on twitter (maybe the first vid she’s made since her vid with rafe) and everyone’s in the comments being like “omg yas this is so hot!!!” “omg this is so much better than her and rafe!!” BALJEKS IDK
the first time someone’s talked negatively about him and it’s actually effected him 😅 he doesn’t like this ego being bruised
It was rare that Rafe checked social media, he just didn’t care about what people thought. He was pornstar and was used to being judged for his career choice and especially for the brutal way he fucked his costars. It was the Twitter notification he got though, with his name and your name tagged along with someone else’s who he didn’t know that caught his attention.
He opened the video, his blue eyes darkening as soon as he saw what it was. It was some nobody with a dick half the size of his, trying to make you cum. He could tell by the moans you were giving that it was all an act, and it ignited something in him he didn’t like. Watching another man fuck you, even if it was your job wasn’t something he particularly was a fan of. He had always loved pussy and money, and never once thought of ever quitting his rather successful porn career for anyone, until you started occupying his mind all day every day. He just couldn’t bring himself to end it yet, his addiction to sex and money way too deep.
As he went to exit out the app, a comment caught his eye. “Wow. She’s a pro at taking dick.” He scoffed as he read it out loud. What dick were you takin? That clown was the size of a pinky compared to him. It was the next one down that had his head raging in a way he had never experienced. ‘Her and @therafecameron video was weak compared to this. 🤣’ He seethed, these stupid idiots comments getting to him and bruising his extremely high ego. His knee bounced rapidly, thumb at the edge of his mouth as his mind raced wildly.
It was the phone, turned into landscape mode as Rafe’s long arm aimed it down to let it capture you taking dick. His free hand was wrapped in your hair, yanking your head back as he drilled into you at a brutal speed. The makeup you had on was smeared, tears streaming down your sparkly cheeks as he had some point to prove. He didn’t exactly say what, but it was a chance to get fucked by the man you were becoming obsessed with.
“Who’s fucking dick are you takin?” Rafe asked, his voice dripping venom as he yanked your head to make you look at him. His blue eyes, peered down at you in a predatory manner as he forced you to give him an answer.
The answer you gave was incoherent, your words coming out in babbles as an insane amount of pleasure was taking over your body. Your eyes rolled back, his huge dick tearing you apart as he wrapped his fist around your hair even harder. The phone that was recording the raw homemade scene was now shoved in your face, his hand on your head forcing you to look at the lens.
You were still so pretty, completely cock drunk off his monstrous ways as you were being his good personal whore. He leaned down, mustache brushing over your ear as he looked at the camera. It was quite a sexy sight to see his wild hair and striking blue iris’s making eye contact with the phone. “Tell them who’s dick your fuckin takin.” He spoke lowly, eyes watching your face through the screen. “Don’t make me repeat myself, I swear you’ll fucking regret it.” He gritted out, toned hips slapping against yours.
You cried out, his hand removing itself from your head to force your chin to look at the camera. You had no choice but to let out a loud whine, screaming the man’s name that you just wanted as yours. “Rafe Cameron! I’m t-takin Rafe Cameron’s dick!” Your voice cracking as you clamped down onto his cock.
As soon as heard that, a smirk came to his face and his nuts tightened. He tilted your chin towards him, sloppily kissing you with his tongue as the camera caught something Rafe never did with anyone. If the kissing wasn’t enough to make people a little shocked, it was that he posted it to his Twitter account, caption reading ‘The only dick that can get her screaming 😱 remember the fucking name bitches.’
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moonstruckme ¡ 7 months ago
Note
Hii i have a request for doctor!remus or maybe emt!marauders (whichever you think goes best) with clumsy reader who is constantly covered in mystery bruises and maybe she bumps her head a lot in a just a few days between them and they find out bc they feel or see the bump or they see her bump her head and maybe gives herself a concussion ?? This is kinda what happened to me a few days ago when i smacked my head really hard and then yesterday at an appartement sighting right infront of the previous tenants and the real estate agent 😩 and i remember walking home and seeing like these white spots you see after hitting your head, you know?? And thinking oh if the boys where here they would be scolding me soo hard but also the coddling i just wanted to be wrapped up by them 😭
Oh god sorry for the long unnecessary and embarrassing backstory 😅
And ofcourse you only have to write this if you want to !! Hope you have a great day 💗🫶🏻
Thanks for the request lovely, hope your head is okay!!
cw: concussion
emt!marauders x fem!reader ♡ 658 words
Sirius watches you, nearly falling asleep against Remus’ side at one in the afternoon. You’ve been in a funny mood all day, only wanting to lie around with the curtains drawn and watch films you hardly seem to be paying attention to. It’s not very much like you, but your boyfriends are more than happy to go along with it. Remus has been half drifting off too, while James keeps going back and forth between the kitchen to make more snacks and Sirius sits with your legs across his lap. 
“Is your head still hurting you, lovie?” James asks as he sits down again, probably only for another ten minutes. 
You hum discontentedly. 
Remus responds by holding you to him as he leans forward, taking your water bottle from the coffee table. “Drink some more,” he tells you, voice rough with drowsiness. 
Sirius watches vigilantly as you take a few slow sips. You look tired and put out, but your expression eases into something closer to contentment when Remus pets your hair approvingly. Sirius sees the moment your boyfriend’s brow furrows. His frown as he looks down at your head, moving his hand over the same spot again. 
“Dove, what happened here?” 
“Hm?” You look up at him, but then Remus must press down slightly because your expression pinches. “Ow.” 
“What is it?” Sirius scoots closer. James leans forward in his chair, too.
“There’s a bump on the side of her head,” Remus says worriedly. He’s trying to part your hair to see better. “Can you lean forward for me, love?” 
Sirius sets a hand on your shoulder, encouraging you to bend over and murmuring a thanks when you do. While Remus tries to turn on his phone flashlight, he brushes his fingers gently over your head. You inhale, and his heart flinches. 
“Sorry.” He kisses your hair consolingly. “Do you remember bumping it?” 
“Yeah,” you sigh, as though the mere memory exhausts you. “I knocked it on a cabinet yesterday at work.” 
“You knocked it hard?” James stands up, peering over Remus’ shoulder as he inspects your head. 
“It felt hard at the time, yeah.” 
“Angel, why didn’t you say anything? You ought to have called us after a bump like that.” 
You shrug. Sirius can see you looking sheepishly into your lap. “It was embarrassing, and it didn’t seem very bad. It’s fine now, just a bit sore.” 
“But you have a headache,” Remus says dubiously, “and you’ve been tired ever since.” 
You hesitate. “Yeah, but…” 
“Can you look up here for me?” Sirius touches under your chin, prompting you to sit back up. He holds up his flashlight, making sure you see it before clicking it on. 
Though it shouldn’t be a surprise, you flinch hard, your face scrunching with the force of your squint. Sirius clicks the light off. 
He kisses the space between your brows. “I think you’ve given yourself a mild concussion, sunshine.” 
“Really?” you ask, bemused, at the same time as James makes a horribly dejected sound and leans over for a hug. 
“Our poor sweetheart,” he laments, bent over awkwardly with his arms around you. “No wonder you’ve been feeling so odd today, hm? We really shouldn’t be letting you watch TV while your brain’s trying to recover.” 
“No, we shouldn’t,” Remus agrees, reaching for the remote and switching it off. “How do you feel about a nap, dovey? You’ve seemed sleepy.” 
“That’s a good idea.” Sirius mushes another kiss into your temple. “It might help a bit with your headache, and I know Remus would nap with you.”
You hesitate. James tightens his hold and Remus strokes the hair near your injury, each of your boyfriends desperate to dote on you in their own ways. “Sure,” you say. “That could be nice.” 
“There you go, lovie,” James says approvingly. “If you hadn’t wanted to cuddle with our Rem, then we would’ve had to really worry about your head.”
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no-goodbyes-no-regrets ¡ 2 months ago
Text
Here's a little "nobody knows we're back together" ficlet that I definitely didn't write while avoiding the prompts in my inbox.😅🙊
---
"Buck! Where are you? I've been banging on your door for the last fifteen minutes, your neighbours are going to call the cops on me soon." Chim said when Buck finally answered his phone.
"Chim? What's going on?" He asked, still half asleep.
Two minutes ago he'd been warm and comfortable, asleep in Tommy's arms, planning on enjoying the fact neither of them had anywhere to be for the next three days, and now his brother in law was yelling at him over the phone.
"What's going on is that I'm outside your door and I need you to open up before I get arrested for disrupting the peace."
"That's not a thing." Buck mumbled as he reluctantly untangled himself from Tommy's grip and looked around for something to wear.
He put the call on speaker as he pulled a hoodie over his head and was vaguely aware of Chim telling him it was most definitely a thing while putting on a pair of sweats that may or may not be his.
"Where are you going? Come back to bed." Tommy mumbled, reaching out for him. His hair was a mess and there were pillow creases in his cheek, but Buck thought he'd never looked better.
"Someone's at the door. I'll be right back." he leaned down for a kiss and only just managed to resist the urge of letting his boyfriend pull him back into bed with him.
"Hurry back."
"Yeah, I'll get rid of him and then I'm all yours."
"I can hear you, you know." Chim's voice came through the phone. "And will you just open the damn door already?"
"I'm coming, relax." Buck mumbled and dropped a kiss in Tommy's hair before making his way down the stairs. He hoped whatever Chim's problem was, would be an easy fix and he'd be back in Tommy's arms soon.
They'd been back together for a few weeks now, after Buck had finally decided to call Tommy, and then show up on his doorstep when he hadn't answered.
They'd yelled and cried until they'd both been exhausted and collapsed into bed together for the best night's sleep either of them had had since the break up.
The next morning they'd decided to keep things to themselves for a while, to actually enjoy dating and getting to know each other without friends and family getting involved.
As far as he knew nobody suspected anything, though that could be changing soon.
Buck rubbed the sleep from his eyes and opened the door.
"Finally! Your neighbour from down the hall is this close to calling the cops on me." Chim held up his thumb and pointer finger, barely an inch apart, as he walked into the loft, followed by Jee-yun who was holding onto his other hand, looking unsure of what was going on.
"What? Which one?"
"Does it matter?"
"No I suppose not." Buck mumbled, closing the door behind Chim. "What are you doing here?"
"What am I doing here? I'm here to drop off your niece, who you agreed to watch today while both me and Maddie picked up extra shifts."
"Wait, what? When did I agree to that? Why are you working an extra shift?"
"I don't know, the second child that's on its way maybe? Or the family trip to Korea we've got planned for next year? That I told you about. More than once."
"I... Uh... Yeah... Ok... Right."
And whoever you've got up there can either leave or get down here and deal with you watching your niece." Chim said, raising his voice slightly and yelling up the stairs." I heard you talking to someone so don't try the there's no-one there thing."
Buck sighed.
There was no way Chim was going to let this go. And if he was, Jee would tell him or Maddie by the time they came to pick her up.
"Babe, are you awake? Just put some clothes on and get down here a minute."
"Babe? You call your hook up babe?" Chim asked but Buck ignored him.
They heard the bed creak and there was some shuffling upstairs.
"I think I've got your sweats, just grab mine." Buck called out and did his best to ignore the looks Chim was giving him.
"You've got a guy up there? Well good for you, getting back out there after Tommy. You're not getting out of babysitting though."
Buck gave him a slight shrug and just kept watching the top of the stairs.
He could tell the exact moment Tommy came into view and Chim recognised him without even watching either of them.
Tommy slowly walked down the stairs, still half asleep, and wearing Buck's clothes. He gave Chim a half wave as he shuffled past him and over to Buck.
"Morning." he pressed a dry kiss to Buck's lips and then turned to face Chim. "Morning Howie. I hope you'll forgive me for not giving you a good morning kiss, I haven't brushed my teeth yet."
"But you will kiss me before brushing your teeth?" Buck teased and Tommy tilted his head and raised an eyebrow.
"I think we both know I've done a lot more than that without brushing my teeth and you didn't seem to mind."
Buck laughed a little but decided not to argue with him.
"When did this happen? When did you get back together? Are you back together?"
"We are." Tommy confirmed, slipping an arm around Buck's waist and sleepily resting his head on his shoulder.
"We got back together a few weeks ago but we wanted to keep it quiet for now." Buck explained. "But I guess everyone will know within the hour now."
Chim looked at them, trying to process the information, until suddenly the loud music from one of Jee's favourite shows started blaring through the loft.
Buck kind of regretted teaching her how to work his TV.
"I... You... But..." Chim stammered then focused on Tommy. "Wait... When you blew me off last week when I wanted to take you out to karaoke..."
"I had plans with Evan."
"I can't believe it." he mumbled and turned to Buck. "But you're still baking."
"We bake together. And some of the stuff I've brought in the past few weeks was store bought." Buck explained. "We just wanted to enjoy being together without everyone else getting involved. I'm just... tired of everyone telling me what to do or what I feel. I want to be with him, I love him."
Tommy lifted his head and smiled.
"I love you too." he said and the two of them shared a kiss.
"I... am happy for you guys." Chim settled on. "and you're going to tell me exactly how and when this happened." he gestured to the two of them. "But I'm running late for my shift and we need the money so..." he trailed off and quickly walked over to Jee. "Sweetheart, daddy has to go to work now, ok? You be good for your uncle Buck and uncle Tommy."
Jee nodded, barely paying attention to her father, eyes fixed on the TV screen. Chim kissed the top of her head and turned back to Buck and Tommy.
"Maddie will pick her up after her shift. She'll text you when she's on her way." he told them, making his way to the door. "You owe me a drink and a night of karaoke, Kinard."
"Sure. Text me. We'll pick a date."
"Sure. If you think you can fit me in between work and making out with my brother in law." Chim joked. "Ok I have to go. Have a good day guys, and please don't traumatise my daughter." he laughed and walked out the door, only to come back in right away. "Don't think this means you can elope when you get married. I need to see you all dressed up and standing up in front of everyone. Just so I can remind you I got you together." he paused and looked at Tommy. "Just don't give him a clipboard."
514 notes ¡ View notes
silversurfersx ¡ 4 months ago
Text
twin flames | oscar piastri
oscar piastri × bsf!reader smau
summary: in which the reader and oscar are so close people think they're dating
warnings: fluff overload
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liked by landonorris, oscarpiastri and others
yourusername: happy birthday to my best friend ☺️🥳🥳, sorry I couldn't spent it with you, hope you'll be back soon for some more late night shenanigans 🙌 😏
view all comments
oscarpiastri: was the body slam really necessary?
yourusername: it was, you know what you did
oscarpiastri: I stand by my point
yourusername: now you lost your right for bday muffins
oscarpiastri: oh no... how will I survive?? Right by not eating them
yourusername: I will not be standing for these insults. I was trying to be nice, but you do not understand my hard work to make this post one of kindness
landonorris: really osc, I raised you better than this!
oscarpiastri: you didn't raise me?!?
user1: what is going on in the house of commons?!?!
user2: fr!
user3: I thought this was meant to be wholesome birthday post, but this is escalating quickly
user4: user3 this is how you know that they're best friends...
user5: awww, thyre adorable🥰🥰
charles_leclerc: happy birthday oscar!!!
yourusername posted a story
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oscarpiastri: if I apologise, can I get one?
yourusername: I'll think about it 🤔
yourusername posted a story
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oscarpiastri: 🥰
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liked by oscarpiastri, landonorris, logansargeant and others
yourusername: OSCOOOOOO!!!!! my bsf is a race winner (who celebrated his podium w/ Lewis Hamilton 🤭)
tagged: oscarpiastri, lewishamilton
view all comments
oscarpiastri: thank you y/n/n, glad you were here for it all (liked by yourname)
yourusername: I'm so happy I was too, I'm sure my outfit was part of your success 🥰
oscarpiastri: I'm sure it was, haha
landonorris: oi what about me? You mention lewis but not me?
yourusername: oh shit lando, I totally forgot, I got blinded by osco's win and celebrating with sir lewis hamilton 😅
landonorris: wow...
user12: congrats oscar piastri!!!
user13: I'm still sad over the fact how he won, but still congratulations to oscar 🥳
user14: fr, he deserved better
user15: not lando being completely ignored, haha
user16: after what he pulled, he deserves this user17: if I were him, I wouldn't have let oscar through yourusername: yeah, but you weren't, so get lost user18: y/n defending her boys 🥰
lewishamilton: well done, oscar 👏 (like by yourusername)
yourusername: did sir lewis hamilton just commented on my post 👀🤭😦
user19: am I the only one wondering what they were on slide 6?
yourusername: watching a film, cuddling and eating pizza in our pyjamas 😊
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oscarpiastri: Well that was unexpected but we'll take it. Thanks everyone
tagged: yourusername
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user24: future world champion right here, haha
user25: kimi raikkonen 2.0 lol
yourusername: why do you take pictures of sleeping people, stalker
oscarpiastri: like you don't have a whole folder of me in your gallery yourusername: 👀
user26: LET'S GOOOOO!!!
user27: the allegations are getting harder and harder to deny...
user28: mate, c'mon...
yourusername posted a story
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813 notes ¡ View notes
il-miele-che-scrive ¡ 9 months ago
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Lando reminds Max how he said he'll let Lando marry Y/n once he wins his first race
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yn_verstappen My boy got his first win ❤️❤️so proud of you my love
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landonorris I think I fulfill the criteria for you know what @/maxverstappen1 do you remember what you said?
↳maxverstappen1 I refuse to remember
landonorris cmon I'd do it anyway
maxverstappen1 It was a JOKE
landonorris well I'm very serious about this
username1 What is Lando talking about?
↳username2 I think under some previous post Max said he'll let Lando marry his sister if he wins because it seemed so unrealistic but now oh well 💀
carlossainz55 As a friend of the both of you I can't wait
↳yn_verstappen Wait for what exactly? 👀
landonorris you know what 👀
yn_verstappen Nahhhh I know it was just a joke
landonorris yeah yeah, a joke, totally
username3 I AM CONFUSED
username2 I think Y/n thinks it wasn't for real😭
username4 Y/n blessing our eyes with the video on third slide 😏
↳yn_verstappen As a fangirl myself, I know what a fangirl desires 😌
username5 But fr fr Y/n would be so lucky if Lando actually proposed now
↳username6 I don't think he is being serious, they're still young and all
username7 And why would he try to outshine his first win with a proposal??
username8 So is the wedding happening or not?!
↳username9 It MUST happen now
josverstappen7 Impressive 👏
↳yn_verstappen Ik dacht dat ik je geblokkeerd had lol
username3 "I THOUGHT I BLOCKED YOU" LMAO
↳username10 Hey Jos, is Max on his way to the gas station yet?
username11 He's still walking from the circuit back to the hotel lmao
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landonorris It's a win-win situation
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yn_verstappen Max still can't believe you did it lmao
↳landonorris he was the one who gave me the idea!
maxverstappen1 IT WAS A JOKE
landonorris doesn't change the fact that it gave me the idea
username1 Max gonna hate himself for the rest of his life lol he trapped himself with Lando as brother in law
↳username2 Poor Maxie 🤣
yn_verstappen Poor Maxie indeed lmao
carlossainz55 Did Y/n take these photos?
↳landonorris of course she did
↳yn_verstappen Yessir I did
georgerussell63 Why's the ring so small? 🤣
↳yn_verstappen Well I love it regardless
georgerussell63 He's just won a race, should try a bit harder, not sure if that impresses Max
maxverstappen1 Remind me, where's your ring for Carmen? 🤔
username3 Max casually shutting George up lmao
↳yn_verstappen He loves his brother in law after all🥹
username4 I love how Max pretends to not like Lando, but when George try to say something he's defending
↳username5 That's real sibling energy
carlossainz55 Congrats to the both of you! 💪
↳landonorris during one weekend I did two things no one expected me to do
username6 No but that's a valid point Max got, cuz how long have Y/n and Lando been together? A YEAR AND HE ALREADY PROPOSED
↳username7 meanwhile Carmen still waiting for her ring after years
username8 Max ain't getting rid of Lando after this
↳yn_verstappen I think he doesn't mind it 😅
username9 Jos getting another son to train
↳username10 Jos pls turn Lando into a world champion
username9 Possibly without the abuse part?
yn_verstappen Not possible I think lol
josverstappen7 Take good care of her
↳yn_verstappen Better than you did 😐
↳username11 Jos tryna make a comeback into Y/n's life lmao
username12 Suddenly he even follows Lando?
username11 Thankfully Lando doesn't follow him back
maxverstappen1 To clear up the accusations - I will not hate myself for giving him the idea, I enjoy having Lando in the family
↳yn_verstappen They know, Maxie 😭 they're just joking around
username13 Imagine Max, Lando and Y/n together in the same room with Jos 💀
↳username2 I meannn Y/n does a pretty good job avoiding her father, I don't think she wants Lando to meet him
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username1 Man's extremely rich, are we surprised?
username2 Trying to impress Max lmao first the win, now this
username3 Well it's understandable that they want privacy on such day
username4 I NEED TO KNOW IF JOS WILL BE THERE
↳username2 Knowing Y/n she won't invite him
username4 As 👏 she 👏 should 👏
username5 Little Lando Norris is the last person from the grid that I expected to get married now
↳username1 Or ever lol
username6 I hope after they are married and have kids Jos will stay away from them
↳username7 Yeah I don't think Y/n would want Jos to be involved in the kids' life after how abusive he was towards Max
username8 Abusive 💀 if it wasn't for Jos Max wouldn't be a world champion
username7 What about Lewis who didn't have an abusive parent?
username9 I'm really hoping to see Y/n keep her last name so their kids can have the last name of a world champion
↳username2 Lando still has a chance 😭 if not this season, then he still has a lot of time
↳username10 Maybe "no kids before Lando's first championship" is their second rule lmao
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yn_norstappen Better than I've ever dreamed of 💓 thank you everyone for being there for us and celebrating our love together 💓 and thank you to my amazing husband for making me his wife
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username1 norstappen in the username 😭 I love her she's iconic
landonorris thank you to my beautiful wife for existing
↳username2 I think we know who he can thank for this 💀
maxverstappen1 It was better than I expected
↳landonorris supportive as always❤️
↳yn_norstappen Chill Maxie we all know you're happy for us
georgerussell63 It was such a beautiful wedding
↳yn_norstappen You should take notes, maybe you'll need it one day
carlossainz55 I cried and I'm proud of it
↳yn_norstappen I had no idea you'd be so touched!
carlossainz55 I guess it was just very heartwarming to see Lando get married, especially when you're the one he's getting married to
yn_norstappen Thank you 🥹🫶 I also cried a lot and I'm crying again reading all these kind comments
↳username3 Lando also cried! It was funny to see that after he said he's just not the kinda guy to cry during touching moments like this
username4 Yeahhhh I was surprised he didn't cry after his first win like 🥹aren't u happy pookie⁉️
yn_norstappen If you like to see Lando crying, wait for a video of our wedding day!!
↳landonorris that was kinda cute!
charles_leclerc Your first win, your first wife, what's next?😂
↳yn_norstappen FIRST and LAST wife
landonorris obviously baby
username3 New gossip alert, he said "obviously baby" without a comma ("obviously, baby") so what if he's actually replying to Charles' question saying next is their first baby? 😭
oscarpiastri So happy to have been with you on such important day
↳landonorris cheesy osc
↳yn_norstappen Thank you Oscar
mclaren Cheers to the newlyweds 🥂 (and to many more wins of Lando's)
↳oscarpiastri But tbh such a shame there was no orange theme
landonorris the baby shower will be black and orange
oscarpiastri You're already planning I see
landonorris it's a bit obvious innit
yn_norstappen LANDO
yn_norstappen We're NOT having a baby YET
landonorris after the first world champion title✍️got it baby
josverstappen7 Shame I couldn't be there with you, but happy regardless
↳yn_norstappen You COULDN'T? I didn't invite you
↳username2 nahhh Jos is tryna make it seem like he couldn't make it but we all know he just wasn't invited lmao
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just-my-latest-hyperfixation ¡ 7 months ago
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🧠🪱Wiggly Wednesday🪱🧠
(This one ran away with me, whoops)
Batboy_Kas: Um ... dude, what? 🤨
This is the dm that greets Steve when he pulls his phone from his back pocket to check his Instagram. One confused frown, some scrolling, and one near-heart-attack later, he concludes that he forgot to lock his screen when he put the phone away earlier.
Which caused him to somehow end up on this random stranger's profile.
And go to his DMs.
And send him a GIF.
Not just any GIF. One of a grotesquely round and jiggly, animated ass. There's a text beneath the GIF. It reads: 2iggnag lg9gajdgka hfhdgjy.
"Aw, fuck!" Steve swears, neck prickling with heat as he types his reply.
Steve_Hairington: Shit, sorry. My ass typed that 😅
Batboy_Kas: Fitting choice of gif 🍑
Steve_Hairington: Yeah I guess
Batboy_Kas: You could say it's a ... smart ass
Steve snorts a laugh. What a dork! He's still debating if he should reply or leave it at that when Batboy_Kas sends his next message.
Batboy_Kas: So ... not even the tiniest chance you were flirting with me?
Steve_Hairington: Sorry dude. I prefer my men-
(He pauses to squint at the guy's profile pic. A cute little cartoon bat.)
-a little more human-shaped.
Batboy_Kas: Hey! That's just bc you've never had a creature of the night b4 🦇😉
Steve_Hairington: 🤣🤣🤣 Nice try, bat boy!
They end up texting (and flirting) regularly. Kas - named after some vampire dude from that dungeons and dipshits game Dustin enjoys - is a huge fantasy and music nerd, can keep up a string of banter for hours, and his dms quickly become the highlight of Steve’s days.
He knows better than to meet random faceless and nameless strangers from the internet, he really does. But when Kas says he's in town for work some two months later, Steve is a bit embarrassed at how fast he agrees to a date.
Kas doesn't really beat the vampire allegations when he shows up at their meeting point, skittish and nervous, clad in an oversized Metallica hoodie, drawn all the way over his head inspite of the sunny weather, dark shades obscuring his eyes.
He's cute, though. Sweet and almost shy without the distance and a screen between them, but still with that quick wit and edgy sense of humor Steve has come to like so much. A deep, rich voice that makes something inside Steve’s belly tingle, a hint of dark curls spilling out from his hood, and strong, calloused hands covered in rings, the edges of black tattoos disappearing into his sleeves. It makes Steve wanna take the stupid hoodie off him so that he can see all of him.
Which is exactly what he does when they take it to Kas's hotel room later that night. And God, the man is gorgeous. Dark, messy curls framing a pair of insanely dark brown eyes and the poutiest lips Steve has ever had the pleasure of kissing. An intricate web of tattoos that are just begging to be traced with his tongue.
Later, when they're lying together in an exhausted tangle of naked limbs and sweaty sheets, Steve snaps a photo and saves it as his phone background. He doesn't think much of it.
Until a week later, when Dustin opens his phone to read out a message while Steve is driving and starts shrieking so loudly they almost crash into a tree, bc why the fuck does Steve have a selfie of himself and Eddie Munson - frontman of the world famous metal band Corroded Coffin - on his phone and are you both naked, Steve???
Tagging some friends to share a brainworm of their own:
@cuips-not-cute @steddiecameraroll @postmodernau @oh-stars @steddie-island
@wynnyfryd @pennyplainknits @medusapelagia @hotluncheddie @sidekick-hero
781 notes ¡ View notes
chahnniesroom ¡ 5 months ago
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cross my heart
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pairing: bang chan & female reader, hwang hyunjin & female reader
summary: chan has quickly become one of your closest friends at university. too bad his girlfriend, hayoon, has him wrapped around her little finger and she's determined to make your life miserable. hyunjin is just enjoying watching the drama unfold.
word count: 4.0k
tags/warnings: angst!!! hurt and maybe some comfort?, infidelity (not between the reader or chan/hyunjin), arguing, the relationships with the reader are more like friendships than dating (please let me know if you think there should be more tags/warnings)
a/n: totally thought this was going to be a short fic (like less than 1k words) but it blossomed into something more. i wanted to try something different with this fic but not sure if i pulled it off lol please be kind if you comment! i also did not to bother with honourifics so... you can pretend that chan, hyunjin, and y/n are all the same age 😅
read it on ao3 | masterlist
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It's almost funny how quickly you and Chan become friends. 
You hadn't really been looking forward to taking a technical writing class, but it's one of the requirements to get your degree and at least the lecture is large enough that you won't have to do any in-class participation. When the professor announces that one of the very first assignments is going to be completed in random pairs, you're instantly nervous. It’s only after meeting Chan, who is easygoing yet studious, that you feel better.
Although the group assignment only takes a couple weeks to finish, you find yourself hanging out more and more. Chan has a natural way of writing, he's intelligent and efficient with his wording without sacrificing clarity. While you can eventually write something that’s fairly clear and concise, it takes a lot of effort and a lot of time so you're grateful to be working with Chan who doesn't struggle with tight timelines like you do.
The two of you grow close together, especially once you realise that you have a similar sense of humour and taste in music. It doesn't take long before technical writing is your favourite class. Chan always saves you a seat beside him, even though he has quite a few friends that are also taking this course. You’re not used to it at first, but you grow comfortable with the way that he leans over to make quips about whatever the professor is saying or pointing out if someone in the lecture hall is falling asleep. You sometimes bring him snacks and in exchange he brings you a drink.
The more you learn about Chan, the more you're convinced that he's perfect.
Well, apart from one thing.
The worst thing about Chan is his girlfriend. Jung Hayoon absolutely hates you and, behind Chan's back, never fails to make sure you know it too. While the two of you have never shared any courses, she regularly meets Chan after class is over and you've been invited to join them and some other friends for a meal or to study so you've interacted with her more than you want to.
You’re not quite sure what you've done to earn Hayoon's ire, but you can only guess that it's your blossoming friendship with Chan as she’s never seemed to care about you before you met him. She takes every opportunity to make backhanded compliments, pointed comments about how much or what you're eating, or loudly exclaim when you have something stuck in your teeth. You try not to let it get to you, but you've always been a bit too sensitive.
You start declining offers to hang out with Chan and the rest of his friends after class, trying to ignore Chan's disappointment and Hayoon's smug smile every time that you make excuses.
Of course, she's sickly sweet around Chan, constantly hanging off his arm, batting her eyes at him, and trying to hold his attention. You can't really stand her obviously fake behaviour, but she makes Chan happy so you don't say anything negative about her when Chan's around.
You aren’t the type to keep up with school gossip, but even you know that Hayoon's track record is far from pristine. In fact, you were surprised to hear that someone as genuine and kind as Chan was in a relationship with someone like Hayoon.
—
The library isn't your favourite place to study, but partway through midterm season you're desperate for a change in scenery. You spend the better part of the day completing practice exams for the course you're the most worried about until you finally feel more confident. Satisfied with your progress and excited at the prospect of eating a proper meal rather than the snacks that have kept you going so far, you quickly pack up.
There aren't too many people in the library since it’s so close to the weekend, a lot of students have either finished all of their exams for the week or just given up studying. Maybe that's why your attention seems so drawn to the couple that you pass on the way to the door.
You don't mean to do anything other than quickly glance at them, but the familiarity of the girl catches your eye. The carefully styled hair and slim figure is a common combination to see at your university, but after weeks of trying to avoid her, there’s no mistaking Jung Hayoon.
And it's not Chan that she’s currently kissing.
You stumble away from them, but not before Hayoon looks up and spots you. Instead of panicking or stopping, she continues making out with the boy, maintaining eye contact with you. She even has the audacity to wink. You stare at her for a second, stunned, then bolt out of the building.
You're so flustered that you don't know what to do or where to go. You end up walking to the nearest bench and sitting down heavily in it.
You knew that you didn't like Hayoon, that she was two-faced and had likely cheated on past partners, but you hadn't expected to ever catch her in the act, especially while she was dating Chan. You couldn't fathom why anybody would want anything else when they had him and you had never been able to understand cheating in the first place.
You have to tell Chan, you decide. As much as you hate difficult conversations and it kills you to be the bringer of bad news, you know that you'd never be able to sleep at night if you tried to hide this from him. If you were in his position, you would prefer to know as soon as possible.
You call him as you start heading in the direction of his dorm.
“Hey,” Chan picks up after only a few rings. “Is everything okay? You don't usually call.”
“Uhm-” You have no clue what to say, you didn't think this through enough before dialling. “Where are you? I- Can I come talk to you?”
“Y/n? What's wrong?” Chan's instantly concerned.
“Nothing, I just- I really need to talk to someone right now,” you say quickly. “I'm fine, I mean.”
“Okay. I'm at home right now, but I can come meet you if you need? Where are you?”
“Don't worry about it, I'll head over, if that's okay.”
“Sure,” Chan says, sounding extremely worried. “Be safe, Y/n. I'll see you soon.”
After you hang up, you don't quite run to Chan's place, but you're out of breath and sweaty by the time you make it. You take a moment to compose yourself before requesting access into the building, but you know you still look frazzled. Chan buzzes you in immediately and he’s waiting in the hallway when you step out of the elevator. He guides you into his room, but only after checking you over and making sure that you're physically okay.
“Y/n, you're scaring me,” he says after leading both of you to sit down at his tiny kitchen table. “Tell me what's got you so worked up.”
“Do you know where Hayoon is today?” you ask, probably sounding insane. Chan pauses for a moment, brow furrowed before he responds.
“I know that she has an exam tomorrow, so I assume that she's studying. Why, what's up?”
“She didn't say where or who she was going to be with today?”
“No, but it's not like I'm tracking her all the time. She's her own person, she's not obligated to constantly update me.”
“I saw her at the library.”
“Okay,” Chan says slowly.
“She was with someone else, a guy.”
“Why are you telling me this, Y/n?” Chan asks, starting to sound annoyed. His tone catches you off guard.  “This is why you called me, why you ran over to my place? If you think I'm that controlling-”
“They were kissing,” you interrupt. “She’s cheating on you, Chan.”
“Who was the guy?”
“I- I didn't see him well, his back was towards me so I couldn't recognize him,” you falter.
“Did you take a picture? Was there anyone else around?”
“No- but, I-”
“So I'm just supposed to believe you,” he says flatly.
“What? Why would I make this up?”
“I know that, for some reason, you don’t like Hayoon.” Chan's usually friendly voice is cold and his face is stony. “I can live with that. I mean, of course it would be nice if you were at least civil to her. But at the end of the day, you don’t have to, she’s my girlfriend and not yours.”
“Okay,” you say slowly, “but how would lying about this benefit me at all?”
“She warned me about this, you know. She said you were jealous. Of her. Of us. That you would do something to try and break us up.” Chan laughs, but the sound is empty. “I always defended you, which she hated. I don't know how many times I told her that you weren't like that, that there was nothing going on between us.”
“Well I can assure you that I’m not jealous. That I’m not trying to break you two up.”
“I know that there’s… chemistry between us,” Chan acknowledges. “I don't have that many close female friends and I didn't before I started dating Hayoon either, but I know that I like your company and that you're easy to talk to. But that's all. It's fine if you're interested in me, you can’t help your feelings, but accusing my girlfriend of cheating? That’s sick, Y/n.”
“Are you kidding me? There is nothing going on between us.” you say incredulously. “Listen Chan, I’m saying this, I'm here as a friend. You think I'm lying? You think I want to hurt you?”
“I think that maybe Hayoon had a point when she said you wouldn't be satisfied with just being friends.”
“That's what you think of me?” you ask, feeling hurt. “Even if I was interested, I wouldn't do that. I respect you as a friend, I respect you as a person, and I respect your relationship whether I like your partner or not. But if that’s how you see me, I’m not sure that we were ever really friends. I would never try to sabotage you or anybody that's happily in a relationship.” Chan's face drops at your words.
“Y/n-” he starts to say, but you've had enough of this conversation.
“Look- I came here because I knew I would feel terrible and guilty if I didn't, but I can't convince you of something you don't want to believe.” You shake your head and walk towards the door.
Chan doesn't try to stop you as you leave.
 —
The next day you get to class 15 minutes before it’s supposed to start. You're exhausted, have your eyes swollen from crying when you got back home last night, and most of all, feel hurt. You had been a little worried about how Chan would react to what you had to tell him, but you never expected that he would dismiss you without a thought. It's hard to reconcile with the upbeat and kind seatmate that you're used to.
Instead of your usual seat near the middle of the classroom, you opt for one off to the side that’s often emptier, not wanting to have to talk to or even see Chan. You pull up an assignment that you’ve been procrastinating working on and manage to ignore the rest of your classmates as they filter into the lecture hall. It’s only when someone slides into the seat right next to you that you look up, surprised anybody would approach you when you’re clearly being unsociable and look awful.
“Hyunjin.” You’re too shocked to even say hello.
“That’s my name,” Hyunjin replies, looking unimpressed by your greeting as he pulls out his laptop. “Good morning to you, too.”
“Sorry, good morning. You don’t usually sit with me.” You can’t help but point out the obvious. 
In fact, Hyunjin usually doesn't sit with anyone. He's popular, it'd be hard not to be when you look as good as he does, but it's in a different way than Chan. While Chan seems to know practically everybody on campus, Hyunjin is almost untouchable.
While there are hoards of girls and guys that would love to have even a sliver of his attention, Hyunjin has a small circle of friends and is more interested in escaping the lecture hall to paint or dance than socialise. The only reason that you know him is because one of your closest childhood friends, Minho, is on the same dance crew as him and the three of you sometimes hang out. You wouldn't say that Hyunjin is more than an acquaintance though, he still intimidates you enough that you never would have tried to approach him first.
“And you don’t usually sit over here.” Hyunjin pretends to stretch and turns to look at your usual spot. “Avoiding someone?”
“Maybe.” You blush, embarrassed to be so easily seen through. “Is it that noticeable?”
“Nah, I just figured it was a matter of time before Hayoon got under your skin enough. I'm actually impressed you lasted this long, she really has it out for you.” While Hyunjin is surprisingly perceptive, you've also spent a fair bit of time ranting about Hayoon to Minho, and as a result, Hyunjin is kept up to speed on everything that Hayoon has done to antagonise you. You never realised that he actually paid enough attention to remember or that he agreed that Hayoon treated you like dirt.
“Actually, she’s not the one that I don’t want to talk to. Well, I never want to talk to her, but I’m not avoiding her.”
“No way,” Hyunjin crowds into your personal space, eyebrows raised dramatically. “Chan?”
You’ve had a pit in your stomach since last night’s argument and your mouth dries up at the thought of being so vulnerable, but something about the way that Hyunjin's eyes have widened to the size of dinner plates and his mouth has formed a little shocked ‘o’ is so disarming. 
“We had a disagreement last night,” you admit.
“Hayoon cheated?” he guesses.
Now it's your turn for your mouth to drop open in shock.
“Don't say it so loud,” you hiss. “How did you know?”
“Well, as much as I usually like to give people the benefit of the doubt, especially for something this serious…” Hyunjin grimaces slightly. “I’ve been kind of expecting it. Hasn't she done the same on her past three or four boyfriends?”
“Oof, that bad? I've heard some things, but never really knew for sure.”
“At least,” Hyunjin confirms. “Honestly, I'd be more shocked if she didn't cheat at this point. I'm guessing Chan didn't take it so well if you're upset with him.”
“He's loyal to a fault, literally!” you complain. “In his eyes, Hayoon can’t do anything wrong, he's able to explain away everything she does. He didn’t believe that it was her that I saw.”
“So what are you going to do?” Hyunjin asks curiously.
“Nothing,” you say sullenly. “As much as I'd like to shake some sense into him, he's an adult. He can make his own decisions and if he wants to live in denial, that's up to him.”
“You're a good friend.” Hyunjin reaches out tentatively and after an awkward second, pats your shoulder. “Not everyone would be brave enough to have that kind of difficult conversation. Chan may be stubborn right now, but he'll appreciate it later.”
“Well based on yesterday, I don't think I'm his friend at all,” you huff. “Anyway, if it's okay with you, I don't think that I will make it through the rest of the term if I have to sit over there.”
“Be my guest.” Hyunjin grins and the sight of it makes the lecture a bit easier to sit through.
—
You don’t talk to Chan for the rest of the term. While you stopped outright avoiding him, you’re pretty sure that he’s purposely steering clear of you. Instead, you continue to sit with Hyunjin and pretend that Chan doesn’t exist.
It feels silly that you miss him or that you can’t seem to get over how things ended between the two of you. You had only been friends for two months, you shouldn’t be so hurt every time he purposely turns away from you or when his eyes seem to slide over you like you’re not there.
Hyunjin basically becomes your part-time therapist. Most of the time, it’s enough that he keeps you distracted. He shares all the latest campus gossip with you, allows you to work while he paints, and invites you to hang out with Minho and the rest of their dance crew more than a few times. On the rare occasion when you’re feeling more fragile than usual, he would be willing to spend an evening at your place and listen to you wallow.
“It’s fair that you’re still upset,” he had comforted you once. You had run into Hayoon in the bathroom that afternoon and she had gloated about how nothing and nobody would be able to break her and Chan apart. It had made you feel sick to the stomach. “There was never any resolution. Chan didn’t believe you, doesn’t believe you, even though you went to him with good intentions and it’s reasonable that you would feel hurt or frustrated.”
“I feel so stupid,” you had sniffled. “It’s not even like it was a break up. We were just friends.”
“That doesn’t make it any easier, you’re still missing someone who used to be in your life. It’ll get easier next term when you don’t share a class, I promise.” Somehow, that actually had made you feel better.
“Thanks, Hyunjin,” you had said with a watery smile.
The two of you work out well together, not just because you enjoy each other’s presence, but also because there’s no expectations or pressure. Hyunjin has slowly started to share with you stories about his previous relationships, how he’s hesitant to start dating again after having his heart broken so many times. Even though there are rumours swirling about the two of you, you know that neither of you are ready for it yet and that’s partly why it's so easy to hang out with him.
Tonight, the two of you are just hanging out in his art studio. You're mindlessly scrolling on your phone, you’ve just finished the exam that you've been dreading the most and don't have the brain capacity to even think about school. You know that Hyunjin is doing the same, you can see it out of the corner of your eye, but he's trying to pretend that he's working since his painting is due the next day.
He drops all pretences when he gasps loudly at something that he sees on his phone.
“Y/n,” he says gravely.
“What?” you ask, only slightly curious. By now, you've gotten used to the fact that Hyunjin would react the same way to seeing a cute puppy video as he would finding out about some terrible news.
“A friend just texted me,” he says, still in shock.
“Okay? What did they say?”
Hyunjin looks up at you for a moment, down at his phone, then back up at you.
“ChanandHayoonbrokeup,” he says in a rush, before wincing, clearly afraid of what your reaction is going to be.
“What?” You can't believe your ears.
“Chan and Hayoon, apparently they broke up this afternoon. Someone heard them shouting at each other.”
You put down your pencil slowly, not sure what to think.
“Do you know why?”
“Someone said that they heard that yesterday, Heeyeon and Yikyung broke up because Yikyung cheated on her. I think it must be related,” Hyunjin says quietly.
“Oh.”
“I think there's pictures or a video out there, I haven't seen anything yet though,” Hyunjin continues on, starting to get excited while typing away on his phone. 
“Oh,” you say again, at a loss for actual words.
“Right before the holidays too, that's so-” Hyunjin cuts himself off when he looks up and sees you frozen in place. “Y/n, are you okay? Sorry, I'm sure it's a lot to process-”
“No, it's fine.” You force a smile. “I just- I think I have to go home now.”
“Y/n-”
“Really, it's okay. I just forgot that I have something to do. At home. Sorry.”
Hyunjin stares at you with eyes filled with something akin to pity, but doesn't say anything else. You try to ignore it as you hurriedly grab your things and leave.
—
A few days later you're packing up your bags in preparation to go home for the winter break when you hear a knock at your door. You weren't expecting anybody, but there's a few friends that you have that like to show up unannounced. 
You're not prepared to open the door and find Chan standing behind it.
He looks terrible. He's wearing a huge hoodie and his hair is tucked away behind a beanie, but nothing can hide the way that his eyes are swollen and his skin is lacking its usual colour. You can only guess that he hasn't been able to eat or sleep much judging from the gauntness of his face and dark circles.
“Chan,” you say carefully. “What are you doing here?”
“I'm sorry,” he says with a hoarse voice. “I was wrong.”
“Ah, Hayoon.”
“You heard?” he asks, face crumpling a little at the mention of his ex.
“It's-” You pause for a moment, trying to figure out how to put it delicately. "Someone mentioned it to me.”
“You must hate me.” Chan laughs humourlessly. “I know that I do. I was such a fool for not trusting you. I just didn't want to believe that she would do that to me. Stupid, I know. I'm really sorry that I said all those things to you, that I avoided you as if that would change the truth.”
For months, you've been waiting, hoping that Chan would come back to you and apologise. But actually hearing it isn't as satisfying as you thought. In fact, you don't really feel anything at all.
“I want to make it up to you,” Chan says earnestly. “Are you free? We can go for a meal and catch up. I missed you.”
“Uhm,” you say, not quite sure how to respond. You don't want to say yes, but you're scared to lose this opportunity.
“Actually, she's busy,” Hyunjin says. He steps out from behind Chan and wraps an arm around your waist possessively, nudging you behind him in the process. “I think it would be best if you leave.”
Normally you hate it when other people talk for you, but right now you're grateful that Hyunjin appeared. You're not even sure why he's here, although you mentioned that this was your last day on campus, the two of you didn't have plans to hang out.
“Oh.” Chan falters. “Are you two… together?”
“And if we are?” Hyunjin asks challengingly. You've never seen him this defensive before. “Frankly, it's none of your business. I'm tired of listening to your half-hearted apologies that are months too late and I'm pretty sure that Y/n isn't interested in them either.”
“Y/n?” Chan pleads.
“Hyunjin's right, I think that you should go,” you say from where you're still hidden behind Hyunjin. You're glad that you don't have to look him in the eyes. “I can't- I'm heading home today. I have to pack before my train leaves this afternoon.”
“Right,” Chan says thickly. “Sorry. I- I'm sorry, Y/n.”
You lean into Hyunjin's back for support, squeezing your eyes shut as you hear Chan's footsteps trail away. You don't open them for a long time, even when you feel Hyunjin turn around and wrap his arms around you. Instead, you just focus on the steady thump of Hyunjin's heartbeat and try to remember how to breathe.
read it on ao3 | masterlist
748 notes ¡ View notes
katsu28 ¡ 14 days ago
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summer's golden haze - chapter six
pairing: lando norris x reader
summary: a love confession, a PR scandal, and an explanation (5.2k)
a/n: don’t hate me for this folks 😅 things are going to be fine with our favorite couple, don’t worry! (or are they??? guess you’ll just have to read and see mwahaha)
previous chapter | masterlist
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Somehow Lando convinces you to stay the night with him after spending a little quiet time together at his place once the jet lands, instead of going home like you’d originally planned. You won’t go into detail, but it involved little talking and a lot more kissing. 
He lets you shower off the nightclub musk first, and only when you’ve made yourself comfy in his bed can you shoot a text to your friends. 
You: staying at lando’s tonight. no need to wait up for me, he’ll drop me off at ours in the morning
Samira: ouuu get it girl 
Maren: be safe wear protection etc etc 
You: GOD no not like that you perverts
Camille: sure 👍🏼
Camille: is he reading over your shoulder? WE’RE ONTO YOU NORRIS. 
You: i hate you guys ❤️
Maren: why are u still texting us go spend time with ur man 
“Everything good?” 
Lando’s toweling his hair dry as he walks into the room, wearing only a pair of shorts. He’s a bit sunburnt on his chest and shoulders from today, but he’s still got that aftersun glow about him as he makes his way over to you. He collapses dramatically beside you on the mattress, wasting no time in sprawling into your space with a content sigh. 
“Yep, fine. The girls say hi and goodnight,” You say airily, putting aside your phone. Lando lets out a noncommittal hum, too busy with making himself comfortable next to you to form a response. In the end, he finally settles with an arm thrown across your thighs, face pressed into your side snugly. 
Your fingers trace the dip of his spine gently, coming up to brush over his reddened skin. “You’re all burnt, Lando.”  
“Sun cream is for wimps,” He mumbles, words muffled. “I’m tough.” 
“You might rethink that when your skin starts to peel.” 
“Did you have fun?” He asks, changing the subject in favor of aiming a hopeful smile up at you. 
“I did. I still can’t believe you’re friends with Martin Garrix, though.” 
Lando chuckles, shaking his head. “You’re still hung up on that?” 
“Uh, yeah! Normal people usually don't know world famous musicians!” 
“Guess I’m not normal then, am I?” 
“No, you’re not,” You hum, pushing his damp curls away from his forehead. His face screws into an overdramatically offended look that makes you giggle. “You’re not normal, you’re better.” 
“Good save, that,” He mumbles, face morphing into what has to be the most fond, heart-melting, doe eyed expression you’ve ever been looked at with.
What you say next seems to fall out of your mouth before you realize just what you’re doing. All you know is he’s gazing at you like you’re holding up the moon and the stars, and suddenly it feels like exactly the moment to say what you’re thinking. 
“I think I’m in love with you too.” 
Funnily enough, Lando’s eyes widen the same way Max’s did when he’d accidentally told you. “What?”
“I love you too,” You say, though a little more unsure this time. There’s a key difference between your first and second confessions, but saying it out loud the first time only solidified what, deep down, you think you’ve already known. 
You love Lando. You’re in love with Lando, and you want him to know. 
Only now he’s staring at you like you’ve just told him some deep dark secret that he wasn’t supposed to know, which definitely isn’t the response you thought you’d get from him, and it makes your brain kick into overdrive. 
Max had seemed entirely genuine at the time, but maybe he was just messing with you. Maybe your entire relationship with Lando was some sort of a prank, or god forbid, a fucking bet. The thought had crossed your mind at the beginning, but you’d shoved it aside because Lando was so charming and so painfully your type that you were willing to take the leap. 
Less than two weeks. It took less than two weeks to fall in love with the boy in front of you, less than two weeks for you to put your heart into his hands and pray that he wouldn’t break it. The heart that he’d already wormed his way into and made his home.
It’s definitely fast, you’re fully aware of the fact. At the beginning, you weren’t expecting to get into anything serious. Telling yourself you’d let things play out, let whatever was to happen happen, prepared to leave any and all thoughts of Lando behind if things didn’t work out. 
You didn’t actually think you’d end up in love with him, and for some reason, it scares you more than you could’ve ever imagined. There’s something terrifying about falling in love, but something even worse than it was him not feeling the same. 
“How did you—” He stops mid-sentence, looking so utterly floored you’ve figured it out that you forget any and all previous doubts of Lando not sharing your feelings. “Have I been that obvious?” 
“Max let it slip.” 
He lets out a groan, squeezing his eyes shut momentarily before opening them again. “Max couldn’t keep his mouth shut if his life depended on it, the twat.”
“Y’know, he said the same thing,” You giggle quietly. 
“Because it’s true! His big mouth has been getting me into trouble since the day we met.” 
“Do you think falling in love with me is trouble?” 
“No! God, no, absolutely not,” Lando insists, shaking his head. In one fell swoop, he manages to shift the both of you so you’re on top of him now, sitting on his thighs with a leg on either side of him. His hands travel up from your waist to cup your face in his palms reassuringly. “The opposite, really. I think you’re the best thing to ever happen to me. I just…I wanted to tell you on my own terms. Had it all planned out too.” 
“Oh yeah?” You hum, hooking your fingers over his biceps. “What'd you have planned?” 
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” He teases, grinning from ear to ear. You make a pleading noise from the back of your throat, but he just shakes his head, zipping his lips with an imaginary key and pretending to hold it high above his head. 
You play along, going to reach up for it, but Lando leans forward, capturing your lips in a gentle kiss. It’s a total distraction move, and it works. You forget all about what his plans could’ve been, the thoughts quelled by his mouth on yours, kissing you sweetly. 
Your hands slide over the broadness of his shoulders without thinking, fingertips pressing into lean muscle to keep yourself upright. 
“Ow, fuck—” He hisses, pulling away from you with a wince. Thinking you’ve hurt him, your eyes go wide. “Sunburn,” He explains hastily. 
You scramble off of him. “I am so sorry!”
“No, no, it’s fine, I’m fine, let’s just—” He leans in for another kiss, but the moment is over now. 
You snuggle into his side, splaying a hand over his chest. Your fingers immediately go to toy with his necklace. “What will things be like when your break ends, when we have to go back to our separate lives?” 
If your question catches him off guard, he doesn’t show it. He just sighs like he’s been thinking about the same thing, rubbing a hand down your arm. “Honestly? I’m not sure. Tried not to think of it much, really.” 
“It’s coming soon.” Your voice is almost a whisper, like saying it as soft as you can would make the day you have to leave each other never come. “Too soon.”
“Too soon,” He echoes sadly. “Do you—I mean, would you want to go public?” 
The first answer that pops into your head is no. 
No, you don’t want to make your relationship known to the public. Lando is a celebrity, and within that territory comes many things you aren’t comfortable with sharing. And it might be selfish of you for the thought to even cross your mind, but part of you doesn’t want to share Lando with the world. 
You’ve gotten used to your peaceful little bubble the last few weeks, and once he returns to racing, that bubble will be popped. It might only be a matter of time before people start to figure things out, and you’re not ready for that. Until you part ways, you don’t even want to think about it. 
“Hey, it’s okay,” Lando murmurs, drawing you out of your spiraling thoughts. His hand is on your face again, cradling your cheek tenderly, thumb rubbing over your cheek. “We’ll keep things under wraps. I’ve got no problems with that.” 
“You don’t?” 
“You sound surprised.” 
“I’m not,” You say immediately. You must not sound very convincing, because Lando tilts his head in question. “I mean—maybe I am? I just thought you’d want to, y’know, go out and stuff. Press events and races, like the other drivers’ partners.” 
“You’ve been looking?” He sighs, but not unkindly. More like an oh, I wish you hadn’t kind of way. 
“Yeah. A little.” You feel a little embarrassed admitting it, but you just wanted to know what might be expected of you as Lando’s girlfriend. 
In doing so, however, all you’ve done is hurt your own feelings. In your hours long deep dive about Formula 1 WAGs, as you’ve come to learn they’re called, there seem to be some commonalities.
They’re all brilliant, accomplished women. Some of them are models, some athletes, some businesswomen. Everything about them seems pristine and polished, always perfect. From their makeup, to their clothes, even their posture is perfect. You, on the other hand, you’re nothing like them. You’re not a model, you’re not as accomplished or as brilliant, and yeah, most of the time you slouch when you sit. 
You’re just…you. 
And for some reason, Lando likes you. Loves you. That should be enough for you, and you hate that it isn’t. 
You hate that at the very back of your brain, the thought that you’re not good enough for him digs its way into your self conscience, burrowing deep into the pit of your stomach. It has its claws in you, and it isn’t letting go any time soon. You’re not sure it ever will. 
“You’re spiraling again, baby,” Lando chides lightly, bringing you back to the present moment once more. You meet his gaze again, thinking you’ll find pity, but seeing nothing but adoration. He bumps your chin with his knuckles lightly. “I love you. Not who you think you should be.” 
Your heart swells so big you’re certain it might burst out of your chest. Lando knew exactly what you needed to hear in this moment of self doubt and didn’t hesitate to tell you. 
You smile at him, leaning forward to press your lips against his with all the love and affection you can muster, because words aren’t enough to explain just how lucky you are to have found someone like him. 
Lando sighs against your mouth, having no hesitation in swinging himself to hover over you. 
You let him nudge you back gently against the pillows, knees falling apart easily to accommodate the thigh he slots between them, and it has him pushing in even closer, chasing the breath right out of your chest with the way he’s kissing you. 
Safe to say, sleep does not take you until a long while later, not until you're both wearing a lot less clothes, tangled in each other’s embrace, fighting to keep your eyes open. Lando tells you he loves you one more time before you drift off for good, a whisper pressed against your temple in the darkened room. 
You’ll sleep well tonight with the ease of knowing that there is no question of how Lando feels about you, about your relationship. Everything is perfect. 
-------
“No, that’s bullshit. I’m not doing that. I don’t care if that’s what they want, I’m not doing it.” 
Lando’s hushed voice is what wakes you up, quiet but still sharp. Firm. 
Light from the bathroom pours in one beam through the cracked door on the other side of the room, piercing the darkness of early morning. You can see him pacing back and forth too, phone pressed to his ear, and it piques your concern. Whoever is on the other side of the line has obviously said something to get him heated. 
Work again, maybe? 
“Is everything okay?” You yawn, squinting at him through the sleep in your eyes as he shuffles back into the bedroom after the call ends.  
“Sorry for waking you,” He says stiffly. You pull yourself into an upright position.
“S’okay. What’s wrong?” Lando just tosses his phone into the mess of clothes in his bag on the chair. You’ll take that as a no, everything is not okay, and yes, something is wrong. “Lando.” 
He sits at the edge of the bed, facing away from you, elbows braced on his knees. You scoot towards him, smoothing a gentle hand over his back as your chin presses into his shoulder, his skin still warm under your fingers. You’re not sure what's wrong, but whatever it is, you’re there for him. 
“There’s pictures of us from the other night, at the club, and the beach. People took pictures of us together and now they’re all over social media.” 
Your heart sinks. “Oh. That’s not great, is it?” 
“No. Not really.” 
“Was that your PR officer calling?” You ask. Lando nods. “What did they say?” 
“Best to not go online today. And turn off your notifications too, because they’ll find you fast. Honestly, just turn off your phone.” He stands abruptly from the bed, away from you, pacing and muttering and raking his hands through his hair. You can almost see the cogs in his brain spinning from where you are.
This is foreign territory to you. You haven’t the slightest idea on how to deal with a situation like this one. You’re not even sure Lando fully does, given the way he’s acting right now. 
Still, it feels…violating. Having photos taken of you without your knowledge or consent, then having those photos spread around like they’re some sort of gossip. Even more so because you’ve felt safe around Lando up until this moment. 
Now he’s telling you to stay offline, to turn off your phone because strangers on the Internet will find you. You don’t even want to know what’ll happen when they do. 
“Will you slow down for a minute, please?” You ask, crossing your arms over your chest. He doesn’t answer, just continues in his back and forth actions. “Can we talk about this, or have you gotten everything about our relationship figured out on your own already?” 
It’s a bit petty, a little bratty of you. Of course he hasn’t gotten much of anything figured out—he’s only just been made aware of the situation that had likely progressed overnight. It isn’t something he should be having to deal with on his summer break, but he does. 
He stops in his tracks, stares at you blankly, and for a second, you think he’ll sit down and listen to you. But then he’s on the move again, rifling through his bag for something. “I think I should take you home.” 
You let out a sharp exhale, raising a skeptical brow. “Are you serious right now?” 
“Why wouldn’t I be? This isn’t a joke, this is my image we’re talking about.” He procures a wrinkled shirt from the depths of his bag, wasting no time in pulling it over his head. 
That leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. You’re very aware that you have no idea what it’s like for him, no idea what it’s like to have your every move be so up for public speculation. That being said, you do know how a biting jab like that makes you feel. 
“Your image!” You chuckle wryly. “Oh, I’m so sorry, you’re right. You need to keep up your image, my bad.” 
There goes the tic in his jaw again. He’s still not making eye contact with you either, which irks you to no end. “Let me find my keys, I’ll drive you home.” 
“No, that’s okay. I’ll just take an Uber. Wouldn’t want to put your image at risk any more than I already have.” You throw the blankets off yourself, going to find your clothes yourself. 
Lando lets out a frustrated noise from the back of his throat. He’s probably just as ticked off as you are, but you're not really thinking of that right now. “C’mon, don’t be ridiculous. I’ll drive you home, sweetheart.” 
Sweetheart. He’s being all pissy like this and he still has the nerve to call you that. You fight to ignore the butterflies in your stomach at the nickname. You’re still getting used to it. Right now, you have a love hate relationship with it. 
“Fine.” 
That’s the last word said by either of you until you're almost back to your place. By this point, you've cooled down considerably. You’ve gathered your thoughts enough to realize you were being a little bitchy about the situation. He’s frustrated, you're frustrated, but it's not either of your faults. 
The car pulls to a stop and the doors unlock automatically, so technically you could just let yourself out without saying anything at all. You almost do, but you don't want to leave things the way they are with Lando right now. 
“I love you,” You say softly, carefully watching him for a reaction. 
The clench in his jaw softens almost imperceptibly, but the crease between his brows, the set of his shoulders, the laser focus he's got on something off in the distance, those still remain. 
It’s an entire world away from the way his face had lit up brighter than the sun when you said the exact same three words to him for the first time, just last night. “Text me when you get back so I know you're home safe?” 
“Yeah, sure.” His voice is clipped, void of any emotion. He doesn't want to talk. That you can see loud and clear. 
Still, you try again. “I’m sorry about the photos, Lan.” 
“Not your fault.” 
It’s not your fault either, you want to say. You want to look him in the eyes and tell him everything will be okay, that things will work out in the end. You don't—you can’t—because he’s angled himself away from you. 
Tears burn at the edges of your eyes and you think you can feel your heart crack a little bit, but you will yourself to get out of the car before he can see them fall. The last thing you need is to add to whatever is going on inside his head right now. 
Yeah, maybe you’d been a little combative with him at first, but at the end of everything, you love him now. You still want to figure things out together. But judging by the way he won’t even look you in the eye right now, it isn’t what he wants. 
How could you go from basking in the light of newfound love to barely being able to get a word out of him, with just one phone call? A phone call about you, your relationship with Lando, one where you don’t even know what was said. 
You hear him pull away as soon as you shut the door behind you. 
Is it bad that a small part of you is glad he waited for you to get inside? It means he still cares about you enough to make sure you’re in safely, even though he might be upset with you. 
Then you’re hit with the fact that he is upset with you, and that sliver of hope vanishes. 
You sink down onto the cold tile of the entryway, back against the door. Everything was so good and now it’s all going to shit, and you hate to think about how you’ve messed things up. 
“Tell us everything and don’t leave a single detail—” Maren’s gleeful shout dies in her throat the second she comes barreling around the corner and sees you on the floor with your head in your hands. 
She’s quick to call for the other two, rushing to your side in a second and wrapping an arm around your shoulders. 
“I’m gonna kill him. Do I need to kill him?” Samira sounds beyond angry. You’ve only ever seen her this angry a few times, all of which you were glad to have never been the source of. 
Camille hushes Samira’s threats, kneeling by your other side. “What happened?” 
“Too much,” You mumble, half muffled by the sleeve of your jumper. Lando’s jumper. You want to rip it off and chuck it in the bin, but it’s the same one he’d been wearing the first night you spent together—soft and well loved, smelling like his cologne. Instead, your hands clench into fists around the worn cotton, squeezing the material tight between your fingers. 
You eventually find your way to the couch, where you remain until nightfall nears, a half empty bottle of wine sitting open on the coffee table in front of you while your comfort show plays quietly on the television. Realistically, you should be getting ready to go for a night out on the town, but you’re all in your pajamas, curled up against each other nicely. 
You’d managed to tell them what was going on through tears that had stopped a while ago, but the thought of Lando putting up walls to keep you out of the situation still burns bright in your mind. 
The doorbell rings suddenly and you wrinkle your nose, confused. 
Camille untangles herself from the pile, squeezing your hand gently. “I’ll get it! It’s probably our food.” You didn’t even know she’d ordered dinner, but you won't complain. All this wallowing in your hurt feelings has really spurred an appetite. 
But then Maren and Samira leave for the door too and you're alone on the couch, even more confused. 
“Don’t get mad at us, okay?” 
Your mouth pulls into a confused frown at your friends who’ve just reappeared, but then you see Lando step into the room. He looks disheveled and just like you were hoping he’s been feeling—guilty. 
Your eyes flick to the girls. You don’t feel betrayed, but rather the thought of them reaching out to Lando brings you a surge of love. 
They’ve always known what you need, even if you don’t know it yourself. 
“You two need to talk things out, so we’ll be in the kitchen. But if you make her cry again and I’ll kick your pretty rich boy ass, I swear to—” The rest of Samira’s threat is cut off by the other two pulling her out of sight. 
That just leaves you and Lando, staring at each other, expressions unreadable. He steps forward, hesitant feet bringing him to the edge of the couch, where he perches awkwardly. 
“Hey,” He says meekly, shoving his hands into the big pocket of his jumper. You can’t bring yourself to greet him back. “You weren’t answering any of my texts or calls.” 
He looks like he wants to reach out for you but refrains himself from doing so. You’re partly glad he does, because if he did, you’re not sure you could’ve stopped yourself from burying yourself in his arms. 
Instead, you stare at him blankly. “You told me to turn off my notifications.” 
Lando sucks in a breath through his teeth, head bobbing slightly. “I did say that, didn’t I?” 
“You shut me out, Lando. You wouldn’t even tell me what was happening,” You grit out. You’re hurt, to say the least. You hope he knows that. “Don’t you think I have the right to know what’s going on?” 
“I know. I know, and I’m sorry,” He insists, almost pleading. “I didn’t mean to shut down like that. I guess I’m just used to doing these kinds of things on my own, y’know? Usually when my name trends on social media, it’s something I’ve done. Something I’ve got to deal with the aftermath of. But now, this time…” 
“This time, there’s me,” You finish, frowning.
“Yeah. It isn’t just my life I have to think of, it’s yours too. Having your every move watched and judged by people who don’t know you is the last thing I want for you to have to go through. I can handle it because it comes with the job, but you shouldn’t have to. It isn’t fair to you.” 
“It’s not your fault.” 
“Isn’t it? We’re in this situation because of me. Because of who I am.” 
“You didn't ask for this. Like you said, it comes with the job, no matter what you do.”
“Yeah, but I—”
“Lando, I’m not mad that the photos got leaked, I was hurt because you just took me home and left me here without telling me what was going on,” You say. Your voice only wavers the tiniest bit, and you fight it even more. “It felt like you didn't want me to have any input on our relationship, and that's not what a relationship is supposed to be like. At least, not one that I want to be in. I would hope you’d feel the same way.” 
“I do. Baby, I do feel the same way. I love you, and I should’ve said it back in the car, I know. And I was angry this morning, but not at you, and I should’ve made that clear too. I was upset and I made some rash decisions, and I’m so sorry,” He sighs, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment. When he opens them again, there's pain swirling within them. “I just wanted something to be just mine for once. I wanted our relationship, I wanted you to be that something, because in my life, everything is public. Even if I’d rather it not be, somehow it always ends up out there for the whole world to see, and I don’t want that for us. I know you don’t want that. I don’t ever want you to feel like you're giving up anything to be with me. That being said, I understand if you want to call things off.” 
He doesn’t look at you when he says it, but the pure sense of defeat in his tone makes your guarded posture finally soften.
Despite how things were left this morning, the thought of calling things off with Lando had never even crossed your mind. The fact that he thinks it was enough to make you want to break up with him has every ounce of frustration you have towards him leaving your body. 
“I don’t,” You say firmly. His head flies up, gaze snapping to yours, a mixture of relief and confusion. “I don’t wanna break up, Lan.”
“Thank god, ‘cause I don’t either.” Finally, he reaches a hand out towards you, and you feel okay enough to crawl over and curl into his side. He immediately presses a smattering of kisses against the side of your head that makes your stomach feel all fuzzy again. “I hate that your privacy was stripped away so soon.” 
“Honestly? Part of me knew something like this might happen,” You admit, pulling his arm around you snugly. “I’ve made my peace with it.” 
“You have?” 
You shoot him a tiny frown paired with a sharp exhale. “Well, obviously it’s not great, but it was bound to happen at some point, right?” 
“So you’re cool with it?” 
“I’m not ready to make it publicly official, if that's what you're asking. But I’m…not as upset as I thought I’d be.” You shrug, humming thoughtfully. “Can I ask what your team said on the phone?” 
Lando lets a mirthless scoff escape from the back of his throat. It stings less now that you know he's not upset with you for asking about it. “They wanted me to say you were just some random girl. That you were a fan, or something, and that I didn’t know you.” 
“Well, that seems a little excessive.” 
“Yeah, I know, I said the same thing! Nobody with half a brain would believe it either. I mean, just look at us.” He digs his phone out of his pocket, scrolling around until he finds what he’s looking for and flipping it around for you to look at. 
Turns out you’d been right on the nose about someone recognizing Lando at the club. The photo is grainy and a little blurry, but you can tell it's him cozied up behind you even though his head is tipped down. There’s no mistaking that messy head of curls. 
Then there’s the one at the beach, of the two of you holding hands as you walk along the shore with your heels dangling from Lando’s fingers. There’s a video too—Lando brushing your hair away from your face before leaning in to kiss you gently. 
It’s still an invasion of privacy, definitely, but there's something romantic about it. Like, at least it's nothing bad. It’s just an outwards expression of your love. You might not be quite ready to share that love with the world just yet, but one day, you might.
“Y’know, if you ignore the whole gossip mill of it all, the pictures are actually kinda cute.” 
“Ha! You think so?” 
“Sure do. My boobs look great in the club one.”
Lando draws his lower lip between his teeth, shamelessly zooming in on the specific photo. “Mm, yeah they do, huh?” 
You scoff, digging your elbow into his stomach lightly. “Stop that!” 
“What? You said it, I’m just agreeing!” He protests, holding his hands up in surrender. Then he tilts his head hopefully. “We’re okay now? I’m forgiven for being a big stupid idiot?” He asks, tilting his head hopefully. You chuckle, nodding, and he beams. “Mint! Love you.” 
“I love you too, you big stupid idiot.” 
"Fuck, I love hearing you say that."
"What, big stupid idiot?" You tease, dodging the decorative pillow Lando swings your way.
"Funny. The first part, obviously. Say it again for me?"
"I love you, Lan," You say again, looking directly at him.
The giddy smile that curves his lips and makes his whole face brighten is worth everything to you. You'd tell Lando you love him every single day if it'd make him happy.
“Am I allowed to ask you all to come over? Max is fetching Pietra from the airport and she wants to meet you all so badly, I don’t think I’ll be allowed back in the house if I don’t bring you back with me,” He says, smile turning sheepish. “D’you think the girls are gonna try to kill me?”
“Uh, I’m not sure.”
“You’re not sure? It’s a yes or no answer, baby.” 
“I’m ninety percent sure you’ll be fine.” 
“Ninety?” 
“Eighty five.” 
“That’s so much worse.” 
When you inevitably do make it back to Lando’s villa, Max and Pietra have just arrived home too, still outside as Lando pulls up right next to their car. 
Max folds you into a hug once you’re in range, pausing briefly to say quietly into your ear, “I knew you’d work things out. I’d have kicked his ass if he didn’t.”
You squeeze his shoulder gratefully, because you know he’d had something to do with getting Lando to make things right. 
Pietra and Lando bicker kind of like siblings, but even then you can tell they're close. He introduces her to all of you, and she instantly melds in so seamlessly with you and your girls it feels like you’ve been friends for ages, chattering away about what Max has told her about your adventures in Greece so far.
Finally, things really are all perfect in your little world. 
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