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peachmangofuzz · 1 year ago

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7 minutes in heaven - shohei ohtani au

summary: Y/N snoops around famous football player Shohei Ohtani’s locker in search for a scandal against his clean record but ends up in one herself.

tropes: friends with benefits, friends to lovers(?)

tw: *slight* smut, mentions of sex, oral (f receiving)

word count: 30,033K words (i'm SO sorry in advance holy shit)

hi! it's been a while. when i made this account, i vowed to write at least once a week but it had been so difficult this month juggling work, my chronic migraines, and seasonal depression (lol).

please note i did not proofread this so plsssss i apologize for grammar mistakes and inconsistencies!!

posting this on the last day of 2023, hoping to give everyone a good read before we welcome the new year. so thankful for this small space to try, linger and reset all over again. hope you had a very merry holidays with your loved ones.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

==================================

Locker Lockdown

At around thirty minutes past four in the afternoon, I skimmed the clubhouse for any signs of life. It was only the quiet that prevailed. Clear.

I tiptoed my way towards the player locker room. I only had around ten minutes to locate the correct locker and take whatever I could find. Discovering the locker area to be empty and unguarded, I felt a surge of excitement.

Six years later, I couldn’t get my big break and decided sports journalism could catapult me into somewhere big in the industry. This is my last chance to prove myself, otherwise I’d have to reconsider going back home and write Hallmark greeting card messages again.

Shohei Ohtani’s jersey number is the number 17. Lucky bastard, after all these years and even after going through free agency, he got to keep his famous number, even at the cost of having their senior player give it up for him when he joined the football team.

And here you might be wondering why I’m doing this aside from my sheer desperation to get an official spot in the workplace and not eat scraps of topics editors discarded for themselves.

Some people are privileged to a fault.

And I hate seeing him on TV. Or on social media. Or his Colgate-white smile plastered all over my favorite beer and skincare brands.

Some would say this is the TMZ tabloid level of writing. I say this is investigative journalism. Find out if the famous favorite son-in-law has any flaws of his own and wrap around a bowtie of hidden horrors of sports documentaries.

And where else can we find this but in the athlete hotpot: their locker room.

I found Shohei’s locker right away as it was the tidiest locker among all on display, with nothing but brand-sponsored clothing hung neatly on the rack. He also donned the top shelf with some dog-eared self-help titles and vitamin bottles. While the rest of the athletes have pictures of their girlfriends, wives and their kids, Shohei has an unreleased polaroid selfie with his dog, Dekopin, just right beside his perfume bottles. Dekopin was looking away, captured in mid-yawn, with his ears raised, and Shohei, smiling into the camera with pursed lips and a snapback on.

I got so immersed into reading the ingredients of his vitamin bottles, trying to find anything remotely related to steroids, or any form of illegal bodily enhancements, that I didn’t notice footsteps from outside the hall.

“What are you doing here?” a voice loomed behind me and I dropped the diet supplement bottle in panic.

Only the sound of the bottle rattling could be heard as I locked eyes with Shohei Ohtani, tall and all muscular. His hair was sweaty and unkempt and his eyes held mild anger and confusion. After the bottle stopped rolling and settled somewhere on the floor between us, there was only silence and the cold sweat building up at my back.

I swallowed hard. I planned everything from studying the stadium’s entrance and exit doors but I didn’t plan on bumping into him. Not like this. Not when I’m at the lowest level of the social hierarchy right now.

I could only be ashamed.

Brain still befuddled at the thought of getting caught, I urged my limbs and picked up the vitamin bottle and returned it back to Shohei’s locker. The plan was not to respond at all and run as fast as I could before the rest of his team arrived. That was the only way to keep whatever dignity I have left.

“I said, what are you doing here?” He caught my arm mid-exit and pulled me back, tightening his grip.

“Let go of me.” I struggled to keep my balance and the way my voice wavered was no help at all.

Shohei saw the camera slung over my shoulder and looked back at me, realization hitting him.

“Y/N, are you a sports journalist now? And were you looking through my stuff?” he said, sounding almost disappointed.

“That’s none of your business. Let go of me.” I kept my voice steady but his grip only tightened. The sides of my eyes slowly formed tears.

“What tabloid media do you work for? I should report you. Would you like that? What a shame you’ll be banned from all the games now, right? You nasty journalists just won’t keep your noses away from my business.” he took my camera and deleted all the photos I took of the contents of his locker. I tried to leap for it but he was obviously inches taller than I was and I was no match for that.

“I don’t write tabloid news. If I was, my name would have been all over TV by now.” I grabbed the camera from him and sighed morosely at the lost media. A day’s work is all lost.

“My boss gave me a green light to do a documentary about the team. And the star player.” I wiggled my fingers in front of him, as if to emphasize the word “star” in front of him.

“I came here assuming you and the other players would be here for an interview but no one was around yet. So I hung around a bit and took interest in your nutritional supplements.” Lie after lie after lie. I gritted my teeth and faked a smile. The most convincing lie I’ve learned on almost all my failed dates and relationships was to stroke a man’s ego and have him talk about all the things he is interested in, making him divert his attention to something else.

“You’ve got really good, um, vitamins for muscle recovery there. Maybe that’s why you got so big and strong, right?.” He looked at me dubiously, nodding responsively to be polite. If he took the bait, then he is obviously just like any other guy I’ve ever met.

“I mean, I guess? I’ve been doing deadlifts so–”

Approaching footsteps and faint voices were heard from the hall. Shohei pushed me toward the opposite end of the hall, where the showers were located.

“Wha–” I started but was shut up when he pushed me further into the back of the shower room, swiping the doors closed.

“Shut up if you don’t want to be caught.” He growled and I recoiled back into the tiled corner. On top of me was the almost rusting shower head who had seen better days, and two bottle pumps for shampoo and body wash.

Voices and conversations were starting to fill in the locker room that was empty only a few seconds ago. The voices of men echoed through the shower rooms. You could hear the sound of water turning on from neighboring shower stalls, laughter and tired conversation in the locker area. We were surrounded.

Shohei could be heard laughing with his mates while blocking the door to the shower room I was hiding in.

“Are you using that, Sho? I could use a hot shower right now.” one of his teammates said.

“Uh, no, I was just about to use this room, sorry.” he said, almost hesitating. After a few seconds, he entered the shower room and started undressing.

I widened my eyes and shot him daggers. When he unhooked his shirt from his armholes, I was rendered speechless.

He had the body sculpted by the gods with his wide shoulders and large pecs that glinted under the light. How could someone look handsome and beautiful at the same time?

So when Shohei reached for the waist belt of his pants down, I didn’t know why I had choked on a silent scream. I looked away, embarrassed to have reacted like an inexperienced teenager. I have seen and have been with naked men before. This should be nothing new to me and my level. Or so I thought.

I stole a glance at Shohei, who was slowly walking towards me (or to the showerhead, where I stood under, obviously) in only his boxers on, gazing at me in wild amusement.

We were almost inches apart from each other, foreheads almost touching, breaths almost converging, if you may. If I stand on my tiptoes, I would be almost at his eye-level and I could peck him on the lips if I wanted to.

If I wanted to.

“Sorry, but I need to shower or someone else will try to take this stall.” His voice broke my salacious thoughts. He looked at me and turned the shower on.

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, I’m supposed to. Aren’t I? I just got off practice and I stink.” He said almost sarcastically.

“So I’m supposed to just watch you bathe and hope I get out here alive?” Water slowly dripped into my shirt, soaking my chest and exposing a bit of my underwear.

“If you didn’t sneak in here, we wouldn’t have this problem.” He concluded and pursed his lips, not looking at me.

“Shohei? You okay? You sound like you’re talking to someone.” a familiar voice floated into the shower room.

“It was a video on my phone that I forgot to pause, Ippei-san.” Shohei’s face turned red but recovered quickly, glaring at me.

“Oh, well then, I thought you finally had a girl in there. I was wrong.” Ippei laughed.

Shohei started lathering body wash on his body at the slowest pace possible. His hands glided through his chest, stomach, and into the dick he’s restraining inside his boxers. Simply having this view had me almost whimpering. If it had been another day, I would have obviously enjoyed this, having a sexy man bathe in front of me, because who wouldn’t? But under my circumstances, I’m only fairly annoyed at being a flustered, hot mess and I couldn’t do anything about it.

“Oh, fuck, now you got me wet.” I blurted a little loudly as the water splashed and got into my socks.

Shohei’s widened and panicked eyes shot at me.

In between those short seconds, Shohei was able to respond quicker than my brain could. He had faked a laugh and said loudly, “Well, that’s awkward, the video keeps on playing on its own. Let me turn my phone off instead.” gaining laughter from outside the shower area and then reaching for the small of my neck and closed whatever space was seen between us.

Based on what I had learned in self-defense training, my initial bodily reaction should have been this: If someone is coming at you from the front, a groin kick may deliver enough force to paralyze your attacker, making your escape possible. 1. Stabilize yourself as best you can. 2. Lift your dominant leg off the ground and begin to drive your knee upward. 3. Extend your dominant leg, drive hips forward, slightly lean back, and kick forcefully, making contact between your lower shin or ball of your foot and the attacker’s groin area.

Instead, when his lips touched mine, I felt my arms throw around his neck and pulled him closer. They say we’re all beggars for something, and this indulgence I had let myself be greedy for.

When his lips reached mine, I parted like the Red Sea almost immediately, welcoming him and everything that he could offer: the taste of his tongue on my mouth, the smell of honey orange and apricot from his body wash seeping through my nose as I peppered kisses on his chest, and his obviously hard dick grinding against my stomach. When I palmed him, he managed a low growl and caught my wrists.

“Not here.” he groaned.

I pushed my head back inquiringly, both of us breathing too hard.

“I have no condom,” he tucked a wet strand of hair behind my ear. Under the dim bathroom light, I could see his face and chest were flushed. “Next time?”

“Well, usually when two old friends meet after a fall out in college, they just catch up and have coffee.” I said.

He laughed and said quietly, “Okay, so I owe you.”

“The coffee or the protected sex?”

“Uh, it could go a lot of ways.” Before he could say more, I palmed him through his boxer shorts and looked up at him, trying to find his limit.

Shohei bit his own lip and tugged the roots of my hair in a bundle, pulling and tugging from the pleasure. To keep himself from making such ungodly hot sounds, he pushed his tongue down my throat and thrusted his hips back and forth against my hand.

As if to make it even, he unclasped my bra and sucked on my already soaked breasts, a satisfied groan slipped from me. We both pulled and pushed and sucked and kissed each other in the crevices the shower splatters couldn’t reach, silencing the moans before it could escape us.

In that brief and elating moment, while we muted the noise from unsuspecting people, we smothered each other’s groans and reached our highs in the quietest, most pleasurable way possible.

=========================================

7 minutes of heaven

It’s strange how I always find myself in the most ridiculous situations.

The next few occasions that I’d meet Shohei would be wordless and timed interactions in enclosed spaces. We’d see each other in public and pretend we didn’t know each other but slip each other notes of the next place we’d secretly meet. It all felt strangely exhilarating to keep a secret like a fifteen year old would, with all the sneaking and running.

We’ve explored almost every nook and cranny of the stadium, discovering hidden spots of our rendezvous. We’d meet up in a different bathroom and he’d push me on my back while he fucks me repeatedly on the bathroom sink. Pre-game preps meant I gave him blowjobs in his manager’s office hours and hours before everyone even arrived.

Of course, when we ran out of places to hide, we’d go as far as looking for the next empty parking lot and tried to fuck each other noiselessly.

“So when can I take you out for dinner?” he had asked one day, when he dragged me out to meet with him around after midnight. I wouldn’t let him inside my apartment and I refused to do the deed in his either, so he’d bring me to places that only us knew, to fuck, to kiss, sometimes to talk, but more often, to drive each other’s pleasure and only that.

Because god forbid we both catch feelings and lose the fun, right?

So no talking, no sharing of personal details, no anything.

We were in an empty parking lot, away from the lampposts and streetlights. Shohei had made sure that we were well hidden in the dark.

He had his legs spread while sitting on the driver’s seat. His hands, warm and wide, rested on my hips and thighs, lightly urging me to ride him slowly.

Soft RNB music played on the stereo, it was a quiet, still night. It was both our day off so he had wanted us to chill and take the sex slowly.

Slow meant gazing at each other’s eyes–gaze, not look–with endearment or adoration, not lust or pleasure. Slow meant thinking the unthinkable thoughts. Slow meant being vulnerable while coming undone.

And I don’t want the slow and quiet moments. I wanted the fast and rough with no time to talk, gaze or even think, just one hundred percent fun and debauchery.

“Mmm. Maybe when you show me your photos,” I avoided the question but I also knew Shohei would never show me the photos he had taken–past and present. Even when we had been buddies for an entire semester, he had, not once, shown me his portfolio.

“So probably never, right?” he gazed up at me with his creamy brown eyes, hands caressing my stomach lightly.

“Probably,” I muttered and with that he had gripped my thighs tightly and moved his hips upwards to meet me. I moaned when he hit me in the right spots. Any sign of softness he had shown a few moments ago was gone, and only the roughness and unsettling disconnection remained.

This particularly fine day, I would be standing at the mercy of his mouth. He had dragged me to an empty storage room in the east wing of the stadium, hours after practice. According to him, the area stands the exact opposite from the lockers so most people hardly come by. How he had found out about this, I had no idea.

He was kneeling in between me, my right leg hooked on his shoulder, giving him more access and my hands tugged at the strands of his hair every time he licked my sensitive clit.

Shohei’s tongue grazing against me had left me quivering in delight. He stands up and kisses me, giving me a taste. My fingers started unbuckling his belt when he felt his phone vibrate.

“Oops, Ippei’s looking for me.” He pockets his phone, looking forlorn, as if telling me he didn’t really want to go yet. “See you again next time?”

“Yours or mine?” I had asked, brushing up and straightening my wrinkled dress. And when I realized what I had done, Shohei’s eyes shot up and he beamed widely.

“I just– I- I want a proper night with sex, you know.” I explained, trying to sound nonchalant. “It’s so uncomfortable having to go commando at work after you had just literally sucked the life out of my vagina, Sho.”

“Mmm-hmm.” He smiled even more.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“What? Fuck off.” By this time, my face felt hot and had probably looked red like a tomato, which probably amused Shohei even more.

“Your place, then. I’ll call you.” he gives me one last kiss then heads out first, leaving me a dazed and pulsating mess.

A shrill sound knocked me awake. It felt like seven thousand screaming hungry babies in my ear, bouncing off around my brain like a pinball.

I looked at the digital clock on the bedside table and saw the time glinting behind the glass: 8:41 PM. I must've fallen asleep after taking a half day off from work, feeling nauseous and slightly feverish. It seemed that whatever body malaise that I have been carrying inside me earlier had sprung into a full-blown ailment.

I pushed my body up and walked groggily to the source of my misery.

Someone was buzzing the doorbell and repeatedly pounding on the door. Great.

“If you’re not dead or dying behind this door, you’re about to be.” I croaked harshly, throat burning; putting all my remaining energy in pulling the door open. I was greeted by an extremely tall man with frantic brown eyes, searching my face.

“Oh, thank fucking god. I’ve been knocking for half an hour.” he wrapped me in a tight hug, I almost collapsed. Partly because of the throbbing headache and overall discomfort that I already felt, but hugely because of the warm minty scent of Shohei Ohtani.

“Jesus, you’re burning up!”

“What are you doing here?” I said, struggling in his grip, his face resting on the curve of my neck. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“You don’t text someone ‘at least i’ll die happy today knowing that my last meal was shoyu ramen’ and then not fucking reply after.” We were still standing by the entrance, his face now angled towards me, a look of concern or anger mixed in his face, I couldn’t tell. My cerebral cortex functions seemed to have shut down after witnessing this unexpected tenderness.

“Medicine knocked me down cold.” I shrugged weakly.

Shohei pulled me into the bedroom and tucked me back in, apologizing for his intrusion, putting down plastic bags of what seemed to be groceries on the kitchen counter, and went back to lightly scolding me for proper texting etiquette to family and friends, to anyone really. That my dark humor doesn’t translate well in messages and that I could have really died and people would think I’m joking but really, he got so scared that he went here as fast as he could.

I don’t remember much but in between fever dreams and my ibuprofen haze, I faintly remember the savory taste of rice porridge exploding in my mouth, the constant dabbing of a cold towel on my face, neck and chest, sometimes, my back, too; the smell of rubbing alcohol and a large, gentle, almost loving touch.

I don’t remember much but in between waking up in the darkness and stone-cold silence, I remember soft forehead kisses until I drifted back to sleep; of big strong arms enclosing me into a big embrace, as if to tell me, you can put your guard down now. you are safe here.

I don’t remember much from coming in and out of slumber, but I remember thinking: wouldn’t it be nice if this wasn’t a dream?

======================================

Reset

In the end, I quit sports media on my own volition and got into a friend’s ceramics house. I have always had a thing for ceramics and sculpting as early as college, where I had met my then-professor and now friend–who happens to be the owner of mentioned ceramics house. She had always praised me and encouraged me to join her when she first opened the shop, but as someone who had musings for writing at the time, I politely declined and pursued, you guessed it, journalism.

I’ve always been good at writing, no doubt, from the way professors always had a good word for me, but I always seem to get into the wrong places every time. Time moves fast if you’re a journo, if you’re slow, then the news is rehashed news, it would just be a late-night recap at a midnight slot that no one is ever awake to watch.

Here, inside her shop, it was quiet, and time moved slowly. I can get into my laziest clothes and no one bats an eye. I can finally retire my stilettos and straight cut blazers.

It was all so going well. The customers were always mid-twenties who got interested in our social media marketing of creating your own mugs and other ceramics and always came in in groups, duos, and solos.

Slowly, I realized that not everyone gets to the places they want. Even when you work blood and sweat for it. Not all were built like, say, Shohei Ohtani, whose talent was recognized early and afforded him an automatic slot in the big leagues.

Some are born to be big icons and some, like the rest of us, are meant for smaller, softer spaces. I get that now. It finally felt like I was in the right place and pace.

All this positivity and good timing felt all too good to be true and been proven accurate when the scandal blew up.

Shohei Ohtani photographed exiting his LA apartment with a woman in his arms.

Shohei Ohtani’s rumored girlfriend receives backlash from fans: READ MORE

EXCLUSIVE: More photographs of Shohei Ohtani and rumored girlfriend driving away in his Porsche

Rumored girlfriend of Shohei Ohtani: Who is She?

When I say it was everywhere, I meant it exploded right in front of our faces like a million confetti, falling and twirling fast. It was unstoppable. It was inevitable.

I felt my limbs go numb when I read the morning news. There in bold and black letters was the headline, my name and a clear photo of me holding Shohei’s arm, smiling. A certain news outlet had gotten juice of us and our secret hideouts and had spread all over social media like wildfire. You know what’s funnier? The media outlet that released this was my previous employer. The same company that asked me to snuff out a controversy. While I had failed to give them the news they wanted, I had unintentionally brought them an exclusive that wrote my entire name–and face–off the map and potentially ruined Shohei Ohtani’s clean record.

Shohei Ohtani, despite his happy-go-lucky and passive demeanor, was a very serious and straight-laced person. I already knew this in university but I got to see more of this side of him when we had started the fucking thing. Even though I had clearly told him that I didn’t want any strings attached, it was unavoidable to give and receive bits and pieces of each other when we’re not naked.

I did enjoy talking to Shohei under the sheets. His ingenious ideas and the way he talked about the things he adored spilled all over him, like afternoon sunlight streaming in between curtains, making way even through the small spaces to cast his light. I basked into this warmth as much time allowed me, because who knows when I can experience the glow of his presence again after all the chaos.

He was exactly like the golden hour: a warm afternoon orange luminescence that usually only stays for ten to fifteen minutes a day. If you wait too long to look up, he disappears quickly as he goes, leaving only the faint orange, yellow and pink hues chasing after him before the black of the night takes over you.

Well, now the fairytale has run its course and the sun has set to announce that golden hour is over. Night has finally fallen on me and I’m feeling scared and alone.

The first thing I did was to grab as much stuff as I could and put them all in my luggage and filed for an indefinite leave.

As if like clockwork, my phone rang and saw Shohei’s name on the caller ID. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. What could I possibly say to him? That I used him just for the clicks and the views? That after all this time we spent together, he would realize that I am still the same despicable, scathing piece of garbage who’d trample on anyone just for a few cents?

So I don’t answer. Even when he calls back again and again and leaves me twenty or more messages by the hour. I turned my phone off. The latest message from Ohtani coming up on the notifications bar read, “Where are you?” before the screen flashed to black.

I have nothing but my pride left. I’d like to keep it that way. In such a way, I was embarrassed, too. I thought I finally had something to brag about. A job that I actually liked and enjoyed, a peaceful mind, and the possibility of liking a guy who had shown me nothing but kindness.

And because I couldn’t handle all of this, I handled it like I have always handled things: I ran away like a coward.

I rode a bus without reading its destination card and let it drive me away as far as it could, to someplace where no one knew me or Shohei Ohtani, or had any idea about the news.

The bus drove away and I never looked back.

================================

Waiting Until My Spring Comes Again: Shohei’s POV

Just like that I lost her. She wasn’t even mine to begin with.

When the news broke out, I was so furious that I wanted to drive to the news outlet that published the article and give them a piece of my mind. I knew my blind rage would have done more damage so I didn’t.

Instead, I looked for her and wanted to let her know that whatever happens, I won’t drop her just like that. That I’m willing to acknowledge the rumors and make it official, if she wanted to.

I’ve always been open to the idea of taking it to the next level with her but every time I broached the subject, she would change the topic, get into a foul mood, or try to pick a fight with me. Which I found endearing. She’s so adorable when she pouts. And when she pushes her luck thinking a five foot four girl like her can withstand someone as tall as me.

I just can’t help but laugh and feel a flutter in my stomach. She’s someone who has been adorable and held a special corner in my heart.

Y/N’s face was so expressive and whatever emotion she was in it would always be evident on her face. When she’s happy, a dimple on her cheek shows up. When she’s feeling sad or down, she’d look downcast and would prefer that you leave her alone. When she’s thinking about something deep, she would chew on her lower lip and always had a blank almost unfocused stare. Despite her many faces, I’m sure as hell that I love all of them. I wanted to be by her side when all this shit happened, I wanted to see which face she was making. Is she pissed like I was? Is she sad? I wouldn’t know. The moment her number didn’t connect after I had tried reaching her, I already knew that she was avoiding me.

I lost count of how many messages I had sent her, of how many missed calls and voicemails I left her. She was unreachable. She gave me her spare key so when I tried visiting her apartment, it was empty.

She was gone.

And only the traces of her lingered in her apartment. Her unwashed mug with leftover stale coffee was on the kitchen counter, specks of lipstick staining the mouth. Dirty clothes hanging on her bathroom door, forgotten and unwashed. The peachy scent of her purifier that always latches on to her clothes whenever we go out. Her unread books on her coffee table, some dog eared and annotated.

Everything that I love about her is here except for her and I miss her.

For the next couple of days, I dodged the media and focused on training, playing and practicing. Those three over and over again. I tried to not think about her and lose sleep because of her. An athlete’s wellbeing is connected to quality sleep.

But she was everywhere I went. Pieces of her were scattered all over the places I avoided, and it was my fault really, for bringing her to places we usually hid. For hoping that someday, the secrets we hid would be our stories to tell. Now I just let her memories rot inside my heart, where she should be.

I thought it would be easier when you just let it slip by but the more days that passed without seeing her, the more I feel a gnawing pain in my heart. She had sucked all my sunlight and took it all away with her.

I want her back.

=====================================

My Answer is You

Eleven days. It took me nine days to realize running away was a bad idea.

When I first got off the bus, I thought the place looked familiar. Turns out, I rode the bus to my hometown, to the very south and the last bus stop until it turned around to go back to the city.

When I appeared in front of my mom–the first time in a long time–she had immediately said, “Did something in the city?”

The moment she asked, I broke down in tears. She shushed and consoled me while I cried like a little kid. Like the way I had bawled to her when my first boyfriend broke up with me, or when my love birds died from illness, the other from loneliness.

It feels like I would die of loneliness, Mom. I had said.

Did he really say that? Did he tell you that it’s over? She cooed.

I was embarrassed to admit to my mom that no, Shohei had never told me anything because I had shut him out even before I could give him the chance. But what if that call was already the end of it all? What if answering his call meant exactly what I had thought. That would shatter me more.

So, no, Mom, you can call your daughter a coward but in her heart, it’s all over.

The next forty-eight hours at home was a blur. After feeding me with what feels like a day’s worth of homemade dishes, she made me wash the dishes, clean my old room, and the living room as well. And when that wasn’t enough, she made me go with her to the night market and bought whatever seafood she could find to feed me.

Is this what you did when Dad left? I wanted to ask her. Did you go around acting as normal while nursing a wounded heart? Did you go all through that facade just to show me that you were strong for the both of us?

She had her back to me, her hands pale and creased with age, showing signs of passage of time and her hardwork to put me to school. I know she was trying to make me busy to keep my mind off of Shohei. I’m not sure if she fully understands the scandal but she was trying her best to keep my head above the water. Probably just like how she always did.

I wish I was strong like you, Mom.

On the fourth and fifth day, she had let me work under the sun harvesting corn. Which I absolutely despised. I had to wear sun hats and these jumpers to cover myself from the heat.

“It’s cheap labor for letting you stay and eat my food,” she said when I complained. “Tomorrow, you’ll help me sell these at the market.”

As the days grew idly by, I’ve grown more accustomed to rising early and eating less meat and more vegetables. I willingly went out of the sun more to do housework, like hanging clothes, watering Mom’s plants, however, I was still not willing to harvest her vegetables, which she made me do a lot. When I say a lot, it means everyday since then.

On the eleventh morning, I woke up earlier than usual and found my mom already awake. She busied herself with a cup of coffee.

“Good morning, mom.” I yawned, grabbing my own mug.

“After breakfast, pack your things and go back to the city.” She said quietly.

“Huh?” I’m not sure I heard her right. Is she kicking me out?

She pushed today’s newspaper into my hands and pointed at an article. An article shows a picture of Shohei smiling at the camera, behind him was a framed candid photo of me turning my head just in time when the camera clicked, I was wearing a sleeveless shirt, a shawl draped over my shoulders, and the wind blowing my hair and covering my face slightly. Just by looking at the photo, it looked like a time when Shohei and I drove to the beach. He had brought his camera and took a lot of photos.

The article said, “Portfolio on Love: Shohei Ohtani’s Photographs Displayed for A Cause.”

“....and when the powerhouse athlete gets a day off, he plays around his camera and takes photos of anything, everywhere. He reveals Insider Today that for the first time ever, he is displaying his portfolio to the public at the Grand City Museum starting today until the 31st of the month, with the theme of “hello, love, are you there?”

“...’I don’t know how else to define love but this. I hope when the public sees this, they will instantly know that my photographs are a reflection of my love,’ he said.

“When asked if this was a confirmation to the rumors flying around recently, he just smiled sadly and said, "I'm hoping that this answers everyone’s questions, especially hers.”

“If your face is plastered on all of the newspapers, it wouldn’t make sense to stay here longer.” Mom said after a while. She had finished her breakfast and took them away to the sink.

“It doesn’t end well if you’re too afraid, my darling.” she said, not looking at me. “To love and to be hurt is to be brave. If it doesn’t work out after facing him, then by all means. Come home. My doors are always open for you. And I will feed you rice cakes while you harvest my corn.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. She wasn’t a hugger but welcomed my hug and patted me on the shoulders. “Now go, before all the chismosas wake up and corners you.”

I packed my bags and left home, my heart pieced back together. It was not wrong to go home and seek shelter. What I did wrong was leaving Shohei all alone when he took most of the fall.

Five hours, one taxi ride, and a ten minute walk later, I arrived at the city museum, nervous, anxious, feeling a little lightheaded and hesitant. I wiped my sweaty palms and got inside.

It was not as packed as I had expected, probably because it was a little over after lunch, though there was still a relatively big crowd overall.

When I stepped into the hall featuring Shohei’s displays, I felt a surge of emotion. It was a collection of all the photographs of his loved ones. In a black and white collection, he had photographed his parents holding hands while walking in the snow, a photo of his dog sleeping idly on his couch, a photo of the football stadium in a wide angle shot, showing Ippei and the rest of his teammates playing a warm up game before practice.

When I turned to a corner, that’s when I saw it. There were multiple frames hanging intricately on one side, showing all of the photos he took of me. One during university days, where I was showing him a strangely large eggplant during our photo walks at the market. There was another with me looking at him angrily for reasons I couldn’t remember, and a more recent one, in the middle, where he was holding my hand while I walked forward, back facing the camera.

On the metal plate below were words that read in cursive: “2009–present. Moments of love that I hold dear.”

At that moment, tears had started rolling down my cheek and I couldn’t help but sob. The onlookers nearby started moving away, probably weirded out by the sudden burst of emotion over some piece of art.

They weren’t just pieces of art. These were moments when Shohei and I were together and maybe realized that it was love.

By then, someone on my left offered a handkerchief and I gingerly took it, wiping my tears-strewn face. I muttered an apology for ruining the fabric.

“This is not the first time someone cried in front of my photographs. Some were absolutely heartbroken after seeing them.” a man’s voice said. And that reeled me back as I turned around and saw Shohei standing in front me.

“I knew this would lure you back,” he said, smiling.

His face was a little gaunt and tired. He had dark circles around his eyes that I’ve never seen before. I could only look at him and he looked back. I had so many things I wanted to say to him, so many things I wanted to explain but he spoke first and said:

“Did you get a tan?” he started, raising an eyebrow.

“I-I was harvesting corn!” I said, covering my face with both hands. I didn’t even have the time to put on makeup or a swab of lipstick and that’s the first thing he notices.

He took my hands and held them tightly against his chest. “No one looks this beautiful even after harvesting corn.”

“Shut up,” I said looking away.

He tipped my chin and held my face. “Let’s start again, shall we?”

I raised an eyebrow in question.

“Hi, my name is Shohei Ohtani. I’m an athlete and an amateur photographer sometimes. I’ve been in love with the girl in the photographs since forever.”

I managed a smile and laced my hands around his neck. “Hi, I’m a ceramics maker and sometimes, a farmer, you should see the corn I harvest. You look so familiar. I think you look like my future boyfriend.”

His eyes perked up and laughed at our silly little game. He went in for a kiss and I obliged, feeling safe and brave in his arms.

Let them take the damn photographs and write the articles all they want, but they could never take my sunshine away ever again.

#shohei ohtani au #shohei ohtani imagines #shohei ohtani #shohei ohtani pov #shohei ohtani fluff #shohei ohtani smut

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thenyoumightaswellwrestleangels · 6 months ago

Text

There is a curse in me that will not sleep (and a home in you that will not leave)

Day 1 of Thank You, Haikyuu - event masterlist here

pairing: hinata shouyou x reader (gn) x kageyama tobio

length: 7.6k

genre: fairytale au !! fluff, hurt/comfort

warnings: very vaguely beauty and the beast inspired, a bit of miscommunication but it's all resolved in the end, I know it's angsty but I promise there's a happy, comforting ending and everybody ends up alright, basically just a lot of emotional stress but that's my trademark by now

a/n: woooow ok au week has officially begun !! I am still kinda scrambling to get all of these finished in time ahaha but this first one is monumentous so I hope everyone enjoys <3

tags: @love-and-lore

It's not often that you see Hinata Shouyou this way, weary and sullen, with his brows furrowed and his gaze turned down. It looks wrong on him, like he's wearing someone else's face - someone else problems. So, of course, you throw the rag you'd been using over your shoulder and flip the open sign by the window of the tavern, quietly sending your barback home for the evening as you make your way over to Shouyou.

He's so distracted by whatever's going on in his mind, so wrapped up in the heaviness of running a town like this that he doesn't even notice your presence until you tap your knuckles on the wood of the bar next to him.

"Did you want a refill?" You offer gently. Shouyou just blinks, spinning on his stool to see the empty tavern before turning back to you.

"You're closed. I should go, I don't want to bother - why isn't anything cleaned or put away? Where's that new barback you hired?" You laugh at his jumble of words - the way his mind bounces around is nothing new to either of you and serves as a comfort that he isn't too far gone right now. You take his cup away from him despite his gentle protests, frowning as he lets you peel his fingers off of it so that you can dump out his ale, serving him a new, fresh pint.

"I sent him home," you say easily. "There isn't much to do tonight, I can take care of it myself."

"You work too hard."

"What were you thinking about?" Shouyou shoots you his best attempt at a scathing look when you dodge his comment, but he turns into such a lovesick puppy when you're around that the effect of it falls short. You merely cross your arms and raise your brows as you wait for him to speak.

"I'm… worried," he sighs eventually, shoulders sagging in defeat as he admits it.

"Cleary," you quip back gently, moving to begin wiping down tables. "What about, though?"

"Did you know they're raising taxes again?" He says quietly. You sigh and pause your cleaning, rolling out the tension in your shoulders - or trying to.

"I thought you had some say in that?" You ask. Shouyou scowls into his cup.

"This may be my town to look after, but I'm only a nobleman. When the royal family demands it, even I have to obey." You hum in understanding as you throw your rag onto the bar and move to begin hauling benches up and onto the tables. Shouyou makes an alarmed, disbelieving sort of sound and shoots to his feet to gently shoo you away, picking up benches in your place.

You roll your eyes, of course, making a big show of huffing and mumbling under your breath about how you can do it yourself. He just smiles in that gentle way of his and you know that the heat in your face and the honest care in his eyes as you move to put up the small chairs, instead, give away the show of it all.

Hinata Shouyou is in love with you because you let him be - desperately against your better judgment.

"We've dealt with raised taxes before, Shouyou," you say quietly. "We'll be ok."

"For how long?" He snaps back, holding his hands up in surrender when you shoot him a look. "I just mean that there's a limit. I'm worried about… well, I'm worried about the whole town. There's only so much the people can take."

"So what will you do?" You ask as he puts up the final bench and lets you usher him back to his seat at the bar - the only chair you'd left available.

"I'm… going to talk to the prince." That makes you pause, eyes wide as you stare at him.

"No you're not," you say quickly. Shouyou looks at you with a care that rattles you, an apologetic sort of love showing on his face.

"He's going to help me… he has to. It's the only option I have." You sigh at Shouyou's words and grip the edge of the bar.

"People are warned away from that castle for a reason, Shouyou," you say quietly. "The king banished his son there for a reason. The forest is impassible for a reason."

"I know, my beloved." You don't even have the heart to chastise him for calling you that when he pulls himself to his feet and sweeps his way around the bar to stand in front of you, the silk of his shirt shimmering under the dull, flickering candlelight. His hands grip yours firmly and he pulls them up to press kisses across your palms, making you scoff and turn your head away. The gold of his rings are cool against your skin and the jewels in them shine, reflecting their colours onto the stains of your apron.

"I must," Shouyou goes on to say. "I must do what needs to be done to take care of this town… to take care of you."

"You will not die stupidly for me." Your voice warbles as you speak and you curse yourself for it. Shouyou just smiles, keeping his fingers intertwined with your own so that he can swing your connected hands back and forth between the two of you.

"I will not," he says firmly. "I will leave at first light tomorrow and be home by dusk. You'll see. Before the flowers on your mantle wilt, I will be back here with you, beloved."

It takes two days for the petals on your flowers to start curling and falling, two days without Shouyou's return before you've driven yourself mad enough to go after him, entrusting the tavern to your young, nervous barback and setting off on your horse. It takes another day entirely to maneuver through the dense wood that separates the town from its wretched, looming castle, the trees thick and sturdy and blanketing the forest floor in darkness.

You wonder, in a crawling, frightened sort of way, if Shouyou's out here somewhere in the depths - if you'll stumble over his body being taken by the forest.

But it does not happen. Nothing happens until you stumble, finally, onto the castle, dark and crumbling, with ivy crawling up the walls and moss covering the stone. Once, you can tell, it was beautiful, but that age of it seems to have died out long ago and the remnants stand haunting and silent until the end of time.

The silence, of course, you test as you shove open the great doors and stumble into the vast, arched entryway. There are no soldiers, no footmen or maids or anyone. There is only you and the silence and the sliver of light from the open doorway.

Maybe it was the nervous whining of your horse outside, her hoof pawing at the ground, that made enough noise to draw attention. Maybe it was your own fault with the way you pushed open the doors. Maybe it was - well, it doesn't matter, you suppose, as the prince himself stomps down a spiralling, ornate staircase and towards you, regal cape flying out behind him and scowl clear on his face.

"Go," he spits angrily, the fury rolling off of him like thunder as he points out the open door behind you. You remember, somewhere far away, of the stories you've heard - of his endless pride and selfish ego, of the day he was banished by his parents, sent to live in exile while his sister was groomed to take the throne instead of him.

You should leave, you think haltingly. You should run and remind yourself how lucky to are to have a life to flee back to, you should -

"Don't be rude," you snap instead. The prince, for what it's worth, merely stares at you and holds his hand to his chest, recoiling from the way you slapped his pointed finger away from you. "I'm looking for someone."

"There's no one here," he says back, voice heated and loud. You cross your arms.

"Perhaps not now, but he would have passed through. It's Hinata Shouyou, the nobleman presiding over the town -"

"I know who my own nobleman is." Tobio''s voice is thunderous, echoing in the otherwise empty entrance hall. You snap your mouth shut for just a moment.

"Perhaps then, you'd be helpful enough to know where he is." Surely, you shouldn't speak to royalty like this, you think distantly. But surely, an exiled prince living in a crumbling castle of a time long gone, a living ghost residing in a relic of the past, cannot threaten as much harm as you've been led to believe.

"He is gone," he says simply before turning, his cape swinging elegantly to hit you across the knees, causing you to stumble as you chase after him.

"When? Where? Wh -" Your incessant questions have Tobio turning from halfway up the staircase, scowling down at you where you skid to a halt and look up at him.

"He, smarter than you perhaps, left when he realized that his trip was fruitless. You will, as well," he says stubbornly. You begin up the stairs again and he tips his head back and sighs.

"He never returned home," you shout back stubbornly, your voice matching the volume of his, ricocheting off the stone around you. "He could be dead because of you, lost somewhere out there and gone and -"

But not even your voice, loud as it is, is enough to drown out the crack of thunder outside, booming and quaking as dark stormclouds stir over the horizon, beginning to blanket the land in darkness.

"The sun is beginning to set," Tobio says rather quietly. "Anyone would die trying to cross the wood at night." You turn to face the open doors at his words, your eyes wide and jaw tight at the darkening sky and the onslaught of rain that begins over the valley. Your hand grips the bannister of the staircase as you stare, as you consider the possibility of dying tonight alone in the wood, of never going home and seeing daybreak again.

"The valley will flood," you say quietly, eyes still trained on the darkness outside. "The wood will turn to a marsh and the landslides will block the trails. I will not make it home tonight."

"I am not so fool as to be unaware of the weather," the prince says haughtily, making your hand tighten on the gold leaf of the bannister in anguish. You wonder painfully, for a moment, if this is what happened to Shouyou, if he was sent to his death so uncaringly, as well.

But then Tobio sighs like he's been burdened by something great and turns to continue up the stairs.

"A room will be prepared for you here. You will leave at first light when the rain stops."

You realize at dinner that night, that perhaps the prince is not as alone as you'd all thought - the realization comes to you as you shift in your plush velvet seat at the large banquet table, servers appearing on either side of you to load rich, delicate food onto your plate.

But something sits heavily in your heart as you think back to the way he'd demanded that you dine with him, the way his eyes stared hollowly at the long, empty table. It must be a curse, you think, to have such space in your heart and home and no one to fill it. You wonder if you could even tell yourself you have a home at all in such conditions.

But then you think of Shouyou, of his beaming smile and kind eyes and soft, firm hands, and the kindness you've been fostering is tampered out again.

"How could you not help him?" You say abruptly, letting your cutlery clatter onto your plate as you sit back in your chair.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Your people are suffering and you sit here living in lavish solitude and turning away the one person who was brave enough to ask you for help."

"Asking is an interesting way of putting it," Tobio says dryly. You falter, unsure of his meaning and letting your words die out.

"What… exactly happened here when Shouyou came to you?" You ask eventually.

"It is none of your concern." He looks away stubbornly, the candlelight illuminating a faint dusting of blush across his cheeks. It must be from the wine, you tell yourself. Nothing more.

"He is my concern," you snap. The prince stares at you, then, something deep and looming in his eyes that you can't place - something that makes you shift again as his gaze bores into you.

"What a life you live, having someone to make you act in such a way," he says softly. You splutter out a defence about how you're friends and look away. The shadows of the pillar candles flicker and splashes of light dance over your faces, like the golden heat is trying desperately to breathe life into this cursed place.

"You have not told me why you will not help," you say in lieu of addressing his comment and his disbelief at your denial.

"And I will not," he responds stubbornly. Your eyes narrow as you glare at him, crossing your arms over your chest.

"You're lying." Perhaps, you think desperately as he slams his fist against the abruptly, you've hit a nerve. Perhaps Shouyou was right all those times he told you that this mouth of yours will get you into trouble.

But then the prince sighs and murmurs something about this being his second tiresome overnight guest and you perk up, locking onto him again.

"The second? You mean -"

"Yes, of course, your beloved Shouyou stayed for far too long - days, in fact. What did you think happened to him?" Tobio says cavalierly. You huff and run a hand through your travel-dampened, tangled hair - much to Tobio's displeasure.

"Why didn't you lead with that?" You snap. "He was probably on his way back to me as I left - he's probably arriving home now and thinks I'm dead - or worse, stuck here with you." That comment, you think mildly, probably wasn't necessary, but the scowl on the prince's face is reward enough.

"Then he's home," he spits the word. "And he's safe. There is nothing to be concerned about." Tobio says it like it's final, like there's no ill will that could befall the two of you now, but as you look out the stained glass window toward the night sky and the storm that stretches endlessly onward through flashes of white-hot lightning, you fear that the worst is yet to come.

As Shouyou stands in your empty tavern, listening to your barback stammer on about how you'd left to go after him and haven't returned yet, he thinks that there is no pain like this, no fear like what he feels now, knowing that you're alone in that cursed wood because of him.

It's begun raining, thunder crashing in the sky and lightning striking down from above and illuminating the horizon as it stretches over the valley. There is no way you'll survive a night in the wood like this, Shouyou realizes as he stumbles to a bench, sagging down onto it and putting his head in his hands. There is no hope on a night like this.

So he stands abruptly, declaring that he's going after you, when the barback all but throws himself in front of the door to stop him.

"You'll die out there," he says earnestly. Shouyou's hands tremble as he clenches them into fists so tightly that his knuckles turn white.

"They could already be dead," he snaps.

"And if they aren't, then you're just killing yourself." Shouyou tries to remember the name of the trembling boy in front of him. Yamaguchi, he thinks you'd said once. But then he thinks of you again and a crash of thunder rattles the glasses on the bar.

"There's no use in both of you dying tonight," Yamaguchi says quietly, his voice shaking as his eyes grow wet. Shouyou sighs and puts a hand on the boy's shoulder gently, a comforting sort of apology as his shoulders sag and defeat takes hold of him.

"At first light, then," he says stiffly, and a flash of lightning illuminates the gaunt fear on his face. Yamaguchi finds himself wishing that you'd never left home at all.

That night, you're aware, should've been a fitful sleep with the large bed chamber and silken sheets and mounds of pillows that you're surrounded with. After dinner that night, Tobio had had you well taken care of - a hot bath drawn for you and fresh clothes laid out, the fireplace lit and glowing golden and the bed given fresh linens.

But there had been something eating at you all night, something akin to guilt clawing at you from the inside as you thought of Shouyou out there, lost and without you, while you luxuriate in bed. When you wake from your turbulent night - from nightmares of the nobleman that had you tossing and turning, all hopes of returning to him are stamped out by the darkness that still swirls overhead.

The storm, you realize when you run to the large, ornate window, is still raging, darkening the endless sky and wreaking havoc over the land. There will be no returning home for you today, and there will be no safety found in Shouyou's arms.

Three days, the cursed storm lasts, raging overhead and causing the ancient castle to shutter and sway. Three days of you trapped in this stone maze with Tobio, trailing after him to ask why, why, why couldn't he bring himself to be a good person just once? It's late in the evening, on the third night, when the two of you find yourselves having cracked open a bottle of wine and sitting on the lavish, soft rug that lays in front of the great fireplace in his lounge. It had taken some convincing - and some drinks to get him down there, but the wine has begun flowing easily and Tobio, you realize delightedly, is almost relaxed.

He softens a bit more, much to his own displeasure, when you sway with how tipsy you are, leaning into him so closely that he can feel your breath on his lips. But then he looks down at you and the sparkling mirth in your eyes and he finds them clear and alert - not nearly as hazed from the wine as he'd expected to see.

"You're drunk," he murmurs anyway. You just smile.

"No more than you," you point out, letting your gaze flicker down to his lips for just a moment. It's enough, you learn quickly, to make him lean into you, closer and closer and melding his body to yours.

It's the wine jumbling his own thoughts, Tobio assures himself, that leads him to close the gap, pressing his lips to yours and tangling a hand in your hair. He makes a small, whining noise somewhere in the back of his throat, something burning in him at the touch of you against him - at the touch of something living against the ghost that he's become.

When you part, your chests heaving a bit too much and your lips both kiss bitten and reddened, he sighs and tips his head back to thump against the settee that you're both leaning against.

"No wonder the two of you are so in love when you're both so ready to use your wiles to get what you want from me," Tobio murmurs, his eyes closed enough that he doesn't notice you staring at him.

"What does that mean?" You ask breathily. He snaps his head up and looks at you with wide eyes.

"Nothing," he says hastily. "I don't know what I was saying."

"Oh my god," you say bluntly, seemingly ignoring his assurances that he was simply talking nonsense because of the wine. "You slept with -"

"It doesn't matter," Tobio all but whines, petulantly screwing his eyes shut and refusing to look at you. You just laugh, though, a loud and honest thing as you pat his shoulder comfortingly. Tobio opens one eye wearily and you're smiling at him gently, not a hint of mocking to be found in your gaze.

"I don't blame you," you shrug. "He's… well, he's Shouyou." Things quiet down significantly at that and you sober noticeably as you look out the window towards the blackened, stormy sky.

"He will come for you," Tobio says somberly.

"He shouldn't have to," is your simple response.

"Why do you deny him?" Tobio's fingertip traces over your exposed shoulder where your shirt's slipped in your tipsy, giggly state and thinks back to when he gave you the clothes, to when you spluttered and looked away and told him how inappropriate it would be for you to wear his belongings. But you hadn't brought anything with you, as he'd pointed out, and silk often feels nicer than three-day-old cotton.

"He doesn't really love me," your quiet, sullen words make Tobio pause, his fingers freezing on your skin as he considers what you've said. "He asked me to marry me again before he left, you know."

"Again?" Tobio asks breathily, cursing himself for the weak sound of his own voice. You hum in affirmation.

"For the third time, yes." You swirl your wine in your cup as you speak, something lonely and hollow flitting through your eyes that reminds Tobio a nauseating amount of himself.

"Why?" He asks simply, pulling his hand away from you as something clenches in his heart, as something in him aches. It's loneliness, he knows, deep and penetrating. Jealousy, perhaps.

"He's noble," you say it like it's obvious. "He can't marry someone like me. It's fun, but that's all - like a little bubble of happiness that has to burst one day." You pluck at the rug as you speak, pulling at threads that are worth more than your home. You wonder what home you'll have to return to, after all this.

Tobio, sitting next to you and reeling from your words, can't fathom why you think so lowly of yourself when you look up at him, beautiful and kind and smart as a whip. As you sigh and reach for the wine bottle, topping up your cup and then pouring into his without comment, he wonders what it must be like to find home in someone like you.

Shouyou, as he wades through the forest paths towards the end of the storm, clings desperately to any semblance of home that he once had with you. He's not sure it was worth it to wait until the weather began to clear, although if Yamaguchi had his way, he'd be waiting until the rain slowed even more before setting out. The boy had been near tears again when Shouyou'd announced that he was going now, and by foot so as not to risk his horse's safety.

He wonders, in a nagging, guilty way, if that boy is about to inherit the life of someone else - if he's about to mourn the people who he's just begun to call home.

But three days of wondering if you died to try to save him was enough to drive Shouyou to hysteria, pushing him out and into the cold, back towards the towering trees and wall of darkness. As he wades through broken branches and felled trees and tumbling rocks and floods, he thinks about you all the while - about every moment, every fleeting glance.

He thinks about the first time he'd asked you to marry him, earnest and honest and caught up in puppy love. You'd laughed at him then, reminded him that he'd only known you for a week since you'd moved to town and opened the tavern. You'd asked him, at the time, what your favourite flower was, and when he didn't have an answer, you asked how he could possibly know that he wanted to marry you if he didn't even know you.

You'd assumed, of course, that that would be the end of it, that he must have just been some flirt who thought his money and influence earned him the right to toy with who he pleased. But Shouyou is nothing if not persistent, and day after day he appeared by your side, his gaze only growing more lovesick as time wore on.

He thinks, as he slips on a mossy rock and stumbles into knee-deep mud, about the second time he asked you to marry him, a few years after that. You'd hired your barback, much to Shouyou's relief, and you'd chosen a shy young boy who needed coin and a bit of life experience and someone kind to help him get it. He'd watched you help Yamaguchi throughout the day, showing him how to run the tavern, how to pour the ale, how to check to see if the bread was rising well.

Shouyou had looked past you, then, at the vase of orchids that you kept by the counter, at your favourite flowers. He'd gotten them for you days ago, he'd remembered, so it must have almost been time for some new ones. When you'd come over to refill his cup, he'd asked you again to marry him. You'd laughed - again, and told him to ask again when he was sober, pressing a kiss to his cheek and stopping to water your orchids on your way past him.

The third time, of course, was the night before he'd left. He'd stopped by the tavern as the sun began to rise and bathe the town in a dripping, golden glow that stretched beyond the valley and towards the looming wood. Standing next to his horse, he'd let you clutch his hands in yours as tightly as you'd needed to, shushing your worries gently and pressing a soft kiss to the crown of your head. You were scared for him, notably, in a way that made his heart ache as he realized how foreign the sight of you trembling and nervous was. He'd asked you to marry him again, in that moment, whispering it against your hair as you let your face tuck into the safety of his chest. You'd squeezed his hands tighter at that, and Shouyou braced himself yet again for another no when you'd looked up at him earnestly, instead.

You'd made him promise to come home to you safely. You'd promised that you'd say yes when he returned to you without harm.

Alone in the wood, in the dead of night, slipping on loose rocks and mud, Shouyou desperately wishes he'll get to see you again - that he'll get to hear that yes. But something in him stirs painfully, a worry nagging at his gut. What is he to do, he wonders, without a home anymore? What is he to do without you?

Waking up in the morning with a raging wine hangover and Tobio's arms wrapped around you is certainly a jarring surprise, one that has you shooting up from where the two of you had fallen asleep on the plush rug. He's groaning and throwing a hand over his eyes to block out the light and ward off his headache, you assume, when the realization that light is streaming in through the windows catches your attention.

The storm, you realize as you look out towards the clear, rolling horizon, is finally passing. You turn to tell Tobio, to announce to him that you can finally return home, when you're faced with him sitting up and leaning back on his hands as he looks out past you towards the shimmering, golden sun that illuminates the crumbling corners of the place he's lived in for so long.

His face, hard and solemn, has you snapping your mouth shut. You both understand the truth - you will leave and he will disappear again, returning to roam the halls of a life that should not belong to the living, eternally alone in this curse of his.

"Tobio -"

"I'll send a messenger ahead," he interrupts you. It's the first time you've said his name, he notices immediately, and it rings through his heart in a painful, abrupt way. He can't remember the last time someone said his name. He notices, rather painfully, that he'd almost forgotten someone could. "That way your beloved Shouyou will know you're safe and you can wait for the forest paths to be cleared a bit before you leave."

You should disagree, you know - you should fling yourself out the grand front doors and never look back, returning to your sunshine love and the life that you've built for yourself. But you move, instead, to sit on the settee next to Tobio's head and place a hand on his shoulder, agreeing quietly. There is a sadness that pours off of him, oozing onto the floorboards and seeping into your soul. There is something about him that makes you stay, some cursed sort of pull that brings you closer.

You stay by his side more than you should - and you know that, somewhere deep down and ignored. You don't sit opposite him at breakfast, separated by the long banquet table. You sit next to him, letting your hands brush accidentally every now and then as you eat.

"It is wrong," he says quietly, toward the end of the meal. You freeze, the closeness between you feeling sweltering as Tobio points it out. "The raising taxes, the treatment of the people… I know it's wrong."

Oh, you think slowly, right. There is more to this world than the hand that brushes against yours.

"Then why not change it?" You ask slowly, tilting your head to look up at him. He stares ahead, at the faded family crest on the chipped wall and the dust that's collected on it.

"My family stopped listening to me a long time ago. I am… powerless, these days. There is nothing I could do."

"Oh," you say flatly, letting your hands twist in your lap. You consider that perhaps you should've known that - should've known that someone so cast out would lose any ties, watching them sever over time as the vines climbed higher over his castle walls and sealed him away from the world. "Tobio, I'm sorry -"

"My father is too old to carry the crown these days. He's stepping down… my sister's coronation will be within the month." He says abruptly, moving past your sorrow, your sympathy. You suppose it means nothing to someone whose life is already dead, already mourned for and buried.

"Will you… go?" You ask hesitantly. He shakes his head.

"Of course not. But I will write. I love my sister, as much as I am capable. It's not enough, I know, but I hope it will be sufficient to sway her. A plea from her brother must mean something, still… and the people do not deserve to suffer by my family's hand." He says it like it's simple, like his words ring with undisputable truth. But it's in your nature to dig up mountains when you find them in your way.

"You are capable of love, Tobio," you say simply, the firmness in your voice making him pause and stare at you intently. "I've seen it." Tobio just scoffs at your words, though, earnest as they are.

"You don't understand what you're saying," he says, his voice hard. You frown at him as you lean back in your chair, crossing your arms.

"What is it that you think you are? Hm? What is it that you're so afraid of me seeing? I have spent three days with you, Tobio, and you are no more than a man." You say stubbornly. The prince looks at you hard, his eyes dark, striking against the backdrop of the golden sun pouring through the windows and into his life.

"Monsterous things don't often show themselves as monstrous things." Tobio's voice is as icy as he can make it, cold and cutting and sharp. But it wavers, ever so slightly, caught by the voice of a boy who lost everything before he'd even been given a chance to learn how to hold it.

"There is nothing monstrous in you," you respond gently, leaning towards him. He leans back, away from you, away from the light that you pour into him. "You are beloved to me and that is all."

"Stop," he says firmly, squeezing his eyes shut as if your words burn through him. "Don't say that."

"What?" You push. "The truth? Don't say that I love -"

But commotions, you've found, always hit at the worst of times, and a shouting, banging disturbance down in the direction of the entrance hall draws the two of you away from each other. Tobio, for his part, sighs like a knife blade had been lifted from his neck and stands quickly to attend to the issue, leaving you to run after him and through the winding, dark halls.

Shouyou's yelling voice is what greets you when you get closer, the volume of it carrying throughout the castle as the panicked spluttering of the messenger that had been sent out hours ago follows. You nearly trip over yourself rushing to the hall to meet him, to see him looking up at you, dirty and tired and desperate.

Shouyou meets you at the bottom of the staircase, having gotten over his initial shock of seeing you here and alive and well so that he can crush you into a hug, a hand cupping the back of your head protectively as he holds you against him and buries his nose into your hair.

You hold onto him, of course, gripping onto his shirt as tears blur your vision and wet his collar. He shushes you with all the gentleness that you remember, swaying you back and forth to comfort you as he tightens his arms around you and whispers delicate promises in your ear that he's here, that you're alright and he'll take you home.

And Tobio… Tobio watches, looks on from the staircase at the two of you coming home to each other and feels the walls closing in on him, feels the gilded, arched ceiling press down, down, deeper into his soul.

Shouyou pulls away from you just enough to grip your face gently in his hands, tilting your head back and forth so that he can look at you thoroughly and make sure you're unharmed. Fortunately… you're really fine. Three days of lavish living with fine meals and lavender baths have treated you well, and you look up at Shouyou with shining eyes and a bright face.

He looks just past you, then, as if he's finally noticing the prince sweep down the rest of the staircase towards the two of you. He… blushes when their eyes meet and shifts on his feet, but there's a cold, impassive stare on Tobio's face.

"You may stay as long as you need to recuperate after your journey. Then… you may be off. The tax problem will be dealt with." Tobio disappears at that, spinning on his heel and gliding up the stairs, leaving the two of you alone in the vast emptiness of the hall.

You're with Shouyou in the bedroom that you'd begun to call your own later that evening, with him freshly washed and in new clothes and sitting by your side on the settee by the window. You're curled up against him, letting him hold an arm over your shoulder and stroke up and down your arm gently.

"What happened between you and Tobio?" You ask suddenly, causing Shouyou to freeze against you. He coughs a bit, clearing his throat and shifting as he looks out the window instead of at you. The sun is beginning to set, painting the sky in violets and pinks as it begins to dip below the horizon that stretches on over the valley.

"I… tried to convince him," he says carefully. "And I failed."

"Mhmm," you respond easily, a teasing note entering your voice that makes Shouyou blush. "But you tried really hard, didn't you?"

"I -" he clears his throat again. "I… yes. I did." You laugh at that, relief painting Shouyou's features as you melt further against him and squeeze his hand comfortingly.

"I got wine drunk and made out with him… if knowing that makes you feel better," you shrug. Shouyou sits up so fast that he jostles you, making you grumble as you sit up, too. He stares at you, mouth open in shock for a moment, before tipping his head back and laughing, pulling you into a close hug.

"He's really not what he's made out to be," Shouyou says quietly, swaying the two of you back and forth where you sit, your legs tangled together on the settee.

"Yea…" you respond, tipping your head back to look up at him somberly. "Some people are like that…" Shouyou looks down at you softly, stroking a hand over your cheek as you peer up at him. He says your name quietly, an earnest sort of prayer given to you as he smooths his thumb over your cheek.

"Shouyou…" you whisper back, pulling yourself closer to him as you grip onto the front of his shirt.

"Will you marry me?"

"…What about Tobio?" Shouyou laughs at your question, letting his head drop to your shoulder and sighing before dropping a kiss to your neck.

"I think that perhaps…" he begins slowly, lifting his head to look at you again, his face serious. "Perhaps our beloved Tobio has been the lonely prince for too long." You smile in a quiet sort of way at Shouyou's declaration, pulling yourself closer to press a gentle, firm kiss on his lips.

He makes a shocked sort of noise in the back of his throat before pulling you closer, a hand cupping the back of your neck to keep you against him. When you do finally part, he makes a point not to stray too far, resting his forehead against yours and grinning broadly.

"Do you have any idea how many years I've been waiting for you to do that?" He asks breathlessly. You giggle a bit and kiss him again, a quicker, lighter touch of your lips against his.

"Ask me again," you murmur, your lips brushing his.

"Will you marry me?" He's choked up by now, his voice warbling and eyes watery.

"Yes," you respond earnestly. Outside, the sun finally dips below the vast, reaching horizon and drowns the world in darkness, but Shouyou holds you to his chest and presses kisses to your ring finger while the fireplace glows with the heated embers of the evening's flames and the sound of home calls to you.

The days, admittedly, start to blend after that, with you and Shouyou taking up residence in the castle under the guise of him recovering. He is recovering, you assure yourself, it's just… taking a while. Surely… surely there's nothing else keeping you here, no ghost walking these halls that's drawing you to this life.

It's over breakfast one morning, the three of you taking up space at one end of the long banquet table, when Tobio announces that he's received a letter from his sister.

"She was… responsive," he says carefully, like the touch of joy seeping into his tone is something that he shouldn't be allowed to hold onto. "It was good to have her hear my pleas. She will be better in our parents' stead. She will be a better leader."

"And you?" Shouyou quips, a challenge rising in his voice. You shoot Shouyou a look, but he's staring determinedly at Tobio, and you're pleasantly surprised to see his gaze matched by the prince.

"It's high time I stepped up and began taking care of my people again," Tobio says firmly, a conviction ringing in his voice that has you smiling softly, reaching to brush a stray hair out of his face. Tobio can't help but soften at the action, taking your hand in his to smooth his thumb over your knuckles and brush against the engagement ring that Shouyou had given you all those nights ago.

Learning that he'd been keeping it with him, that he'd had the ring on a chain around his neck since the day he first proposed to you… well, you'd been thankful for the bedroom you'd been given that night - for the silk sheets and plush pillows and the privacy of the sprawling corridors outside.

As Tobio thumbs over your ring, you feel your face heat at the memory of that night, and as you shift in your seat and Shouyou send you a beaming smile, you know that he's smugly aware of what you're thinking of.

"Well," Shouyou says happily. "You may need some help, you know, coming back to your people and learning how to be what they need."

"And you might need some companionship," you chime in. "What, with this big, lonely castle and all." Tobio leans back in his chair and crosses his arms, trying desperately to maintain the stern look on his face - but a blush dusts itself over his cheekbones and a smile twitches on the corner of his lips.

"And what of your beloved tavern?" He asks you.

"There is more to me that is beloved besides the tavern," you say easily, glancing between the two of them. "And besides, Yamaguchi's been doing well enough on his own. He can take care of it while I'm away, and if the forest paths are finally looked after and kept safe, then the journey back and forth isn't so bad. Maybe it's… maybe it's time to move forward in this life a bit, hm?" Tobio sighs at that, letting his shoulders drop as his smile finally breaks through as he thinks of taking a step forward, of being alive once more. Shouyou whistles happily at the sight, leaning back in his chair and grinning.

"You two are getting married, or haven't you forgotten?" Tobio snipes, but there's mirth in his voice as he arches a brow.

"Well," you drawl. "A castle is such a beautiful place to hold a wedding."

"And what a perfect start," Shouyou chimes in. "There's no better way to gain back the people's love than by hosting an event like that. Open your home up to them, let them in."

"Well, sure," Tobio sighs, tipping his head back to look at the arched ceilings, the golden morning light shining in and illuminating the family crest hung on the dining room wall. "After all… this is a home now, isn't it?"

The wedding, of course, is as grand and extravagant as you could've imagined. Tobio'd fixed up the castle for the event, his sister having sent staff to make sure that everything was repaired and polished and restored to its former glory. Tobio was pleased by it, in his own way, tight-lipped and subtle and small about the whole thing. You and Shouyou would never comment on it, would never bring attention to it, but there is a life in Tobio now that wasn't there before - a colour in his cheeks and a shining light to his eyes.

But true to himself, even as he stood at the altar and officiated the wedding, he remained stoic and upright while you and Shouyou held hands and kissed, teary-eyed and trembling. It wasn't until that evening, late into the night when all of the guests had gone home, that the mask began to crack.

It's a privilege, you think as you lay in the master bedroom, to get to see Tobio like this - soft and smiling and laughing once he's really relaxed. By the end of the night, the silk sheets send cool chills across your exposed skin as you lay between your two lovers, Shouyou's hand intertwined with yours so that he can see your ring next to his, shining in the dim, golden light of the fireplace. In turn, you twist the fingers of your other hand through Tobio's matching ring - the one that you'd slipped on quietly during the festivities while the three of you snuck off somewhere private.

There had been chatter at the wedding, of course, about the prince's sudden appearance and the light that begun to fill up the corners of the valley. Even the forest, people whispered, had thinned, ground solidifying into safely travelled paths and creeping vines receding. The air had shifted, the clouds had dispersed, and the sun had risen in its endless way to shine light down to patches of the land that had not felt that warmth in years. It's like time, people began to say, is finally moving in the proper way, and life has been breathed back into the valley.

There's a sort of haze that fills the air surrounding the three of you, a comfortable safety that blankets you as you're tucked between the two of them, skin pressed against skin in the privacy of your home. You giggle at the thought, placing a kiss on Tobio's exposed chest where your face is pressed against him.

"What are you thinking of, my beloved?" Shouyou asks quietly, his voice a hushed whisper in the quiet room.

"Just that it's nice to be home," you whisper back, your words making Tobio hum in agreement and tighten his arm around your waist.

"It is nice, isn't it?" He says lowly. "To be somewhere… to have someone's that's home."

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invisiblegarters · 2 months ago

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High School Frenemy Final Thoughts

I know, I know. I'm super late with this one. To be honest I was just going to keep it for a set of micro reviews (as if there's anything micro about any of those, sigh), but well. *looks down* Yeah. So here I go.

Oh my gosh this show. What can I even say about this show. Gird yourself because you think I was long winded before? Ha, you don't know long winded. The thing is that this show was completely off of my radar. To the point that I don't even remember if there was a mock trailer for it at some point, and to this day I don't think I've seen the official one either. The only reason that I bothered watching is that one of my mutuals was telling me about it and I said, "huh, this reminds me of School 2013 I think it was. I watched it because of my undying love for Lee Jong Suk." To which they replied, "oh yes, I think it's an adaptation of that." And since I had watched that one and remembered liking it well enough, I decided to binge watch the first eight episodes (all that were out at the time). I've never been so happy for an "eh, I guess" watch in my life. Because this show was so good. Part of it is the source material - School 2013 was an excellent show that explored themes of friendship, the pressure that students are put under by parents to succeed, the trouble people get themselves into when they are desperate...it's just great. And this show explores that as well. Part of it is the cast - everyone was amazing even though I will never stop being mad that I loved Foie's Mr. Sung as much as I did - but in the end what it is is the same thing that got me with Peaceful Property: this show has heart. What I loved most about this show is how hard it fought the idea that is so prevalent today that people are stagnant. That is a lesson that I really wish we had more of in today's world - so often we're willing to hate others forever based on something they did years upon years ago, often with very little evidence that they've continued to do so as they grew older and ultimately, wiser. So often the thing that we are holding against them happened when they were teenagers. And so often those opinions have changed. But we don't account for that, and neither do some of the teachers (most notably the Vice Principal) in this show. They see Class 2 as a project, or irredeemable thugs, or lazy and unmotivated. And Class 2 isn't really interested in changing that belief. It isn't until someone actually expects them to do better - not demands it to get money for the school, but because they know that they are capable of it - that the kids start to change. But it's not really changing, as Mr. Sung points out later. It's that they're growing up. As we all do. And finally, they're doing so in an environment that is allowing them to actually grow. But it's not jus the kiddos who are learning. It's the adults too. Because shockingly enough, we don't stagnate after we hit 20, either. So many people in this show are in the process of change. Of striving to be better. Of learning - sometimes hard - that their way of doing things isn't the only one, or even necessarily the right one. Not that everyone in the show did change. Jeng remained a dick throughout, and I appreciate that, because while I do love the heartwarming message the truth is that some people actively choose to make the wrong decision and then keep on that path regardless. At the heart of the show, though, was friendship. Fractured friendship that is being mended, tested friendship, new friendship, and friendship that is so fierce it causes people to reach down into the darkness swallowing you and yank your stubborn ass out by force, even if they have to enlist the help of every single person in the class to do it.

Shin and Saint's friendship was of course front and center, and I adored it - these two are so ridiculous about each other in the absolute best way, and I think we all knew that Shin was never actually that mad about Saint breaking his leg but about breaking his leg and then leaving him - not only taking his dream but also taking the one person, ironically, who could have made it bearable: himself. The amount of pain all over Shin every time he saw Saint's big pleading puppy dog face was enough to know that, but if we didn't get it they then had him literally scream it at him (to be fair, pretty sure Saint didn't get it. He's lovely but also kinda dumb, poor thing). Their friendship was the glue that held the show together, and it was threaded throughout even when they were barely talking or had worked things out and then somehow managed to adopt the rest of the class as their unruly kiddos. They were glorious, and both Sky and Nani did such an excellent job that I immediately put Wu on my to watch list even with that absolute farce of a mock trailer. I will watch anything these two are in together, BL or not. And I genuinely did watch most of HSF without shipping Saint and Shin, although by the end I was convinced that no they're in love actually (Shin absolutely is aware of this and Saint is not. See lovely but dumb). GMMTV's first branded bromance pair? I'd be down for it. That said, Saint and Shin's friendship wasn't the only one in the show that got me. Eve and Peeta did too, as did Airy and Eve. I liked them a lot - Eve and Peeta's friendship is being tested a bit by her overbearing mother sticking her big foot in where it isn't wanted, but I really loved that when it came down to it and Peeta was starting to fall apart Eve only cared about her well-being. I also really liked that despite the initial dislike and distrust between the girls from the different schools, Airy was actually a really good friend to Eve, level headed and giving decent advice when she and Peeta were in the middle of falling out. I also liked the way she and Tangmay went to bat for Eve when they thought that Jan had kicked her out of the Thai competition due to preferring Peeta instead, and then apologized when they learned they were wrong.

The one friendship I did not expect to feel so much about was Ken, Knot, and Nate, though. I thought they were going to be just a trio of hapless bullies, there to be fought against and not much else. But no. Instead of making them two dimensional bullies and not much else, they made them well rounded human beings who adore each other to pieces, who clearly bonded because they feel like they have no one else (this is especially shown in Ken's case, that dude's dad sucks). The way that Knot begged both Nate and Ken to please think about their futures because he loved them so much. The way that Knot and then Nate pretty much dragged Ken out of Jeng's gang by the scruff of his neck (with help from Saint and Shin, resident Batmen and aforementioned coparents to a bunch of kids only a couple of years younger than them). The way they rallied around him and were willing to do just about anything to help him out. That's love, and it won me right the fuck over with ease.

Ken in particular got me in a damn chokehold. The way his face would get whenever anyone treated him like a friend always made me feel a bit teary. And the way that he really did start trying once he realized that there were more people than Nate and Knot on his side, and that he didn't actually have to fight the world.

I also really need to take a moment to talk about how amazing Mark Pakin was as Chadjen. Just an amazing performance. I really hope that he gets at least a nod for it.

I guess this turned into more of a love letter than it did a review, but whatever. The show was amazing and I loved it. The only criticism I have is that I feel like Ken's father's turn around was a little too pat. I do like that the kids weren't the only ones learning lessons and changing, but I don't buy that one conversation with Ms. Jan took Ken's dad from drinking too much and saying things like his son would never amount to anything and it was a waste of time to care about him to sincerely wanting to make an effort. I also wish that we'd seen at least some of how Shin's mom went from very reluctantly allowing Saint back into their lives (understandably, to be honest, considering everything) to making him food and treating him once again like part of the family. I have my own thoughts about it, and we didn't have to see it, but it would have been nice.

In the end those two things did keep this show from passing the Moonlight Chicken Test…but not by much. 9.5/10, almost my perfect show.

#high school frenemy #rambles #final thoughts

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sunnie-angel · 27 days ago

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The Mourning Years

conrad oxford x reader summary: the war has taken your brother and now you live in fear that it will take conrad too. a complete (mostly) canon compliant rewrite of the king's man (no knowledge of the movie is necessary to read) tags: period misogyny, grief, minor injury, off screen death, unresolved sexual tension, angst rating: mature | wc: 10.7k a/n: i have very few words for you about this chapter except that i'm sorry. the poem quoted in this chapter is wilfred owens' dulce et decorum est. @batchilla has once again been the best beta reader ever, please send all tomatoes my way part 1| part 2 | series masterlist | ao3

Grief settles itself over the house. Curtains are drawn shut and mirrors covered up, the lamps dimmed and the doors barred shut. Georgie's gone and taken all the light and laughter with him, sucked out all the air from the building. The official death notice comes, as Lord Kitchener said it would, and your mother's grief stricken wails could be heard clear across the village. You hope they do, hope they reach the Oxford estate and Lord Kitchener's guest room. Hope that they haunt him the way they haunt you. Georgie will never know happiness again — most days it feels like you won't either — so why should the man that killed him get that pleasure?

Once — only once — do you try and approach your dead brother's room. It's a path you've tread hundred of times and yet this time the hall seems to stretch away before you, the short walk suddenly interminably, unbearably long. The shadows clinging to the walls seem to grow, thick with memory, but still you had braved those dark corners. Walked right up to the door and put your hand on the knob, clutching the packaged bundle tight to your chest.

One pair of socks, hand knitted by yourself and finally approved by Celeste as fit for wear. Two packets of sweets, one of aniseed balls in memory of Private Henry Hart and one of pear drops for Georgie. A letter, three pages double sided written with your new pen.

Nothing has changed about the room since the last time you'd entered looking for a mechanical manual Georgie had requested be sent to him in one of his last letters. The covers on his bed are still the same shade of patterned dark blue, adjusted and cleaned to the housekeeper's precise standards. Dust hasn't managed to make much progress on his writing desk and the curtains have not yet been drawn tight. Nothing has changed. Nothing but the fact that the occupant will never return.

The package is placed with shaking hands on the desk, scribbled notes shoved aside to make space. A tear falls fat and heavy on the polished wood. With a terrible cry you lurch backwards, grief striking like a physical blow sending you to the floor. The room seems to swallow you up in its stillness, no teasing joke or yelled instruction to get out I'm changing! filling the air. You barely notice the pain of falling onto your arse, hands desperately scrabbling over the floor and catching on the carpet fringe in your panic stricken search for the door.

It hits your spine, the solid wood, pressed shut with the weight of your body thrown against it. Strength has deserted you, your unwilling limbs unable to take the weight of you. The bed stands cold and empty in the middle of the room, as much a grave as the one they're preparing down at the parish church. No more pillow fights or blanket forts will happen here. Never again will you be able to borrow one of the marked up tomes without feeling loss cleave you in two. His sleepy voice will never reluctantly make way for you on the nights that the heavens shake or your father's wine drunk voice echoes in your head too loud. Georgie's abandoned room suffocates you as you sob until your fingers go numb and your eyes go blind. No one enters that room again.

Grief, that unwanted guest, has truly made a home for itself in your house. It's silence, silence it's deepest truest form, cold and shadowy, swallowing up everything in its path. Even the clocks out of respect don't tick so echoingly. Winter has returned out of season to your home for all that the flowers bud and bloom outside.

Numb isn't the right word. You simply….refuse to feel anything, to acknowledge anything, because to acknowledge the world around you would be to acknowledge that your brother's not in it. To allow yourself to feel the knife buried in your chest, grating against your clavicle, torturous to leave in but far more dangerous to remove. You had seen the damage it could cause, locked in the tomb-like embrace of your brother's bedroom. You can't— it's too painful, too much and so it all must be buried under the numbness too.

There is mourning, the things you try so desperately not to feel, and then Mourning, the strict rituals you must observe. A funeral — ha! a funeral without a body, without a scrap or trace of the man your brother is, was, will never be — is organised. Black, the dreaded mourning blacks, are donned. Every time the movement of your crape skirts catches the corner of your eye you are reminded of the unfairness of the world by their dark colour.

People will say that the service is lovely, later. They will say that the Reverend spoke a beautiful message of duty to one's country and peace in God's embrace. You will remember none of this. The funeral will only ever come back to you in snatches.

There is the memory of your hands clutched tightly in your lap, the fabric of your gloves drawn tight over your knuckles and the world shaded by the black lace veil pinned to your hat. There will be snatches of hymns sung from choked up throats and an organ with one wrongly tuned foot pedal. The Duke, Conrad's father, steadying you as you stumble with a hand on your shoulder. A man sitting in the back row of the church — one of Georgie's Eton friends? — weeping openly. That awful final portrait of Georgie in his uniform smiling down serenely at the congregation. The scent of lilies will always choke hereafter.

What will always be seared into your memoruy is after. The burial. An empty coffin weighed down with sand. Did they calculate his weight, you wonder, or simply guess at something heavy enough to make the pallbearers earn their daily bread?

The early spring wind is strong enough to make you clutch at your veil, wiping the tears from your numb cheeks even as they fall. Georgie's name is engraved on the coffin lid. It's even accompanied by the days he lived. Too short, whatever measure of time it should have been was too short. Still a boy, your brother, not yet ready to be a man and now he never would be, no matter the grand stories your mother and father may cling to in their grief. The skies open up and rain starts to mist over the proceedings.

A flower lands on the coffin lid, then another. Roses, lilies, even some carnations. Hothouse flowers all of them, perfectly grown then cut down in full bloom. One after the other they stream into the open wound of the empty grave. There— there should be bluebells, Georgie would want bluebells. For Harry.

Dirt rains down. Smears across those pretty petals. You can't breathe. You'll miss him when he's gone, like there's no air but you're still breathing. Georgie was right. There's no air left to breathe, not when they're going to bury him again.

Your mother nudges you forward and a stranger pours dirt, closer to mud in the smattering showers now, into your hand. With a gasp, you tear yourself away from the sight. You can't— you won't — bury even the ghost of him under the cold wet mud. He should be up here, breathing the cool air and racing you to climb the trees. There's no light down there and Georgie had never been afraid of the dark but he shouldn't be condemned to it forever. Not your brother with his soft eyes and secret smiles. He doesn't— he doesn't deserve to be trapped down there, forever, waiting on help that never came. Won't ever come.

The crowd parts around before your hurtling, trembling form. Voices call your name but you pay them no heed. What hold do they have on you, these people who would kill your brother a hundred times over, one handful of grave dirt at a time? But your flight cannot continue forever and it comes to a stop on the other side of the church in the oldest cluster of graves sheltered by a spreading oak that drips with the rain. The bark of it is rough even under your gloved hands. Panting, you tear the veil from your head and let it pool in the patchy grass. Tremors wrack your body, though from the dampness of the rain or from the anger working its way through you, you couldn't say.

How dare they all claim to mourn Georgie while murmuring hollow words about duty and for his country. How dare they claim his life for their own, to be spent at the whims of older, more powerful men. Your brother isn't at peace. He will never know peace because he will never know anything but the dark and the dirt again. What's heaven to a lump of meat?

A hand holds out a handkerchief to you but you dash it away, the grave dirt sullying it's pristine whiteness. Conrad pants, hands on his knees as he tries to catch his breath.

"Don't," you tell him sharply, barely holding yourself together at the seams. He needs to leave, to not be here when the sharpened edges of your grief carves you into pieces.

"I'm sorry," is what he says instead, all earnest blue eyes. "I'm so sorry." He reaches out to you again but you can't. Not after last time. You know he won't be able to contain your grief for a second time, the way its carving you open. His outstretched hand falls.

"Don't. Don't give me your sad platitudes that I don't know what to do with." Even the fresh air tastes like earth to your tongue. "It's all so meaningless," you choke out. The damp and the mud cling to your skin through your gloves and hasten to tear them from you, unable to bear them any longer.

"It's not," he insists, reaching out again. Again you avoid his grasp and throw your gloves down to join your veil.

"Don't you see? George was so loved and he's going to be so missed. That's all this is. Everyone missing him terribly."

"Missing him! Missing him! Ha!" you laugh, hysterical laughter bubbling at the back of your throat. Long gone is that treasured numbness. "That's the point Conrad, that's the point everyone's missed. My brother—" Conrad flinches at the way your possessive tone excludes him from any claim to Georgie "—is dead and for what?"

"He died bravely in the service of his country," he says stone faced and stoic, mumbling through all those fine empty words that have been repeated over and over until your ears bleed and ring with them. "He knew the risks and chose to do the right thing anyway, to do you all proud and he has."

You reach down, grab one of your gloves and throw it at him. He manages to turn just enough to avoid the mud splattering on his white shirt, but it catches on the black mourning band attached to sleeve of his suit jacket before once again falling limply down to be reunited with the earth.

"Get this through your thick skull," you grit through your teeth. "My brother is dead. Gone. Snuffed out. And he didn't go easy or through a freak accident my brother died because someone killed him. I don't care however many pretty words you dress it up in, his entire future, his friend, all of it is gone. Forever. England won't bring him back. Making us proud," you scoff at the very idea, "won't make him any less dead."

"But—"

"But, but" you mock him and his shock. "My brother died alone and in pain. He suffocated to death slowly under tons of wet Belgian dirt if the initial impact didn't kill him. Or maybe it tore him up just enough that he could bleed out. Do you think that would have been kinder?"

He opens his mouth to speak but you rush onwards, desperate to get this bubbling, roiling anger some outlet before it burns you alive.

"What ever happened it happened to him alone. Can you imagine? Alone and clawing in the dirt, calling for help that never came. Help that never came because his only true friend in the world had already died—" the hurt that flashes across Conrad's face will forever haunt you "—and because no one else was there. We weren't there. You weren't there."

It's an accusation as much for yourself as it is for him. If you had been there, defied your mother's wishes and your father's orders and volunteered to help nurse, would that have changed something? Would that one small ripple of your presence have been enough to perhaps keep Harry alive long enough to keep your brother from dying? Or to save your brother when injuries threatened to pull him under?

The thought is as nonsensical as Conrad being able to do anything to save your brother but the grief and the anger that is rocking your body is not beholden to any kind of logic.

"Fine. Fine!" you laugh through the tears clouding your vision. "Pat yourself on the back about how sad it is to lose him while making yourself feel better by putting yourself in proximity to his 'glory'. It's not like you've got any you've earned for yourself, have you?"

Conrad's posture stiffens, his face shuttering as you land the killing blow. It's always the ones that know you the best that know where to cut and you wanted to make him feel a fraction of the pain you're in. Calculated, killing, cruel, you want to take it back as soon as the words have left your mouth. You're too late. In this, as in so many things, you're too late.

"I can see that you're not yourself. Pardon me for imposing myself where I am clearly neither needed nor wanted." He bows stiffly, then strides away before you can do more than gawp.

The dirtied lace of your veil flaps feebly in the wind.

Two weeks. You have two weeks of pure unending solitude before polite society deems you in control of your womanly emotions enough to receive guests. Two weeks of pure hell with only your thoughts to keep you company along with the shell of a person your mother has become and the smell of whisky lingering in the halls outside of your father's study. Two weeks before deepest Mourning will end and you are allowed to apologise.

There's no guarantee that it will work is the thing, no kind of certainty that no matter how you grovel and beg that this is reparable damage. You've had two weeks to go over the fight from every angle and you truly can't tell anymore. Yes, the grief had rubbed you raw until you were more bleeding wound than girl. Yes, you had warned him against your rage. But none of that erases the facts of the matter, namely that you had used all of your love and all of his trust in you with the intention to hurt and hurt him you had. Deeply. Intimately. Without any thought to whether or not he deserved the pointed violence of your anger.

To hell with your heart, you want your friend back.

On the 15th day Celeste — lips pressed into a thin line, the colour in her cheeks having never recovered since the day Lord Kitchener visited — accompanies you to the Oxford estate. Your mother had barely noticed when you had announced your intentions to go out, staring into the distance and unseeing of the world around her.

After so much time indoors, the fresh air washes over you as heady as hard liquor. Celeste, dear Celeste, says nothing on the walk. She has said very little to you of her own private grief, tucked behind flannel handkerchiefs and private corners, but you know in her watery stare that it exists. She smiles at you though, when the butler announces you to the drawing room, squeezes your hand before settling herself down into a chair placed at a discreet distance.

Conrad rises to greet you and it's worse this time, worse than when he wouldn't look at you during that accursed dinner because he looks at you now through a stranger's eyes. There's a guarded distance despite the smile painted on his face, his offers to sit down and have tea. You recognise it because you put it there, that hurt. You don't know where to start, all the fine pretty words you'd rehearsed suddenly melting away at his studied pretence of indifference.

"How are your parents?" is his opening salvo.

"As well as can be expected, under the circumstances," your inept rejoinder. The moment drags out, the soft murmurs of Polly and Celeste keeping careful watch competing with resounding echo of your heartbeat.

"I'm sorry," you blurt out, the words too raw, to clumsy to be practised. "I treated you terribly the other day. I said untrue, cruel things to you because I desperate to make the world hurt as badly as I was."

"I'm sorry as well," he says, holding up a hand to cut you off before you can interrupt. "I was insensitive and careless to your grief at a particularly sensitive time. It didn't matter why you'd lost him, only that you had and I was too inept to understand that."

"Yes but he was your friend as well as my brother," you begin slowly, not liking the way he seemed to say words he should. "You lost someone as well."

"That may be so," Conrad concedes mechanically, "but even still I was wrong—"

"Stop it. Stop it!" you hiss, hands tightening in your lap. "Stop pretending to be your father or whoever it is that's taken over your body. Be angry at me," you plead. "Be angry with me. Be sad, be whatever you need to be, just please stop being this cold detached stranger. Stop being someone I don't recognise."

Unconsciously, your little speech has drawn the two of you closer, knees bumping together. He's close enough to touch, this strange marble statue sitting there in the likeness of your friend, and so you do. Reach out with one gloved to cup his cheek needing to feel the warmth of his skin under your palm and the soft exhale of his breath at your wrist. He sags at the touch, exhaustion rewriting itself into the lines of his body.

"No I— I miss him. Terribly. Like a limb, though George of course would joke and claim to be the sole source of my brain." He pulls away from your touch with a weak smile.

"He wouldn't," you tell him, feeling strangely bereft at the absence of his warmth and insistent on correcting his assumption. "Georgie wouldn't say that because he knew you were clever in your own way. I know that despite all my teasing. I'm sorry if the other day I insinuated otherwise but it's not true. You're going to make everyone so very proud of you one day."

"I hope so," he responds shyly.

You leave your visit with a sense of hope knotted up with a twisting fear that something had been irreparably changed between the two of you. An unsighted, irrevocable thing that would only show its face with time but who's true nature you dread. But until that moment there is the hope left to sustain you that this last tie to Georgie may remain unfrayed. That one part of you may survive this.

Time marches onward, an unfair onslaught that brings with it the agonizing knowledge that every moment is a step forward without your brother. There is no never ending present for him anymore, only the ever distant land of the past. Georgie is past tense now.

The only thing that seems to bring your mother out of her grief induced stupor are the rumours. An offensive in April at Ypres, days after your brother had died there. Tales of it spread through the servants' chatter, stories brought back from newsreels at the picture houses, the papers, letters home from relatives. Horrific, whispers the rumours, a new weapon never yet seen that drowns men on dry land. Gas, is what the pilfered papers that your father no longer reads declare. Poisonous gas that had caught the men unawares and claimed far too many. There's a kind of awe to the words, a sense of their own tragedy unfolding.

It is this tragedy, those righteous deaths of brave young men struck down by cowards hiding behind unsportsmanlike weapons, that awakens your mother. Visitors trickle back into your home, sad condolences for your loss turning into a ghoulish curiosity. All your mother has to do is utter the magic words, my son died at Ypres, and suddenly she is the centre of it all. Attention, gossip, condolences and grieving cards pouring in. She blossoms wielding this social capital no one else in your social circles can claim, a queen bee in her mourning robes. It turns your stomach like nothing else.

There is nothing of Georgie to be found in her trite stories, the repeated refrains of a hero gone too soon. Not a trace of him to be found in the greedy maws of the vultures circling through your drawing room and perhaps for that you should be grateful. But still to hear his life and death flattened so, into a story designed to squeeze tears out of the stoniest heart, that you cannot abide.

You cannot escape your attendance in her parlour, cannot ignore her summons and entreaties, not when she drags you out anyway to trot around as a prop in her grand play. And so you grit your teeth and smile forlornly, nod and agree at what a great tragedy it all is until one day it all boils over.

Visiting hours are nearly over and even the last most gossip hungry straggler has finally left the house. Your mother chatters mindlessly, hashing and rehashing the high points of the day, which lady had gasped at which part of the telling, which detail had elicited the most tears. With an almost audible snap the last threads of your patience and good will snap.

"Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time," you start to recite, the poem long kept in tucked away into your book.

"But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning."

"Dear, what are you going on about?" your mother asks nervously, eyes darting around the room. Not to be dissuaded, you carry on reciting.

"In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,"

"Stop," your mother says quietly. "Stop! I will hear no more!"

You continue instead, voice growing louder until you are almost shouting, determined to make her listen to you for once.

"And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—"

She closes the book on your fingers and throws it across the room.

"I told you to stop and you will stop this, do you understand me?" she hisses, her face contorted in her disgust.

"But didn't you want to know, mother dear?" you ask, all wide eyes and innocent smiles. "Didn't you want to know exactly how you're telling all of your friends how your darling son died?"

"Your brother is dead. Leave it at that," she says, body sagging with the wind torn from her sails.

"You will not, and so I cannot," you reply, stalking over to pick up your fallen book. The hard corners of the cover cut into your chest from being hugged too tightly.

"I've told no lies to anyone," your mother says defensively. "If they choose to believe something untrue then that is entirely their fault."

"But it isn't. You never lie outright but you lead them right to that knife's edge. And maybe it shouldn't matter, but Georgie only exist in the memory of him now and you won't stop twisting it all up for your own gratification. How am I to stand idly by while my brother dies another death?"

She sighs, heavily, then finds a seat to perch her unsteady weight. "You've always been a dramatic child," she says finally. "I suppose that was our fault, allowing you to attend lessons with the Oxford boy, filling your head tales and stories so detached from reality."

"It is your fault," you accuse her. "You knew that one day there would be a very specific kind of future waiting for me, one you decided not to prepare me for in order to curry favour with the Duke. If you had simply kept me home, kept me cloistered and tutored and ignorant of everything but the world you wanted for me, I could have been in ignorant bliss. Or instead, if you had let me learn anything of value, any practical trade, I could have made a living of my own. We woman are so close to being given the vote and yet I hardly know how to cook my own eggs. Instead, I have the training fit for a future Duke and yet neither the opportunity nor the ability to actually put that to any kind of use. So yes, to you I am dramatic, to you I am silly and foolish."

You dash away the tears before they have a chance to stain your book.

"So I will sit here and I will read my useless stories in dead languages and think of how all that lovely education you provided for me has instead meant I know every excruciating detail of how my brother actually did die. Because this is what you made me."

The silence stretches out between you, brittle and poisoned. A clock chimes in another room. A maid, come to collect the tea tray, opens the door then quickly closes it again, breaking the moment. You turn to leave.

"You know, there's never been a particular future that I've wanted for you," your mother says, and you wince at the carelessness that it implies. "Not for the reasons I am sure that you think. Sit."

Hesitantly, you obey.

"There has never been a particular path that I have wanted for you, my dear girl, because the world does not change fast enough for it to yet exist." Her gaze is electrifying in its steeliness. This is not the woman you know. "You were my brilliant, wild thing and even when you were young I knew that whatever the future was going to hold for you, it would be too little. What I would want for you is to continue to be that headstrong, intelligent girl that was always showing up her brother in her lessons, fearless. But that is not a road I can clear the way for or adequately teach." Her grip on your hand is clammy.

"So yes, I did not prepare you for what becoming an adult would eventually mean and that is to my regret, but for a few perfect years, you were allowed to be the girl I'd always dreamed of for you. I know you may think me a very silly woman indeed, but the power and the influence I have been given, that I know how to wield, is limited in the extremes. I do not know how to live without those crutches. I do not know how to mourn without needing to turn it into something that can save me. But never, never doubt that in my own way, I have always been proud of you and of your brother."

The woman sitting across from you has not changed from the hour before in which she entertained a rotating crowd with details of young men dead early but she is also a stranger. Your grief stricken simpering mother, more concerned with appearances and mannerisms than newspapers or fine art speaks with a fierceness and an energy nothing else has ever drawn out of her. All of her choices, spanning back across your life, the ones that you had resented her for for all that they act as more constraints around your world, shift. She is by no means now the perfect mother, but perhaps she has been a loving one in the only ways she has let herself imagine she can be.

But hasn't that always been the problem, you think, blood heating your face as you struggle to understand the turn things have taken. That to your mind she has always simply been your mother, rather than Elizabeth, sixth Lady d'Orcy?

She reaches out and grips one of your hands firmly, the skin around her knuckles softer and looser than you remembered it being. Lips pressed together firmly, watery emotions lining the inner corners of her eyes, she nods at you once, sharply, then takes her leave.

Maybe it is the frankness of your grief, maybe it is the rawness of the truths she has shared with you, but you are no longer forced to join your mother in receiving visitors. A further kindness perhaps, but neither of you bring up the conversation, the painful things said. Despite your complicit silence, there is still a knowing that cannot be forced back into ignorance. The burden of growing up is to no longer see your parents simply as your parents, but for the fallible people they are.

There is no talk of preparing for another social season, indeed with the continuing war there isn't to be one at all, but it is the lack of lamentation that indicates that perhaps your mother, Elizabeth, is aware of her foibles.

You do not eat the first currants that year, nor the wild strawberries even when they are mid-season plump and their stems are pulled towards the earth with their heavy weight. It does not feel right to, to enjoy this simply pleasure that your brother first introduced to you. Still though you pick them, gather them up in your mourning skirts, the colour too dark to show the deep red juices. A gift for Georgie. His body may not be under the gravestone marked with his name but it is all you have and so you must make do.

It is on one such visit that you run into Conrad again. Bravery seems to have deserted you for after that first, painful visit to apologize, you have become terrified of provoking him into once again becoming that solemn stranger. Conversation no longer flows the way it once did, nervousness pushing you to swallow down your anxieties where once you would have confided them easily. That is not the case today.

There is bright red juice stuck to the crevices of your nails, an unfortunate underestimation of how ripe a blackberry had been. There are flowers too, joining the bounty collected in the basket slung carefully over your forearm. Celeste does not join you for this part, she never does. Her refuge is the church where yours is the softly blooming grass over the empty mound of dirt. The day is warm for early summer, though the stiffness of the breeze will not let you forget how recently spring has left.

Usually you are the lone visit to the cemetery, a stillness and peace you are not often afforded elsewhere, and so the presence of a visitor is already unusual to you. Disappointed that you might not be able to talk to Georgie so freely, you inhale and steady yourself before pushing through the graveyard's gate.

Those straight shoulders, the slope of that nape, surely there isn't a world in which you don't recognize them.

"Conrad?" you ask quietly, so as not to startle him. He startles anyway.

"I'm sorry," he says, tugging at the hem of his jacket despite it not needing any straightening. "I didn't mean to intrude."

There's fresh flowers on Georgie's grave. You'd wondered who had been leaving them.

"No, no, it seems like I'm the one that's intruding today," you reassure him. "Do you always leave bluebells?"

"If I can find them," he answers, stepping forward to help you spread the picnic cloth from your basket. "Do you visit often?"

Perhaps because of your most tenderfooted efforts at restraining your interactions with him, it feels like you are making small talk to a stranger. You hadn't been prepared for company so the fabric is small. Still, you invite him to sit with you.

Perhaps it is the sacred ground or simply the ghost of Georgie's presence, but this does not feel like an a day for half-truths.

"He doesn't write to me anymore. This is as close as I can get to writing back." You laugh thin and high in your throat. "Being dead hasn't made him any better of a correspondant."

"It's his first letter all over again," Conrad agrees, studiously avoiding looking at you. "All redactions and only the barest hints at a real message."

You pull your meagre offerings from your basket. The flowers have held up well, but you remove the few dead leaves that hadn't been caught your attention when you had first picked them. The sap is sticky between your bare fingertips. You had not been so lucky or perhaps as prepared as Conrad and it is a mix of bluebells and other wildflowers you bring for him. Hopefully Georgie won't mind too much. Thankfully after the first few visits the habit of bringing a small stack of leaves for a plate and the berries are served up far more tidily than they had been collected. It's a sad little picnic the two of you are on, facing the grave that doesn't hold Georgie.

"I feel quite silly, but its the first time he hasn't really been here for something we've always done," you confide in him.

"I couldn't eat any of them— the berries I mean," Conrad says conspiratorially. "I went looking, like we always do — did — but it didn't feel right. Nothing feels right."

"I think I'm the worst person in the world," you say, the sudden non sequitur startling him into looking at you skeptically. "Because in a weird, awful sense I'm glad. I'm glad that the horrid, endless wait of 'what if' is over. The worst has happened now, I don't have to dread when or where it will come anymore."

"It's not awful to not want to live in terror," he replies fiercely, reaching out a hand to where yours are folded limply in your lap. They burn against your bare skin. "No one, no one could ever doubt how much you love and miss George. Not even him."

You swallow thickly and wish your basket had contained a flask of something. Perhaps something strong.

"It doesn't make things better or bring him back, but I'm grateful that you aren't living in fear."

"That's what Georgie said, in his last letter," you tell him, eyes blurring. "That he didn't want me to hold my breath. Waiting."

"He was surprisingly good at giving advice, when it made it through the censors," Conrad says, his own voice thick. "I can't help but feel like I've let him down."

The ground should open up and swallow you whole if any kind god — or even the ghost of Georgie — is watching. It's too much to hear him break your heart when your brother is freshly dead and meant to be buried less than a metre away. You extract your hands from his.

"I'm sure he wouldn't have held you to a promise you felt you were unable to keep." The words come out strangely even.

"I think— I think I could have done better. I should have treated you better, been there for you as the friend I've always claimed to be, instead of ruminating on my own feelings. I promised him that much." He reaches for your hand again and you let him take it. It feels strangely cold this time.

Nursing a heart that has been shattered by grief and ground down into a fine powder by heartache is no easy thing. Its like relearning how to walk in many ways. One foot forward, don't read too much into the softness of his eyes, other foot forward, enjoy leaning into the strength of his side but not too much. Balance on one leg, accept his invitations but never stay as long as you would wish. Hop, skip, jump and never take more than three barley sugars from his pocket. You manage it all somehow.

The falling leaves outside match your mood more often than not. Listless, purposeless. Buffeted by the whims of those around you. Mr. Lucius Thomassen of New York writes once or twice but those letters are sent straight into the bin unopened. The whims of a stranger or not another concern you are willing to shoulder. As the leaves fall faster, the rains grow more frequent, and the cold grows stronger, you are unable to stray very far from the house, that cold echoing place. Not even your newfound understanding for your mother makes it any more of a home, not with the loss of George hanging so freshly over you all.

Still, you find ways to break your heart regularly despite the changing seasons. Morgana, the sweet grey mare of your childhood, is still young enough to carry you on her back (Conrad must still rely on the strength of his bribes but you she carries with glee). Shola has finally let you drive the car out of the yard and around the country roads on the estate. Conrad pouts at being left at home but Shola notices the way you tuck your chin to your chest at the thought and insists. It almost feels like Georgie is in the car sitting next to you when you complete your first full circut.

On a rare, rare occasion, you will allow yourself the poisonous joy of going into the village on Conrad's arm. A taunting echo of what you can never have. It's a beautiful lie, that the two of you could be any young couple seeing each other without a care in the world. The illusion is brutally shattered.

Mr. McClintock, the old man that runs the sweets shop, had looked at you with pale sorrowful eyes before gruffly adding a few pear drops to your bag of barley sugars and 'forgetting' to add them to your bill. Your face had frozen into that mask of saintly gratitude perfected after so many mornings playing attendant to your mother's guests in her grief but it had felt clumsy. The part does not comes so naturally now that you do not perform so regularly.

Already knocked off kilter and clinging to Conrad's arm like a lifeline, you barely notice the women as they stride past. You nearly miss the exchange, the white feather they give him. When you do, you see red.

"And just what do you think you're doing?" you hiss, snatching the feather from his fingers.

"Oll our men are off fightin'," one of the women says hautily, looking down her nose at you. Her awful hate makes her look like a scarecrow. "If 'e were a real man, e'd be off fightin' with 'im, not stayin' ome and 'idin behind a woman."

"If 'es gonna be a coward, then the 'ole world should know," the other one agrees viciously.

"You awful vile evil people," you howl at them at them through gritted teeth, throwing the feather to ground at their feet. "His — our — brother was just killed at the Front and now you'd send him to die too?"

"E can follow in 'is brother's footsteps and do the 'onourable thing then," the ghoulish scarecrow sniffs.

"He's not even 19 for the love of God!" You laugh, a hollow, empty thing that has even the vicious one stepping back. "The blasted Army wouldn't even take him, and you'd send a boy out to war to die against men? You awful, heartless cows!" You scream the last word so loudly they glance once at each other before hurrying on, cowed by your rage.

Panting, you don't notice him stooping to pick up the dirtied feather. You do not notice poor, sweet Conrad whose large frame and long limbs had seen him prematurely mistaken for far older than his age, tuck it into his pocket with trembling hands.

The event is not so easily forgotten as you try to pretend. By the way Conrad's interest in the war only grows, you'd wager your least favourite set of pearls he hasn't forgotten it either. For a few months longer he will remain 19 and you hope and pray with the last ounces of faith that Georgie's death had not stripped from you that his interest will fade before then. It has to.

A brittle, fragile accord springs up between you when, unable to bear hearing him discuss the most recent battlefield losses for the umpteenth day in a row, you beg him to stop. Is it underhanded to bring up Private Hart and Georgie in one fell blow? Yes, but you are no longer beyond underhanded means if the end result is Conrad's interest being dissuaded. Fair rules of play are for children, or at least that seems to be what the world has decided and neither of you have remained any such thing.

Celeste comes to you one day with an apologetic look and before she can even open her mouth you know instinctively that the earth is about to shift under your feet again. The very last vestige of your childhood you had thought a living part of you slips out of your fingers.

"I'm sorry," is what she begins with. "I'm sorry to be leaving you." Already your tears are flowing. "But I've had an offer of marriage and I can't—" her voice cracks under the strain of her emotion. "I thought that for you, for you I could stay on a while longer, until I was sure you would not need me. But every corner, every hallway, I see the echoes of the little boy I raised."

Surging forward you clasp her trembling hands. "I know," you murmur thickly. "You need no forgiveness from me."

"It's a fresh start," she tries to explain anyway, words tripping over themselves in haste. "I'm not likely to get another, not like this one, a household of my own. You're too old to be needing a nanny and without the social season you've no need for chaperoning that a maid couldn't do. This way I shall leave with my head high and of my own accord before I'm asked to."

"I'm happy for you, truly," you say and try to mean it. You won't, not for a very long while. "Is he very handsome, your new fiance?"

"Oh!" Celeste says, cheeks pinking despite the tears slipping down them. "I should think him very handsome, though I hope you don't feel the same way about your old dancing master."

"Monsieur La Roche?!" you gasp.

"Mr. O'Reilly, actually," she confides.

"No!" you press your hands to your mouth in shock. Your face is not so damp as it was.

"Oh but you mustn't tell!" she giggles, no longer just the woman that had dogged your steps and fretted over you ceaselessly. "He's quite good at what he does but no one will hire him without that ridiculous accent."

"It's rather terrible," you agree, struggling to contain your own laughter. It feels an awful thing to laugh as you say your goodbyes, the comfort of the past suddenly cut off from you by this last landslide. No path forward but a future on increasingly unsteady terrain, threatened on all sides by the war, the machinations of others.

Later, when you stand by your window looking out to watch her leave, you allow yourself the full weight of your grief. Celeste looks so small hurrying down the lane to meet him, Mr. O'Reilly. He greets her with a warm embrace before taking her bag and offering her his arm. The pair disappears into the distance of the evening, a long drawn out departure. The hollowing sensation of once more being left behind lands like a blow and you stumble. Your fingers catch in the thick fabric of the curtains. Your ribs shudder and expand, prey-quick, the looming jaws of your own isolation inescapable.

Alone now. Well and truly alone. Georgie's been taken and Celeste has gone. If Conrad has his way, he'll leave too. Already he feels half gone, his eyes ever more firmly turned towards a horizon that doesn't include you. One day, and you pray it isn't to war, he'll go. Leave you behind in this house where the gates are growing ever higher and the walls pressing in too close. Just like Georgie, eventually you'll be just the ghost of a memory too.

"You still haven't told me what you'd like for your birthday," you remind Conrad, looking up from your well worn copy of Ovid's Metamorphoses. The fire in the library grate crackles cheerfully, the tea Polly had had sent up long gone cold. Moments like these are growing increasingly rare, his interest in the war and respect for your wishes to keep far away from it dragging him away from you more frequently.

"Where is the fun in that? Far more entertaining to have you guess so that when I do open it, you're dancing on tenterhooks," he replies with a smile. His own book — that rather petty novel on first aid from his birthday only a year ago — has been set down. You flush at the realization that he's being doing nothing but stare for the last few minutes.

Jutting your chin out towards the discarded book and sniff, "Well I've never had any complaints."

"Then I'm sure you'll have no issue again this year without my input." Very reluctantly you resist the urge to stick out your tongue at him. Instead you place your bookmark very precisely between the pages.

"What are your plans for the special day in any case?" you wonder. "I shouldn't like to interrupt simply to deliver a gift."

He shifts in his seat, unable to look you in the eye, and doesn't answer. The moment draws out like spun glass, so still is the silence that you almost don't expect him to answer until he opens his mouth and begins to speak.

"I'm to go to Russia. With my father. Cousin Felix invited us for his Christmas celebrations." Still he won't look at you.

"Isn't that how Lord Kitchener died?" you ask, throat slowly collapsing in on itself.

"Yes, well, we'll be going by train instead of boat. Much safer," he says getting to his feet and pacing before the fire. He runs a hand through his hair, breaking up the pomade in it and mussing it up.

"But you'll still go anyway." It's a statement, not a question. Everything's already been settled while you weren't looking. Your protests and concerns are meaningless, pebbles tossed in a stream. And why would they mean anything? Your voice carries no weight here.

"Only for a few days. I'll be back by Christmas Eve," he tries to placate you. "Cousin Felix has been begging Father to try and talk some sense into Uncle Nicky and maybe this time my attempt at going out in polite society won't end in an assassination."

"You're going to risk travelling through several countries currently at war with each other—" you interrupt slowly, desperate for him to contradict you "— so that your father, the renowned pacifist, can convince the Tsar of Russia not to pull out of the war." Hysteria unspools in the pit of your stomach, bubbles up until you can taste it. "Are you mad?"

Conrad recoils and another brick in the growing wall between you is laid.

"It's not pointless to try," he argues. "Don't you want this awful war to be over as soon as possible?"

You look away, not wanting to let him see how deeply the question has cut you.

"You, of all people, should know how badly I want that," you say flatly. The brittle edge of your voice is sharp enough to cut. He bows his head, shamefaced. "I think I shall take my leave—" you stand, fussing with your skirts so you don't have to look at him. "—I should start thinking of a gift if I'm to catch you with it before you leave the country."

"We leave tomorrow," he offers weakly.

You freeze, then with a great act of will, force your shoulders into a parody of relaxation.

"After, then."

In the end, it is surprisingly easy to decide on a gift for Conrad. The photographer down in the village still had the negative and it wasn't hard to find a small frame with a hinged cover in the large town an hour away, smaller than a palm and able to be put on a chain and worn around a neck if desired. The hardest part had been convincing your parents to allow you to go make your purchases, but with the excuse of the Christmas season on your tongue you had managed it. Now the three of you — Georgie, Conrad, You — stare up at you from your cupped palms. The three of you had looked so young in the photograph. Had it really been less than year since—

With a firm shake of your head, you put the thought away. Snap shut the case and begin to wrap it carefully for the short distance into Conrad's hands. Just to be sure, you had called ahead to make sure the family were home. Shola had answered the phone strangely subdued.

It isn't until you see the front page of your father's discarded morning paper that you begin to have the horrifying realisation why.

TSAR'S MYSTIC MURDERED BY PRINCE FELIX YUSUPOV, it screams up at you and you have to readjust your grip lest the present go crashing to the floor. Cousin Felix had been desperate indeed.

Unlike your own house, the estate is decorated in full Christmas cheer. The atmosphere inside does not match the light-hearted decor. The servants are more silent than usual, a grave air to their every movement. Shola does not meet you at the door as he usually does, and so you walk yourself to the drawing room. That, at least, holds the familiar sight of Conrad pouring over the papers.

"Are you quite sure it's safe for you to join society?" you ask, startling him. "That's the second time it's ended in the assassination of an important man."

He chokes on air and you take pity on him, pouring him a glass of water from the carafe on the side table.

"Yes, well, I'm sure Cousin Felix had his reasons," he croaks after draining the glass. He looks down at the empty cup as if surprised at how quickly the water had disappeared. Idly he begins to spin it between his hands. A bruise, fading and yellowed, decorates his cheekbone.

"Did you meet him, then, this mystic?" you ask. He chokes again and you roll your eyes before pouring him another glass. Conrad drinks it down just as eagerly.

"I wouldn't— I wouldn't say we met. Properly." His eyes dart around cagily and you let the matter drop, resolving to get the details of his 'not meeting' out of him later.

"It's certainly put a damper on things, but I hope that this—" you hold out your gift, "—goes some way to redeeming your birthday this year."

Pouncing upon the distraction, he enthusiastically but neatly, tears into the coloured paper. The little photo frame looks so much smaller in his large hands and you hold your breathe as he cracks it open.

Come back to me, you scream silently, handing him your heart on a plate. See all you have to return to? Come back home to me.

With wide startled eyes he looks up at you and you hope some part of him has heard your pitiful desire.

"I know— I know that you have your own copy, but if you keep insisting on travelling all over the continent, then I thought perhaps you might like one to keep with you," you explain in a rush, embarrassment suddenly turning you verbose. "A reminder of us at home. And look—" you slot yourself beside him and reach over to take the frame from him. "—you can add another photograph to the front of the cover too."

"I—"

"Oh you despise it, don't you?" you fret. "I did ask for your input you know, it's not my fault that—"

"Would you— would you take another picture with me?" he interrupts. "For the other side?"

You giggle in a fit of nerves. Shared photographs are for family or for lovers. They aren't something that friend do regularly. "It shan't be the same you know? Georgie won't be there in his grand uniform, it'll only be the two of us."

"No but I will," Conrad says. The smile starts to slip from your face.

"Will what?" He can't possibly hint at what you think he is. He's been 19 for less than a week.

"I'll be in my uniform," he repeats, a nervous smile on his face.

"No, you won't," you reply hotly. "Because if you are, then you wouldn't be the Conrad Oxford I know. Because the Conrad Oxford I know, the one that is my dearest friend, wouldn't be foolish enough to sign up for a mass slaughter that's already taken one person we both love."

"It's not like that," he insists stubbornly, his brow low and set the way it is when he insists on playing chess or going to the village and no other substitute will do.

"It's exactly like that." You move to leave, to stand up, to do anything but sit there as he merrily discusses getting himself killed but he is too quick for you. He clasps your hands in his, heat searing through your frozen fingers, slips from his seat to kneel before you.

"I know that you fear the worst," he begins, you look away, unable to bear the earnestness of his gaze. "It won't happen. I promise. But I need to prove myself to— to my father. To myself. That I'm a man, fully grown, not a boy anymore. I need to make him proud. As soon as I've done that, I'll stop. Become a medical orderly, or a supply driver or— or even an administrator." Fingers graze your cheek and you are helpless to stop yourself from turning to meet his soft eyes. "I just need one chance to prove I'm not a coward, that's all."

Closing your eyes, you steel your heart against the breaking already shredding your rib cage. Cruelly, you throw off his touch.

"Conrad it's been two years — three, in only a few more weeks. Three years of war the likes the world has never seen, millions — not thousands but millions — dead already and still you treat it all like some…. some game." Anger, disgust, disdain, all of it drips from your voice. "Georgie dying, was that just some game to you?" you spit, watching the weight of the words land with unerring accuracy at your target. You get up, pacing back and fourth as all of your love pours out of you like the richest venom.

"Will it make you better than him, do you think, to win the game, win the glory and escape with your life while the masters that are sending you out to die in the mud don't have the nerve to call back their armies and talk? You need to prove your manhood so badly that you've got to step over a dead man's grave to do it? Because you're going to have to kill someone, someone else's son, to prove to your father that you're not a child anymore. You'd waste your life on a chance at this?"

"ALRIGHT FINE! YES! Is that what you want me to say?" he roars back. "Is it such a crime that I want to do something with my life? I mean, it's my life to waste anyway," he repeats mockingly. Snow is beginning to fall outside the window.

“You’re going to give up you father’s pacifism — the principles that your mother died for — just to prove to some nebulous version of society that you’re what, good enough for them?”

“I already have!" Conrad yells you into a shocked silence. "I already have,” he repeats again, more gravely. "The bomb… those—those people in Sarajevo. I killed them—"

"You don't know for sure," you interrupt him.

"I checked!" he cries, getting to his feet. "I checked and three people died because I killed them. I've already left those principals behind, why does it matter then? At least it'll be someone that deserved it and not— not two sisters and a husband." His voice breaks on the last word but you cannot afford to give any quarter.

"So Georgie deserved to die then?"

"Wha— no, you're putting words in my mouth!" He scowls, hands balling into fists.

"According to you, my brother deserved to die simply because he was there. That the German that sent off the shell that killed him, as long as he was like you — was just trying to prove himself — was doing the right thing." Conrad looks away but you step back into his line of sight. Your voice is soft, pleading. "Is a little ambition all it takes for me to lose another brother?"

"I. Am not. Your brother," he seethes. "This has nothing to do with hurting you, but of course yours are the only opinions that matter, aren't they."

You rear back as if slapped, nostrils flaring.

"If you are not my brother then you are a stranger and I do not know you. I do not care to know you. I will not remain to watch a stranger turn their nose up at everything they have been given and waste their life so pointlessly in the pursuit of killing others. Good day sir."

"Wait!" Conrad calls as your hand grasps the door handle. You refuse to look back. "Wait for me. Just— just give me a chance to prove myself. If I have to, take a life to save my own but I'll save two, no three, for everyone that I take. I'll— I'll make you proud. So just wait for me. Please."

You inhale, sharply, and then force yourself to leave without a word.

You won't speak to him again.

Since the day you were first introduced to him at a mere 10 years old, you have never gone so long without speaking to Conrad. Weeks fade into months and the itching sensation of a lost limb never fades. You'd been losing him, his departure had been inevitable, and so you had made the first cut. Amputated the gangrenous appendage before the poison could spread to your heart. But the wound still hurts, pulses with a heartbeat that is not yours every day the separation does not end. The pointed glances of your mother over silent meals every day that you do not go out simply makes it harder to ignore.

You've heard almost nothing since he left for training, not from him or anyone up at the estate, just the perfunctory news delivered by note that he had finished training at the end of March and promptly been shipped to the Front. Now the frost has melted enough for you to resume your morbid little picnics with Georgie. He's the only one left listen to you after all.

Polly — never quite a confidant but firmly a past ally — is the one that calls. Its with shaking hands that you hold the phone to your ear.

"He's alive," is the first thing she says and you shudder with relief, the echoes of your brother's name ringing in your ears. "His Grace has pulled enough strings and Conrad's being stationed in London. He'll be in on the 3:15 train tomorrow, you might catch him on the platform before he's to report for duty."

“Thank you,” you breathe down the line, voice thick with relief.

“Give him my love,” she says brusquely, before hanging up promptly.

It’s not as hard as it should be to convince your parents to let you go up to London unaccompanied to see Conrad, the spectre of your brother and the last time anyone saw him still haunting your memories. The entire train ride to the city, you can’t help but feel that your lungs are too big for your chest, your heart fluttering and desperate to escape your ribcage. Too soon, too quickly, you stand on the crowded train platform in the middle of the station, one among hundreds longing for a single glimpse of a loved one. The cold chill of the winter air still bites at your cheeks but you barely notice, so distracted by straining to watch the train pull in.

A cry goes up from somewhere on the platform at the first sighting and the crowd surges forward in excitement. The chuffing and squealing of the train is almost deafening, steam billowing and obscure the faces pressed to the windows. It’s a true free for all when it comes to a complete stop, men pouring out of carriages, tossing luggage to one another and helping each other onto the platform. Wives, mothers, fathers press forward, tears and joyful cries as familiar faces are recognized. Dazed, you push through the crowds, desperately searching every face for the features you know so well. There! Turned away from you but the same height and build, it has to be Conrad only a few feet further down down the platform. You run, uncaring of the way your heel threatens to twist your ankle.

You crash into him, gasping out his name, only the face that turns to greet you is wrong, wrong, wrong. His eyes are the wrong shade of blue, his features not delicate enough. There’s no trace of the fine scar on his chin from when a branch broke under his weight or the easy smile he’s always had for you. Mumbling your apologies, you press on, desperate to find him. To apologize.

Slowly the crowd thins, and still you can’t find Conrad. Families walk away embracing, couples twining their fingers together. Yet you remain achingly alone. Roaming up and down the platform you search every face, every window of every carriage for a sign or hint of the boy you know better than your own features. It’s only you and the porters on the platform now and Conrad still hasn’t gotten off the train. Maybe Polly got the trains wrong or— or maybe he had to take another train. That must be it. He must have been delayed for some reason. You’ll go to the rooms you’ve booked at a nearby hotel and return tomorrow and check that 3:15 train too.

Conrad doesn’t arrive on that train or any of the other earlier trains that day either. You are forced to admit defeat, to board your own train home trying to ignore the crumbling pit in your stomach. He’ll be in London soon and he’ll write and Polly will chaperone and it will all be like it was before. It has to be.

Polly is waiting for you in the foyer of your home. Her eyes are a red rimmed nightmare you see daily on the face of your mother and in your own mirror since the death of your brother. Your knees crumple.

#conrad oxford x reader #conrad oxford x you #cut all the flowers series #the king's man #divider by saradika-graphics #sunnie writes 🌻

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ddejavvu · 1 year ago

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sooo mei I was reading through your matt murdock ml and stumbled across the mafia one and pleaseee that is so cute, would you ever expand on that au? like maybe r’s flat is broken into and before she can even go to the cops there’s a bunch of matt’s guys there like don’t worry we’ve got it handled and she’s just ???

mafia!matt is the last thing i thought i'd be writing in the year 2024 but i can work with what you gave me <3

You're not sure whether you'd consider yourself lucky for escaping the bank unscathed, or unlucky for having been in the bank during an active shooting in the first place. Either way, the entire ordeal leaves you unsettled for weeks. You're bordering on agoraphobic, but food is a must, so you set out to brave the streets of Hell's Kitchen in search of something quick and dirty.

Upon your return, you know you're unlucky. You'd locked the door when you'd left, but evidently that doesn't stop someone who's desperate enough to break into a place that's barely up to code. You stare into the gaping, dark recess of your burgled apartment, noting that several electronics and appliances are out of place, but none of them appear to be missing. Your television is cracked, but you suppose your computer will be a suitable replacement until you can manage to afford a new screen.

You back away from the door just in case there's still someone inside; you're not stupid enough to investigate for yourself. However, the moment you step back, you ram into someone behind you, and your mottled nerves make you nearly shoot out of your skin.

All you can manage is a muffled, 'mmf!' when a hand clamps itself over your mouth, but the voice accompanying the hand is quick to assure you, "Easy, tuts, we're not gonna make it worse. We're with- uh, the cops. Okay? We got a call from the neighbors, 'said they heard someone breakin' in. We've got it handled, alright? Just relax. You can head back inside, that creep is long gone. We'll have someone stand guard outside, got it?"

You're only let go of when your captor deems you calm, but your heart is still racing in your chest when you turn to face him. He doesn't look anything like a police officer, but he does look menacing. He shows you a badge and I.D, and they look authentic enough for your arrythmia to settle.

"Go on," He ushers you towards the door, "Get in there, we'll take care of it from here."

You adjust your grip on your plastic bag of frozen meals, passing a couple other men that are now posted at the front door of your apartment. Each attempts a kind smile at you, and you're glad to shut the door on them once you get inside.

There's a man on your couch.

You don't notice until you flick the light switch on, but he's sitting there, clad in a suit and sunglasses. You shriek, and briefly consider whether or not your frozen ravioli could be used as a suitable projectile.

"Relax," The man stands, an easy smile on his face, one that drips with sympathy, "I'm Matt. I'm here to stand guard."

"Why were you sitting in the dark?!" You demand, now doubting the validity of the police badge you'd seen earlier, regretting the decision to trust these less-than-official men.

"It doesn't matter to me whether it's light or dark," He chuckles, and your face flushes momentarily when you realize what his sunglasses are for.

"Oh. Well- well you're not doing a very good job of making me relax, Matt. I feel like I'm more in danger of you than I am of someone else breaking into my house."

The man's smile is gentle, but not weak, "Sorry. Just go about your business, okay Y/N? We'll replace your damaged property and be out of your hair as soon as we can eliminate the threat.”

"Eliminate...?" You echo cautiously, "How long does that take?"

"Depends. A day. A week. Months, maybe. But this is all for your precaution, Y/N," He stands, making his way over to you and carefully feeling out the broken glass on the floor with the toe of his shoe. He places a hand on your shoulder, "Just trust me, I'm here to help. None of this will ever happen to you again- not on my watch."

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annaphoenix1994 · 1 month ago

Text

Trying Again

Previous Chapter - Masterlist - Next Chapter

»»-------¤-------««

Once the ceremony had concluded, Simon had helped eased Kiera into the passenger seat of his car, eager to get her home and enjoy the rest of the evening within the presence of each other before they departed the next morning for the first destination to mark their honeymoon - to which Simon still did not tell her what he had planned. With assurance that Jacob and Evie were taken care of and secured into Eva's vehicle, Simon waited until Eva had driven in front of them on the way back to the ranch.

"That ring looks good on you, babe." Kiera giggled from the passenger seat, blushing as she physically witnessed Simon's pupils dilate to a thicker diameter once he held his gaze on her, his lips curling into a smirk.

"Not used to wearing rings, but I'll gladly get used to this one," He chuckled, his right hand reaching for her left, bringing her knuckles up to his lips, pressing a soft kiss there. "Didn't think that ring could look more perfect dressed on that pretty finger, love."

"I still can't believe we just got married," She sighed. "We've waited so long for this and now that it's finally happened... I can't wrap my head around it."

"Me either, but I'm glad it did," He smirked. "As much as I dread leaving our children behind for our honeymoon, I think it'll be a relief for you to have some time away."

"It will, but I'm going to miss my babies so much," She frowned. "Mom said she's going to send us constant pictures and videos while we're gone."

"I'm sure, love," He assured her. "I can't wait to see your reaction once you figure out where we're going."

"Well, where are we going?"

"That's a surprise. But I will say I accidentally fucked up the flight..."

"What do you mean?" She arched her brow.

"Well, our first flight was supposed to go towards the east coast, but I somehow scheduled it for Nevada..."

"You're confusing me, Simon."

He smirked, "Let's just say we'll be spending a couple of days in a certain town in southern Nevada first..."

He watched her jaw drop, "Babe, are we... Going to Las Vegas?"

"Possibly," He smirked. "Just know that I can't afford to be losing my new wife in Sin City. I babysit Johnny enough."

She giggled, "You can't babysit me if you can't find me..."

He arched his brow and she giggled, "Trying to make my blood pressure rise already?"

"Oh, I'm sure you already are getting a rise out of this evening. If you know what I mean..."

"Don't start anything you can't finish, love."

"Who said I didn't want it to finish?"

She smirked as she watched his face flush before he moved to adjust himself behind the steering wheel, clearly desperately trying to hide his pending erection, his mind briefly short-circuiting as he had hoped they were nearly home. Sighing, he gripped the steering wheel tightly before reaching for her hand, hoping to distract himself from intimate thoughts until he were to get home.

»»-------¤-------««

Without giving her any notice, Simon hastily swept Kiera off of her feet before he began to carry her towards the house, the train of her dress waving in the night air as Kiera giggled into his neck, placing short and teasing kisses along his hot and aroused skin. "All bloody mine," He grumbled. "You got that?"

"Roger that, Lieutenant."

He huffed in frustration, closing the door with his foot before rushing himself and his new bride into their bedroom, easily laying her on the bed and gently resting himself between her thighs, caging her between his arms and capturing her lips with his. "Simon." She moaned into his mouth, her core flexing in arousal.

"What is it, love?"

"I can't believe this - us. We're finally married."

"Good thought, yeah? How about we finally officiate this marriage?"

She groaned at his words, running her hands through his neat hair only to ruin it, leaving the residue from his hair gel on her fingers. His hands had slowly began to run up her smooth legs, smirking against her lips when he realized she had been wearing a garter around her thigh after the pads of his fingers swept across it. "What's the order of this thing?"

He knew.

He knew what it was for and the tradition behind it, but he wanted to hear her say it as well as add his own twist to it.

"Oh, you know, typical bride attire," She giggled. "Tradition."

"Is that right?"

"Mhm. Don't they have that in Manchester?"

He shrugged playfully, "Don't know. Never been married before. Might have to fill me in on this so-called tradition."

"I'm sure you can figure it out, babe."

"Oh, so you're not going to tell me?"

"Well, we kinda broke the tradition a little bit..."

"We've broken several, love."

She giggled, "Well, you know how I tossed my bouquet during the reception and you refused to take my garter off from under my gown-"

"Because I'm selfish and didn't want anyone to see your legs? Yes." He replied proudly, the pads of his fingers tracing over the garter slowly.

"You were supposed to take it off from under my gown and toss it to your groomsmen and whoever caught it was supposed to be getting married next-"

"Well," He scoffed, placing a kiss to her collarbone. "We agreed to make our own traditions. I think I know what I want to do with it."

"Hm? What's that?" She hummed.

"I think I'd want to rip this off of you with my bloody teeth and display you as my trophy," He didn't give her a chance to reply before he placed a kiss to her lips and lowered his body to where his head was under her gown, placing slow and delicate kisses from the inside of her knee and thigh until his lips fell onto the garter itself, gently grasping it with his teeth before he began to drag it from her thigh, smirking against her skin every time he heard a pretty whimper leave her lips. "And when I do that, nobody's eyes except my own get to lay on you."

"I'm all yours, Simon."

"I like hearing you say it." He murmured, proceeding to remove the garter with his teeth and slide it over his wrist before his mouth returned to her inner thighs, proceeding to move upwards under her gown before his lips landed on her sweet core, his hands resting above her gown to run his fingers along the lace fabric. All fucking mine.

Her fingers were desperate to latch into his hair while her soft moans filled the quiet bedroom. She couldn't get enough of the image of him in his suit all for her.

Simon's hands splayed across the outside of her thighs, holding them firmly against either side of his head while his tongue lapped through her folds, nearly making her jolt every time he crossed her clit with every slow and determined minute.

Eventually, she had climaxed on his encouraging tongue, rewarding him for his efforts before he sat up on his knees, looking down at the overstimulated mess of his new bride, smirking at how flushed she already was. He sat back on his knees, admiring the way her dress bunched up at her waist and how her skin flushed, leaving red blotches of adrenaline dressing her chest and cheeks. Smirking, he moved to where he was standing on his feet, walking over to the nightstand to retrieve a condom from the drawer, setting it on top of the nightstand before he removed his dress shirt, tossing it to the side as Kiera moved to sit on her knees on the bed, her perfectly manicured nails curling around the belt of his trousers, her lips pressed against his muscled abdomen while her fingers slowly unbuckled his belt.

She pumped his erection slowly with one hand, her thumb swiping the small bead of arousal that pooled at his aching head, swearing to herself that she could feel his pulse through his shaft. "On your back, babe." She whispered.

"Dominant lass, yeah?" He smirked, looking down to admire the doe-like gloss in her eyes.

"Don't make me ask again."

He couldn't help but smirk at her demand, sincerely loving when she'd get intimately aggressive with him, Kiera being the only person he'd consider being submissive for. He didn't know why, but he loved being bossed around by her - it unlocked a new excitement he never knew he had. "What happens if you do?"

"Then I guess I'll just satisfy myself." She hummed.

"Is that right?" He arched his brow, curling his index finger under her chin, forcing her head upward to look up at him. "Those toys of yours don't have the same affect, love."

"Making yourself feel better, huh?" She giggled, knowing she was pushing his buttons. "On your back."

"I don't much like being told what to do-"

"Oh, I know, Lieutenant," She hummed, placing a kiss to his chest. "But you're a long way from the barracks, babe. Need I remind you that I technically outranked you if you want to start using terms."

He inhaled sharply, his chest rising and a tingle traveling through his body, although he still didn't budge. I want to see if she really could make me, but bloody hell, those eyes she's giving me makes me want to fall to my knees and do anything she asked...

"That's what I thought," She giggled after hearing no response from him. "On your back."

He couldn't help but do as he was told - Kiera being the only person to be able to dominate him. If he were honest, he quite liked being submissive - having her on top of him to her mercy and using him as she pleased.

He loved it.

Especially in her wedding dress - the sight alone drove him wild.

Her dress splayed over him as she straddled his hips, subtly rolling her own hips to grind against his erection. He couldn't help but grasp the fabric of her dress in his hands during his desperate attempt to grasp her hips, leaning his head back against the pillow when he felt himself succumb to her hot core.

They groaned in unison as his hands firmly held her hips while she slowly slid down on his length, eventually able to fully sheath himself inside of her.

In roughly three months, the couple had lain together once due to the unfortunate events of the miscarriage in July followed by her father's passing.

And during that one time, he had begun to use a condom to prevent another pregnancy knowing she had wished to wean from birth control and that he didn't want her to go through another miscarriage.

It was a decision made by him to use a condom for her sake, knowing the effect hurt her more than it did him.

He knew she had been mentally exhausted - the last thing he wanted for her was to feel like she had an obligation to please him sexually.

After all, he could care less if she had told him she'd never want to have sex again, knowing that the miscarriage alone was enough to frighten her about the idea of ever getting pregnant again.

"Fuck!" She hissed, briefly uncomfortable due to the sudden stretch, keeping herself still on him to let her body adjust to his size.

"Are you alright, love?"

"Yeah," She nodded, splaying her palms across his chest. "Been too long for us." She admitted, blush staining her cheeks.

"I'll wait as long as you want me to." He assured her, his hands finally finding the skin of her hips under her dress, gently rubbing circles along her skin with his thumbs.

Her hips rolled against him, Simon unable to restrict his hips naturally wanting to buck up into her, but he knew she had things in her control when he was under her, completely surrendering himself to her.

Already overstimulated from his tongue, she had heard herself squelching against him between moans. It was addicting for the pair of them. "You feel so good, love," He admitted, his voice gruff and smooth. "You were bloody made for me."

She hummed in agreement, leaning her head back to enjoy the sensation he was giving her with just his length alone - his touches and words nearly driving her over the edge every time she felt his skin on hers.

Suddenly, his forearms hooked under her thighs, effortlessly picking her up off of his length and curling his arms to where her core was level with his face. She braced her hands on the headboard in front of her, tightening her abdomen to keep her full weight from landing on his head. "Simon, I-"

"Don't hold yourself," He warned, his hot breath fanning against her wet folds and making her shiver against him, gasping when she felt his arms tighten around her thighs and pulling her weight down onto his face. "Sit."

"But I don't want to hurt-"

"-Sit," He said sternly. She was unable to see his threatening gaze by how her dress had spread over his head when he moved her, but she knew that look. "Like a bloody chair."

"But what if I suffocate you-"

His arms tightened around her thighs and pulled her down onto him, the tip of his nose pressing firmly against her clit, giving her the perfect stimulation while his tongue began to work against her folds, eager to bring her to a second orgasm. He loved when he would bury himself inside of her, but something about pleasing her with his mouth drove him crazy. Like a drug, he would think, musing about how intoxicating her taste was to him.

He rewarded her with a quickened pace of his tongue when he felt her relax, knowing that gravity was in her favor when she finally realized just how good it felt. And to Simon, the thought made him harder than what he already was - almost painful.

But he couldn't let up anytime soon.

She tasted too good.

Her moans gradually grew louder and louder, her stomach tightening at the sensation of his skilled tongue, goosebumps erecting along her skin when she felt his hands leave her thighs and slide up her back, slowly and delicately unclasping each button that held her dress together, keeping her nude body from him. He knew that if he didn't get that divine dress off of her soon, he'd accidentally end up ruining it.

Sensing that she was on the brink of her second orgasm, he couldn't help but smirk when he heard a desperate whine leave her lips, knowing it was a punishment for even saying that her toys could get her off faster than he could in a sorry attempt to get him to submit.

With the dress now draping from her shoulders and exposing her breasts, he curled his arms around her waist and gently guided her to lay on her back, placing a hot kiss to her vulva before he guided her to lift her hips to slide the dress from her body, leaving her to be completely nude under him. His hair was now a mess and his chin was glistening with her excitement. Licking his lips clean, he then moved to make a trail of kisses from her hip all the way to her sternum, shooting a quick glance to her before he gave attention to her breasts, expecting her to deny access to them as she was still breastfeeding. Unbeknownst to her, Simon knew that even caressing her nipples were more stimulating than before she was ever pregnant.

Judging by her sudden moan after he did it, he assumed that she had finally realized.

Especially when she arched her back to press her breasts even closer to his mouth, begging for more than just his hands. "Eager, are we?"

"You're just teasing me at this point." She giggled playfully.

"It's what you get for teasing me with the thought of you playing with yourself earlier," He answered, sitting back on his calves to reach for the condom on the nightstand, pinching the corner of the wrapper between his teeth before she stopped him.

"You won't need that, babe," She spoke, her foot coming up to rest on his hip. "I want to try again."

"Are you sure?"

She nodded, "Positive."

He wanted to ask her what was going through her mind for her to compile her decision, but he didn't want her to think about the reason as to why he had begun wearing condoms in the first place since the miscarriage. "I know we haven't really talked about it prior to the wedding, but-"

"-I love having children with you," He assured her. "I want another one."

She smiled, "You do? I thought two plus Baler was enough for you."

"The lad is almost an adult and our two are now a year old. I can't lie to you: I loved seeing you waddle around like a penguin with your belly."

She laughed as his hands ran up and down her smooth calves, slowly tracing his fingertips to her hot folds, excited at the primal thought of getting her pregnant again, except this time, they were actually trying.

"Best get to it then, babe." She smiled, opening her legs for him when she felt his body lower onto her, their lips locking as his hips lazily pumped against her, teasing her yet again before he snuck his free hand to guide himself into her, the sensation driving him over the edge with her immense warmth and tightness.

They lay in sensual lust - his hips guiding himself slowly into her as he savored every thrust while she purposely squeezed her walls around him every time he withdrew his hips. His lips were pressed against her neck and jaw while her nails dug into his back, leaving small scratches behind only to encourage another hard thrust from him. "You're so deep," She groaned.

"I can go deeper," He whispered into her neck.

"H-How?" She asked, surprised.

He smirked against her jaw before slowly withdrawing from her, "Turn over," He directed, grasping the nearby pillow to place under her abdomen, arching her hips perfectly for the deep angle he was about to let her experience, giving him an unrelenting pace into her G-Spot once he began to thrust. "There you go. Press your thighs together and cross your ankles," He continued, now standing at the edge of the bed, pumping himself lazily as she did as she was told. "I can't lie and say I won't hold myself back from getting rough," He admitted shyly, his head now at her even tighter entrance. "You grip me even tighter like this."

She began to reply before her mouth opened to a gasp, the hot stretch of his length entering her and pressing against her G-Spot once he fully sheathed himself. "Please get rough, Simon."

He groaned at her plea, hoping that she knew just how rough he could get. Pressing his palm between her shoulder blades, he did as she requested.

Relentless, powerful thrusts of his hips snapping into her at a set pace. Each thrust rubbing against her G-Spot, making her toes curl and her back shiver while the pillow under her head collected her loud moans.

Skin-to-skin contact filled the room along with their moans of pleasure. "Harder." She begged.

"Are you sure, love?" He whispered, keeping up his pace. "I don't want to hurt you-"

"Harder, Simon," She moaned. "I want you to."

Bracing one arm next to her head and the other palm between her shoulder blades, his thrusts grew harder and harder, the headboard of the bed now colliding with the wall as the squelching from her core swallowing him drove him wild. He curled his hips downwards every time they snapped, jolting every time he felt the sponge-like flesh of her G-Spot against him.

Several minutes later, he stilled to release his spend into her, pumping slowly until he too became overstimulated, only keeping up his pace to bring her to her second orgasm before he did.

With deep breaths, he rewarded her with kisses along the column of her back, slowly withdrawing himself before he helped her move to a comfortable position, smirking at how her mascara pooled at the corners of her eyes before bringing his thumb up to wipe the marks away.

#simonghostriley #simonriley #simon riley #simon ghost riley #call of duty #callofduty #call of duty modern warfare 2 #ghost mw2 #call of duty modern warfare #cod mwii #cod #ghost cod mw2 #cod mw2 ghost #cod mw2 #mw2 #ghost call of duty #ghost cod #ghost

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yahoodarling · 10 months ago

Text

Diluc X GN Guardian Angel Reader (Snipbit)

Diluc X guardian reader whos a little late on the whole ‘helping out’ part. Expect some good ol angst from both parties, enthusiastic reader and Diluc in denial. Reader gives off ‘dad thats been absent for your developing years and shows up in your 20s’ vibe.

Word count: 3k (full fic around 10k)

Warnings: none in this extract but warnings will be added in the final fic

You are holy. You are divine. You are perfection incarnate. You have a duty.

In your hands held the fate of a mortal, someone desperate and in need of your guidance and as an official of Celestia it is both an honor to guide them and an honor bestowed, to be favored and seen by the gods for their struggles and in turn given the gift that is yourself. Admittedly you filled the application for this position a little late but surely your mortal is just fine as they are, you were just… a little preoccupied is all. You smile as you think of the future journey ahead, a new start of healing and recovery for a poor soul. Your… your new mortal…

Mondstadt, you haven't been here for a while but the smell of fresh brew in the air and tugging of the wind in your hair will always welcome you. You set off to find your dear human, your existence tied to his the moment you fulfilled the proper application of acceptance. He's in the city, a short distance away. The night was crisp, winter is around the corner but with your light you shall guide this mortal through and reach the warmth he so desperately needs. You open the door to a tavern, a further welcome of cheer and joy from its patrons and there standing in such joyous potential is your dear! Crimson hair bundled high, gaze focused and frown evident, such ache surely lies within him.

“Greetings Diluc of Mondstadt! Its a pleasure to finally meet you!” you speed walk up to the counter and lay on your finest smile, first impressions are important if you'll be spending the rest of his life together.

He didn't seem pleased with your manner, perhaps you were too much? Either way he sighed, “Right, and what would you like this evening?”

“You~☆”

His frown further lowered and brow crinkled, lines all too familiar with this exchange.

“Order a drink or get out, i am not accepting courting attempts”

“Courtship? Oh no no no! Haha you're mine in a different way! I'm here to give you a surprise alright?” You stood up straight, opened your arms out wide to him, beamed a smile as welcoming as possible and with as much joy and enthusiasm as possible declared,

“Diluc of Mondstadt I am your official Guardian Angel! Tremble no longer! Fret no fear for I as one of Celestians chosen have come to bring you peace in your times of need!”

…

He looked at you with blank tired eyes, not the ones of enlightened hope you were expecting

“Right well i think this joke has played its course. I'll ask you either leave or buy something.”

Huh? That's not what you were expecting. Shouldn't he be enamored? Shouldn't he be fulfilled with hope and respond in such a manner befitting of a life changing event? What's different here? What have you done wrong? You've done what you usually do, introduce yourself, have a good first impression, positive attitude, state your position as an official of Celestia, your previous mortals were overjoyed when you first met but this one is different, he doesn't look happy or relieved he just looks… tired.

Perhaps it's because the situation isn't right. In the past when you met your previous mortals it was in an immediate sense of danger whilst here he's just at his job but would something like that really affect his response? He still needs you after all, why isn't he overjoyed?

“Haha, there is no humor here other than the joyful future we are to embark on! Umm- haha, ah, you aren't in awe or anything right? This is the start to a new life for you! No more suffering or pain, you have I, your benevolent guardian, to guide and support you! Haha- um, you don't look all that greatful haha, i'm not usually this uncomposed it's just you don't seem very grateful and, yeah…” he's really throwing you off here, its like you don't even exist with the way he looks at you.

“Diluc! We need another round of 8 ales for the second floor!”

“Coming up Charles.”

He turned away and got on preparing the drinks. How awkward. You stand unmoving, simply blinking along and watching your mortal- Diluc, right, Master Diluc of Mondstadt, get glasses and fill them. Eventually your legs felt a little odd having to stand, you sit down on an available stool and continue to watch the men prepare drinks.

Is this really the reception you get for being a little late? Nothing serious could have happened in the time so why is everything so different now compared to how it's meant to be.

Your mortal finished his task and returned to his position, when his gaze laid on you he had to sigh but still approached.

“Will you order something now?”

“Oh no, i need not drink.”

“Right then what are you doing here other than to play this prank of yours?”

“Prank? Oh I'm serious about my position, Diluc of Mondstadt i am serviced to guide you.”

“I don't need any ‘guiding’ but if you are indeed of any i can help guide you out the door if we are done here.”

You can't help but laugh, he's being rather silly, of course you don't need help walking out the door but maybe he's confused or doesn't believe that someone could be blessed an angelic guardian.

“Diluc of Mondstadt-”

“‘Master Diluc’ is just fine, thank you.”

Oh? Weird, you could have sworn you read that he introduced himself as ‘Diluc of Mondstadt’, it's his title right?

“Right! So Master Diluc, going forward i will be joining you in you daily-”

“No you will not.” oh how blunt! You cringe a little inside, being treated like this is so odd, your previous mortals were never like this.

“ahaha- um yes i will, its my job. Worry not! I do not have to be physically present like i currently am, i just figured our first introduction would be best if i took a mortal form, you lot find great comfort in those you can identify yourself with and i will respect that! See!” you lift your arms out and display your form as if he hadn't taken a good look of it, you were rather proud of your visage, you always received praise from your fellow guardians when it comes to your human designs. “See, I put quite a bit of effort into this one! Haha but again, I can take on a spiritual form in the times you need to be ‘alone’. Not alone alone, you'll never be alone! But rather when you need other humans to perceive you are alone. I can do my duties both in and out of form! There is more to guidance than just protection after all! I am here as your new voice to lead you down your-”

“Okay that's enough.”

Please! Dear mortal, stop interrupting me! This is important! you shut your eyes and release an unseen tear, this hurts.

Diluc of Mondstadts’ frustration seemed to grow, his appearance did not change, his eyes still narrow and frown rested easily on his cheeks like before but you could easily sense his annoyance. How. HURTFUL!

“I'm done with your ‘guardian of celestia’ nonsense. Please leave my tavern before I have to escort you out, and I will so do not take this statement lightly.”

“Oh you couldn't even if you tried haha, different phases of mass and all that. I know it may seem ‘annoying’ to you for whatever reason but I am here with you for the rest of your life. It may be different from what you are used to but i can swear on my pledge that i will do all i can to accoustum into your life in a way befitting of your personal needs all whilst helping you out your sadness!”

He sighed, pressed his fingers to his brow and took a moment to recompose. Once he was done his frown wasn't so harsh but he still looked tired.

“Right well, I cannot deny you are a Celestial being. I've had all manner of entities in my tavern but none have gone so far as to claim they are supposedly my ‘guardian’. I do not know why you claim this, if you take a look into my life you will see I am well settled and content with my present so I am not indeed of your services. I thank you for your offer but please, take it to someone who may actually need it.”

“ha… haha silly, it's not an offer system, that's not how things work, haha. I am tied to you now. I can't just leave and you do need me! Your submission wouldn't be in the files if you didn't. Celestia knows when a mortal is deserving of their attention and you are! I'd say you are especially special considering you have a vision as well. Well done! Good job! You are already on the path of healing! Now with my help you'll reach a lovely new future.”

“Well I'm rather happy with what I currently have. Enough of this talk, you will confuse my customers.”

“oh? Oh you are worried about confidentiality? Not a worry! Our discussion is filtered, they cannot hear information they are not allowed to. They are likely hearing us chat on about the weather haha.”

“What?” his frown turned into confusion, how cute.

“oh yes! Being your guardian means dealing with personal stuff for you, it wouldn't be right if someone could just listen in to our conversation. There is also the fact that I hold knowledge that should not be heard by mortal ears and luckily the filter works to block it all! No secret spilt or your personal feelings uncovered.”

He looked concerned for a moment before huffing out and directing his attention elsewhere.

“Of course the gods work in ‘mysterious ways’”

“oh, I'm not a god, I'm an angel.”

“I'm not talking about you.”

“ah…”

He simply ignored you after that, tavern goers came and went and when he wasn't attending to them or greeting familiar faces he busied himself checking lists, stock and otherwise keeping things in order. You found your spot on the bar bench and hadn't moved since, only watched, you tried to start up another conversation but he had shut you down rather quickly so you were once again left in silence to sit. It had been a while since you surrounded yourself with mortals and the distinction was clear, they easily made merry and got on with life none the wiser of the world yet still all too eager to enjoy their lives, it was refreshing. Their simple lives were so cute, it was moments like this that made you fall in love with your job all over again, only pity is your current mortal doesn't seem as pleased. Humans are both simple and complex and your dear mortal was complexing to the core. You felt the hurt in him and yet he did not want help, you stated you were of Celestia and he refused you, why? Perhaps you'll need to try out some different methods to get close.

The early night turned late and Diluc finished his tasks leaving the few stragglers for Charles to close up after. He took his coat and disappeared out the back door. It took a moment for you to register he had left, so engrossed in your own thoughts and your surroundings you had actually stopped monitoring your mortal, not that you'd admit to doing that of course. Quickly you got out of your seat and ran after him, a few moments later you were at his side as he trudged on Mondstadts roads.

“soooo~ Mondstadt huh? Pretty place.”

He said nothing

“Last time I was here was ages ago, the winds really have flattened out the hills, it's nice!”

...

“I'm still not so happy about the smell in the air, you'd think that would have cleared out by now.”

“What?” he finally looked at you and it was in total confusion. “What are you going on about?”

“oh haha! I was just thinking aloud, I actually can't say. Hmmm… how could i word this… you've killed people right?”

All you saw was his back as he sped walked forward, eyes ever on his depressed past and not on you, his future.

“Diluc of Mondstadt halt! I did not mean to be offensive, I just wanted to link a connection you would recognise. That smell of death lingers in- it-” haha filters… you need to recompose yourself. “Haha nevermind! Topics of the past are not fun. How about we talk about you? You work at a bar? Oh no i believe i read you owned a winery, very impressive. But it being your fathers is no achievement of your own, we shall create your very own success in our journeys to come!”

“What?” his speed walking stopped, he held his stance firm, much like the form you need to take in the scene of battle, no sign of weakness displayed even in a simple action such as standing. Too bad for him you knew he was just playing, there is no way he could actually hold himself so well when he's so in need. And yet it didn't feel that way and he looked genuinely angry for some reason, you've only been encouraging.

“What right do you have to claim The Dawn Winery is not an achievement of my own?”

“Well simply you're not the one who developed it but that's okay! We have other chances, we can-”

“Not ‘we’, ‘I’ and it has always been ‘I’. I am the one that has gotten myself up to this point and have no need for a ‘we’. I do not need your confirmation nor your support which consists of empty notions and insensitive remarks. Leave before I force you to.” He took out his blade. He actually took out his blade on you, proof he'd follow through with his words.

What have you done wrong? Why is he so confusing? The others weren't this confusing. They were just sad and depressed and you comforted them but this one is just angry, your comfort feeding the flames but he wouldn't have had an application made for him if he wasn't in despair. Just what is this mortal's problem?

“Diluc of-”

“Do not even speak my name if you cannot say it correctly. I understand you may be an inhuman being but that does not exempt you from working by human standards when speaking with one. And typically human standards will not have one creating a false narrative of some guardian angel you are trying to play. Again, leave me be. That is your final warning.”

“But- but I am! It is not a false image, I am an official of Celestia, i am here to help.”

He lowered his blade but still his eyes remained sharp. His claymore could never harm you anyway yet the sting of his look was felt.

“Then tell me, if you truly are sent from Celestia why is it that you come now once my life is content? Why now when your ramblings prove nothing but eer and not in the time when I truly could have needed Celestia's help?”

It hasn't been that long though…

“I cannot answer that. See-”

“If you cannot answer, it means I cannot accept. To say Celestia sent help yet failed means to lose all respect for the gods. It is easier for me to say the gods work in unknown ways, that I faced my hardships without their guidance for a reason then to be told they failed, that I could have had an easier past if not for the incompetence of others whom are meant to be superior to us mortals. It is for that reason that I hold some semblance of respect for them that I cannot accept you as an agent of theirs.”

How? But that's not- what? His words held no meaning, no meaning you could understand anyway, they were only a collection of words that could not fit together. You could not understand them, you could not comprehend them. Is this how mortals feel trying to comprehend the higher plane? But his words are not a superior entity to you, you are superior, you should understand! But his words… What could he mean? Of course he respects Celestia but how does that differ to accepting you are one of theirs? It's not like Celestia could do anything wrong to garner disrespect. Right? No, it's unquestionable. Its- its-

You feel the strange tingle, you should move on from this subject. Right! Yes, move onto a new subject and respect the mortal, feed into their understanding if it means they can progress.

“haha i see i see. Well you do not have to see me as an official of celestia then! You can see me as a helpful spirit that has decided to join you in your adventure!”

“i refuse”

DAMN HUMAN LISTEN

“ahaha ha… um how about as-”

“The only thing I see you as is a malignant being whom pesters me for their own satisfaction.”

Ouch… but you could work with this!

“I see! Yes yes, your dismay gives me joy so in order for me to not ‘pester’ you you must not fall into dismay but rather develop and progress a more healthy future, yes okay! Human! I shall follow you and ‘pester’ you from this point onwards!”

He did a physical rolling of the eyes, rolling his body along as well as he turns himself away from you and continues walking.

“If you do so quietly I might reconsider impaling you on my blade.”

Its progress! Okay, you need to listen to him.

“right right, i shall only speak when absolutely needed oh or to say something to agitate you considering i am a malevolent being. In all honesty though, I find it hard to say disparaging things. I usually work as a supportive and helpful being but I will try to be vexatious.” You hear a faint ‘you don't even have to’ come from him, silly human, you can still hear him even at this distance.

A little bit more of a filler introduction to the fic im working on! If the dialogue feels awkward, good, its meant to be. As always angst shall follow but i find the dynamic rather fun. Let me know your thoughts and opinions of what youd like to see in the future!

#yahooworks #diluc x reader #diluc x gn reader #diluc x male reader #diluc x fem!reader #diluc x female reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin x male reader #genshin x female reader #genshin x gn reader

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