#i'm in a very specific mood rn honestly
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mvndrvke · 1 month ago
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i'm still working on starters for my other call but this is an au-specific starter call for the following--
MEG GIRY in her BRIDGERTON* or HOTD* verses
MEDEA in her HOTD* verse
EFFIE TRINKET in her GLASS DON'T BEND verse
SHIREEN BARATHEON in her RIDER OF VISERION* or HOTD verses
KIRI AUGUSTINE in her STAR WARS or STAR TREK* verses
ACHILLES in ANY verse
SHMI SKYWALKER in her FORCE CHOSEN verse
SATINE KRYZE in her SENATOR KRYZE verse
usual rules for starter calls apply-- mutuals only, specify 1-3 muses or verse, especially if you're a multi like me. asterisks mark verses with most interest, but i'm happy to write literally any of these
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just-some-guy-joust · 9 months ago
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Saw your scp post, I love SCP and if you know what the specific pages for Amelia are I'll read and summarize it
Thank you! I've got a couple pages here both from my own search and from a comment on the post I made. I just need info about Amelia to vibe check if she's Just Some Guy. I got a short summary in the submission for her but it wasn't enough to really be Sure, yknow? So I appreciate it <3
NX-143
SCP 5056
SCP 6622
SCP 6056
SCP 6156
Some writing??? Idk I've never ventured off the main SCP-### pages before
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bratbarzal · 3 months ago
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On Your Side (NH13) / Chapter Five
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Pairing: Nico Hischier x Fem!OC Poppy Jensen*
*I say it's an OC, it's just a name and third person POV. I use minor character descriptions because I don’t get on with writing vague reader inserts/YN for long-form, story heavy fics, but I will generally try to avoid including race and body type or really any physical descriptors. I’m always open to feedback on my writing, or how to be more inclusive.
WC: 17k (holy moly)
Chapter Warnings: I tried to sprinkle some fluffy flashbacks and smutty references later in here just to lighten the mood but this is angsty!! probably cursing I honestly can't remember, and serious warnings rn mentions of hacking/gossip blogs/blackmail/cyber bullying/nudes being leaked, talia is her own warning tbh. I tried not to make a cliched ex comes in between them plot and idk how it comes across but yeah I was trying to toe the line between it being interesting/different and then going too far and not being able to write around it which is why the plot kind of fixes itself quick and is a leeeetle bit bad but there's some unresolved bitterness in that relationship for sure lmao she has a LOT 2 say!! did I mention there's angst in here? insecurity/self-doubt and miscommunication!!! in abundance!!! but!! luke is a cutey patootie in this I wrote his part with a lil smile on my face 💖 also a ridiculous conversation about huffing glue lmao
Series Masterlist
Previous Part (Chapter Four)
A/N: ok so in the grand scheme of things this is both a filler chapter and also like a pivotal point in the story to set something later up, but when I was planning this entire fic out, the only directive I gave myself for this specific chapter was insert angst. you wouldn't believe the amount of times I've written and rewritten and gone back and forth on what's in here. it's the kind of instruction only a complete melon would give themselves and I clearly just hate myself in ways that are spooky and strange to submit myself to this kind of torture.
and I hear your cries of hasn’t this fic just been angst so far??? yes!! you may be correct!! but you don’t get a rainbow without a bit of rain hun!!! grab an umbrella!!! I promise good will come of this lmao
I'm sorry this one took so long, it's the only chapter I didn't have any kind of plan or direction for obviously and I tried to come up with so many different options for the talia plot before I landed on whatever this is, but the next one I do have some scenes written out in my plan so shouldn't be as long in between. my goal has always been a chapter a week but like I said the other day work has been a lot for me the past couple of weeks so I am genuinely sorry for making you wait!!
you guys were very fun and very kind to me after the last chapter so please please please lets keep the good vibes going come chat to me about your thoughts about the fic about the weather about anything!! 💓
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Nico
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When Nico and Talia had first started dating, there had been an element of excitement to the dynamic. Nico hadn’t properly dated anyone in a while - had casual flings here and there, and for the most part spent his time swallowing down his burgeoning feelings for his best friend - and there was a novelty to starting something with someone new.
He had all the intentions of building something serious with her. She was fun, got on with his friends, had ties close to home that meant he wouldn’t be putting a wedge between the two of them should he want to travel back in his breaks, and sinking his teeth into the challenges of a relationship was something that actually intrigued him.
He liked planning dates, liked buying gifts to see that buzz of joy and gratitude it would elicit, and he liked the companionship - liked having someone there when he came back from a long roadie or a tough string of games. 
He liked it so much he never really opened his eyes to the fact that Talia didn’t. 
She didn’t like the dates he planned - didn’t like the restaurants he chose, the movies he wanted to share with her, the bars him and the guys frequented. She didn’t like America, didn’t like their coffee shops, thought their pastries were packed with too much sugar, their portion sizes were too large for her ever to enjoy going for lunch, always complaining about feeling bloated and sluggish after every meal. She hated Jersey - wanted to spend all her time across the Hudson, looking down on everyone she met and everywhere they went together. She didn’t make much use of the gifts he bought her - let every bouquet of flowers die a quick, careless death, said the watch he bought her didn’t go with enough of her other jewellery and turned her nose up at every effort he made to make his apartment feel more like her home. 
She wasn’t all that comforting when it came to companionship, either. Rolled her eyes when he came home aching and exhausted, went out without him on the days he was coming back from a roadie and returned home when he had long retired to his bed. She would always want to meet up with her girlfriends instead of hanging around the team, and only ever wanted to come to games if she could bring her own entourage - mostly to show off her connections and hardly ever to actually support him.
And so, despite the initial attraction, despite the excitement that first came with their blossoming relationship, Nico can only look at Talia with disinterest and frigidity now.
He barely greets her as he opens the door to his apartment, moving aside to let her in and waiting for her to trudge her small case in behind her before he closes it, leaning against the surface and watching her discard her bag and keys on the counter with familiarity.
When she turns to face him, running a hand through her hair and huffing out a big sigh, he takes in her dishevelled appearance.
Even when travelling, Talia usually takes great pride in her pristine exterior - hair blow-dried, outfit co-ordinated and steam-pressed to perfection, not a crease or stain in sight, and usually a light layer of makeup to cover the slight imperfections like the darkened under eyes and redness around her nose. This isn’t like her.
She looks like she’s been messing with her hair the whole 8 hour flight out and beyond, her eyes are rimmed-red with smudges of brown at the corners, her lips are chapped and swollen like she’s been crying, and her sweatpants don’t match her hoodie. It’s almost like she’d thrown on whatever she could find and caught the first flight out, fresh out of bed.
“What’s going on?” He cuts straight to the chase, losing all formality and courtesy. He should feel bad for his callous greeting, but she had broken up with him over text not even a month ago - she doesn’t exactly deserve outstretched arms and a warm embrace, he thinks.
“Hi Talia, how have you been, Talia? It’s nice to see you Talia.” She mocks, a frown overtaking her features immediately. “I’m absolutely amazing, thanks for caring, Nico!” Sarcasm spews from her tongue like pure venom, and his eyes practically roll into the back of his head.
Nico pushes himself off of the door, heavy footsteps leading him into his kitchen where he can make himself a coffee to get through this. His watch reads 6:05 - far too early for her antics - and rising to her nagging is only going to make things worse.
“Do you want a drink?” He asks, as he busies himself with his coffee press, unable to look at her too long without the pricks of guilt irritating him.  He doesn’t even know what he has to feel guilty about.
“I’ll get it myself,” she scoffs, venturing over to the fridge and pouring out some orange juice - her movements around his space eerily natural. She slams back most of the drink as he works out how to brew his coffee - but she sees right through him. He’s hardly ever used the press before, and he’s just doing so now to avoid her in whatever capacity he can. “I need money.”
Nico’s almost positive he hasn’t heard her right - that there’s some kind of mix up between her standard German and his Swiss - and he slowly turns to properly face her, brows slanting into a deep frown as he assesses her expression.
She has a hand on her hip, her jaw set and her eyes darkened and serious. 
“You have money.”
Talia comes from money - her father is some kind of film producer and her mother an artist, if Nico remembers correctly - and she makes good money, herself. She’s been a print model since she was scouted in some market in Munich since she was 15, has had her face plastered in ads in magazines and catalogues around the world. She’s hardly strapped for cash. She gets things gifted to her by whatever company she can get a hold of. What could she possibly need him to give her money for?
“Not enough.” Her tone is cold, her demeanour the same, and if Nico can still gauge her emotions correctly, there’s an element of blame that she is starting to shift towards him, and his whole body starts to feel tense.
“Not enough for what?”
He can’t quite tell what feeling washes over him - worry, at the thought she’s gotten herself into some kind of trouble, stress, at the thought this could be a recurring thing, and potentially pity, at the way she’s so clearly carrying the weight of something heavy - something she’s lugged all the way across the Atlantic on a long haul flight with her.
“Not enough to pay the guy who’s blackmailing me not to leak the videos that I sent to you.”
“What vide-“ he bites back, and the immediate arch of her brow tells him all he needs to know. “Oh.”
Shit.
“Oh? That’s all you have to say?” She sneers, fury in her gaze and dismay in her tone. “You’ve ruined my life, and all I get is an oh?”
“Whoa, slow down, I’ve ruined your life?”
Nico has never been one to shame any girl for sending explicit pictures - he’d been more than willing to receive them at the time - but he hadn’t ever forced her hand. He hadn’t even asked her for them, in the first place. 
She’d taken it upon herself to spice things up, as she had put it at the time, when the team had gone on the road in early December. It was just after he’d returned from his injury - a time in which he’d spent mentally distanced from her as he’d focused so much on getting back to the game, their relationship consisting mainly of not-so-passionate sex to avoid aggravating his injury and hardly of any kind of meaningful conversation - and she had thought that keeping him on his toes on a roadie would mean he’d come back more interested than ever.
If he’d been looking out for red flags at the time, he might have caught that blaring one; needing to try new things only a few months into a relationship to keep it fun and light.
He’d been in his hotel room in Seattle, freshly showered and ready to throw himself straight into bed when his phone had started to ping. It was suggestive texts at first, are you alone? And I’m thinking about you. Then it had been pictures, hands over lingerie and fingers between glossy, pouted lips.
And then videos, one after the other before he had any chance to respond - her phone set up far enough away that her whole body was in frame, touching herself while laying on his bed and calling out for him.
He had called her instead of sending anything back, and as he realises the severity of the situation, a selfish part of him is glad he did so.
“Talia, I didn’t even save those videos, and I definitely didn’t show them to anyone else.”
Nico could never. Not only for the fact that he was raised to be a decent human being, but he has a sister - if anyone ever did that to Nina, he’d tear them apart, limb from limb. 
“You’re the only person I’ve ever sent anything to.” She seems to have made her mind up, and Nico feels as if his heart plummets through his torso at the realisation. She’s travelled all this way because she genuinely believes he’s the cause of this - that he’s shared intimate videos of her without her consent, to someone who would extort her for them. “And he sent me some pictures as proof, had information about me like the address of this apartment.”
“Talia, I swear on my mother’s life, I wouldn’t do that to you - to anyone, not ever.”
Tears well in her crystalline eyes, and Nico waits with bated breath as she assesses the situation in her head. 
He isn’t a liar - he has never given her a reason to think he is one. In their time together, he had always been honest, always been loyal, and he hopes at the very least - despite her obvious distain for him now, and how little she ended up caring about their relationship in the end to cut it off in the way she did - she thought of him as kind. 
He can do nothing but be patient, let her come to whatever conclusion on her own, and it’s only when he spots the quiver in her bottom lip that he takes an apprehensive step forward, ready to console her if needed.
She practically throws herself into his arms, wrapping her own around his waist and bawling into his chest, and all he can do is hold her and wait. He tries to rub a soothing hand up and down her back, holding the other against her head as her body wracks with sobs. All he can feel is the pounding of his own heartbeat, pulsing throughout his entire body until it’s all he can hear, too.
Nico does his best to comfort her, shushing and cooing and whispering how it’s going to be alright, but it does little to help. She’s beyond relief.
“There’s a guy who said he can track whoever is doing this to me,” she sniffles as she pulls herself away. “He’s in Jersey City Heights, he’s some sort of ethical hacker, whatever that means, I’m going to meet him and he’s gonna go through my phone.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” Nico doesn’t even hesitate to ask - if not to protect her, and make sure she isn’t unknowingly getting herself into an even more dangerous situation, then to protect himself too. If someone has Talia’s pictures, and she only sent them to him, there’s a possibility his phone had been hacked, and if this guy is as ethical as he says, maybe he can check Nico’s stuff, too, just to be safe.
She gives him an appreciative smile, eyes still glassy and cheeks flushed. “I’d really appreciate that.”
“I’m gonna shower, then we can go. You can grab whatever to eat while you’re waiting.” He backs away from her completely, only just able to acknowledge the ache in his muscles once the intensity of the situation has settled a little, and he just needs to stand under the steaming spray and clear his mind before he properly immerses himself in her company. 
He has a lot more than this whole mess that he needs to think about, and maybe a shower can bring him a little clarity on how exactly he’s going to explain himself to the beautiful girl whose bed he had abruptly left not even an hour ago. 
“Why are you dressed?”
Nico stops in his tracks.
When he had got back to his apartment, he’d made a little effort for it to seem like he’d been there all night. He’d gone through to his bedroom, mussed up his sheets to make it seem like he had been sleeping in them - and not with the anticipation that Talia was going to be entering his bedroom, but with her, he never knows - trying to retrace the steps of his usual routine before he goes to bed, he had closed all the blinds, had moved his gym bag by the door.
But he hadn’t changed.
Still adorned in his sweatshirt and jeans from the night before, the clothing feels all that much heavier on his body as she brings attention to it, and he quickly racks his brain to come up with a valid excuse that doesn’t rouse further suspicion.
“I fell asleep in these clothes.” As easy as the lie comes out, he doesn’t feel great saying it. Doesn’t feel like erasing the night he had shared with Poppy is for the greater good, even if it is just to Talia, but avoiding another difficult conversation is a must right now - especially when he’d already lied to her on the phone. “Was out late with the guys last night, Timo threw a party for my birthday.”
“Right,” she drags out, and when he turns back around, she casts a scrutinising glance over him, top to bottom. “Sorry, I forgot.”
“No worries,” he shrugs, genuinely not offended. She has no reason to remember his birthday. Not anymore. “Like I said, help yourself to whatever, I’ll try not to be long.” 
When he undresses for his shower, he’s thankful he hadn’t had the foresight to change in anticipation of Talia’s arrival. He probably would have donned a t-shirt and some shorts, oblivious to the visible indents on his thighs where Poppy had dug her nails in as she took him in her mouth.
His chest and torso are littered with scratches, some faint, some a little deeper, and he can’t get the right angle to see his back but he imagines they’re the same - the memory of her clutching at him as both of their climaxes approached is vivid enough for him to picture the marks she left behind.
He groans as the thought of her brings back that swirling feeling in the pit of his stomach, as he notices the blooming arousal pool there, and feels himself harden as he steps under the spray of his shower.
If his phone had been on do not disturb through the night, he could be in the shower with Poppy, instead.
He could have woken up to her in his arms, could have pecked at her sleep-swollen lips until it brought her out of her slumber, and spent his morning making up for lost time just like he had promised her last night. He could have made light work of the pleasure he had given her the night before - could have had her underneath him in her bed, tangled up in the mess of sheets and falling apart before they shared a morning shower, where he’d have held her up against the tiles and would’ve moved into her until they couldn’t tell where he ended and she began. He’d have made her breakfast, something sweet, so that as she sat and watched him atop the kitchen counter he had tasted her on for the first time not even 12 hours before, he’d press his tongue into her mouth after she had eaten and savour the flavour of strawberries that had settled between her lips.
Instead, he’s here, turning the temperature of his water down until any and all excitement in his body is dampened, and all he can focus on is the effect the cold has on all his other aching muscles.
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Once he has showered and gotten dressed - and has come to the conclusion that any further thoughts about Poppy need to wait until the Talia problem is resolved and out of his hands, he finds his ex girlfriend sprawled across his couch, music playing from the speaker in the corner, and taking helping herself to a whole new level. 
Her case is opened where she had left it by the door, and she’s set herself a little vanity up on his coffee table, fixing her appearance before they leave.
She’s changed out of her mismatched sweats, has dressed herself in jeans and a sweater, and has found an extension cable long enough for her to plug in whatever hot tool she’s currently running through her hair.
“You take the longest showers in the history of man,” she rolls her eyes, not even casting a glance his way as she focuses on her own reflection in the little mirror she must have brought with her. “I do not want to know what it is you get up to in there.”
“I was barely 30 minutes, are you ready to go?”
“Yeah, almost,” she runs the tool through her bangs until they flick out at the edges on either side of her face, and it reminds him of all the times he had watched her while waiting for her to finish getting ready. It makes him feel uneasy how familiar it all is, how she’s so quickly made herself at home again in his space.
He wants to tell her she needs to pack her stuff back up, that she won’t be staying here and needs to give his keys back, but the weight of the situation at hand dawns on him before he can open his mouth.
He’ll wait until they get back later, his decision depending on the outcome of their visit to her hacker friend.
As much as he doesn’t want her around, he isn’t going to kick her out with no place to go if her life is still shrouded in unsafe circumstances. 
Talia unplugs her stuff, wraps the cord around the handle of the brush she was using, and places it on a mat she must have brought with her so it doesn’t burn through the surface of the table. “Kay, let’s go.”
She marches ahead of him, picking up her bag and keys on the way out and leaving him to lock up while she calls for the elevator. They wait together in silence, his heart thudding an anxious rhythm in his chest as he anticipates the arrival of the elevator - and thankfully, it arrives empty.
He tries to distance himself from her as they enter, him standing in one corner, and hoping she takes the other, but she doesn’t quite get the memo, standing obliviously in the centre as she types away to someone on her phone and he presses the button to go to the basement.
Nico watches the numbers go down with bated breath. His floor, the next, the next one after that, and he uses any good will he has left with the universe to hope and pray it skips the floor coming up - but, as is just his luck, the elevator comes to a stop with a soft thud, and the doors open to reveal the very situation he’s been hoping to avoid. 
Jack walks straight in, eyes cast down to the phone in his hands, distractedly typing away and not even noticing the button for the parking level has been pressed before he pushes it, himself.
Luke notices straight away, halting in his movements to enter the space as his gaze flickers between the two people already occupying it. 
He diverts his eyes when they meet Nico’s head dropping as he steps in and stands beside his brother, uttering a quick greeting of, “Hey, Cap.”
Jack’s attention is captured immediately, spinning at an almost dizzying speed to face his captain, phone disregarded into his back pocket. “Schao! I thought you’d be at-,”
He’s thankfully able to tune into his perception before he carries on with his train of thought, a subtle movement in his peripheral diverting his gaze to the figure stood to the side of Nico. 
“Talia. Hi.”
“Hi, Jack.” Nico cringes inwardly at how disinterested she sounds. “Luke.” Talia had never really cared for Nico’s teammates - especially not the younger guys like Jack and Luke. She was quick to pass judgement, making comments on their maturity, or apparent lack-thereof, and wasn’t the biggest fan of how close Nico was with the pair. Didn’t like the time or attention he gave them considering the close quarters they lived in, and had always been resentful. She always claimed her English wasn’t good enough to hold a proper conversation with them, but he’d seen her enough around her American friends to know it wasn’t true.
“We’re just meeting up with some of the guys for breakfast.” Jack says, cautiously, in an attempt to fill the silence. The invitation remains unspoken, but Nico can tell in the way the younger boy cocks his head and meets his eye that he’s gauging his current situation for the morning.
“We have plans.” Talia must be able to tell what he was getting at, too and Nico can see Luke’s eyes narrow as soon as the word resonates in his head. Plans. Pre-meditated. Made before she had sprung all of this on him within the last hour or two. Panic stirs within him, and his throat itches to speak the truth, but it’s just not the right time to do so with Talia stood beside him. If he starts getting defensive, she’ll start asking questions, and the boys will have to bear witness to him skirting around the matter of Poppy. 
It’s not a good look no matter which way he swings it. He’s stuck in a thick, dark, tarry mess of not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings but making all the wrong decisions. A minefield of not knowing how to explain himself without raising a million questions on either side, and hoping one of the brothers might toe the line of the boundaries of their relationship and just straight up ask why Talia is here.
He knows he has fucked up without the way neither of them are looking him in the eye.
He knew it the second Poppy’s door had locked behind him this morning - he doesn’t need Luke refusing to meet his gaze, doesn’t need Jack’s shifting side eye to tell him he’s made a mistake. 
“I’ll text you later.” Nico says, mainly to Jack but still trying to meet his brother’s eyes with no luck. It’s an attempt to say something, without saying anything. A silent beg not to jump to conclusions about what they’ve seen - and, although he knows they wouldn’t, not to tell anyone else. Not whichever of the guys they are meeting up with, not anyone else on the team, and definitely not Poppy.
“Yeah, sure,” Jack mutters in a poor attempt to hide his discomfort, and an even worse attempt at masking his relief when the doors ping open on the parking level.
“Have fun with your plans,” Luke huffs out, his tone like a tight fist clutching at Nico’s chest despite his courteous choice of words.
“We will,” Talia forces a smile. Nico gets the feeling she isn’t as oblivious to the tension as he hopes she is.
The four of them separate into their pairs with mumbled goodbyes, Jack and Luke heading off to Luke’s car on one side of the garage, and Nico and Talia heading to his on the other, and Nico can’t even let out a sigh of pseudo-relief before Talia jumps on him.
“That was weird.”
“We broke up, they weren’t expecting to see us together.” He quickly excuses as he starts the car up, turning on the heat and hoping the soft buzz of the air will fill the silence enough that she doesn’t feel the need to talk. 
“It’s been like 3 weeks, most couples get back together after their first breakup.”
Has it only been 3 weeks? He thinks, shuddering at how little time had actually passed between her sending that text and him restoring balance to his life.
“We’re not most couples,” he shrugs, shutting that train of thought immediately as he starts to make his way out of the parking garage, ascending the ramp where the doors open up to reveal the dull beam of the winter morning sun. “You dumped me over text a week before Christmas, we’re not getting back together.”
“Oh yeah, I bet you were real cut up about it,” she jibes, sarcastically. “Probably landed straight in the bed of some desperate puck bunny more than happy to take your mind off of how awful I was to you.”
His mind immediately goes to Poppy, to last night, to her bed - and despite the complete bullshit Talia has fabricated in her head, despite how much he wants to tell her she has it all wrong, he can’t bear to twist himself even further into knots to skirt around mentioning the girl who did make him better.
“We’re not having this conversation right now.” He decides, tapping at the screen in the console of his car until he brings up the navigation. “Put in the address you need, we’re not too far from The Heights.”
The location she enters into the system is for an unassuming condo in a quiet, suburban area. The neighbourhood itself is picturesque, the buildings colourful, the paths lined with trees that seemed to flourish even in the midst of winter, and when Nico pulls up across the street, he notices the amount of families around - parents walking their kids to school and couples with dogs getting their morning steps in. It’s the last place he imagines some hacker to be shacked up, but maybe that’s the point.
He still doesn’t entirely understand the ethical part.
“It’s the one with the red brick and the balcony,” Talia points to the other side of the road as she unbuckles her seatbelt, and Nico looks over at the building as if he’s going to be able to see all the secrets stored within it.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, number 414.” She shows him the messages she has exchanged with the guy, and sure enough, the address matches up. “C’mon, the sooner we get in there, the sooner we can figure this out.”
He follows her across the street, adjusting the cap he wears atop his head and making sure it conceals his identity from anyone with eyesight good enough to catch it, trying to shrug off the discomfort of the whole situation as he waits for someone to pick up the buzzer Talia relentlessly presses.
He hears a different kind of buzz, lighter, like the manual zoom of a camera, and cranes his neck to assess their surroundings as they wait, before he catches sight of the device in the top corner of the porch, facing directly onto them.
He hears the click of a lock as soon as his eyes make contact with the thing, and cautiously tries the handle on the door until it pushes all the way down, letting them into the building. 
The door to the ground floor condo is open, and stood in the entrance is a guy no older than 20, dressed in all black with dark, beady eyes framed by wire-rimmed glasses. If Nico could find it in him to see the humour in the situation, he’d laugh at how he looks like Luke - a mop of curly brown hair, tall with a slim build and ever so slightly poor posture.
He straightens up as the two of them approach, Nico keeping Talia behind him as he assesses the safety of the situation. If they’re being lured into some kind of trap, he could definitely take this guy - he can’t even maintain direct eye contact, never mind manage to subdue a man of Nico’s stature.
“You didn’t tell me you were bringing someone, Talia.”
He’s soft-spoken, his voice ever so nasally, and despite the fact that he’s talking to the girl behind him, his gaze has settled on Nico’s chest.
“My name’s Nico.” He introduces himself, holding out a hand to shake. He thinks he can write him off as a threat, for now, and if making him feel comfortable encourages him to help them, he wants to put him at ease. “
“I know who you are.” He doesn’t shake Nico’s hand. “I’m Myles. Come in.”
Myles doesn’t wait for the two of them, marching back into his place and leaving the door open for Talia and Nico to enter and close behind them. 
Nico isn’t surprised by the space - from his brief encounter with the resident so far, it fits him to a tee; neat, impersonal, furniture that looks fresh out of a catalogue. He follows him over to the corner of his living room, a PC set up with several monitors that he can’t tell are on until they’re standing straight in front of them.
Myles throws himself down into the large swivel chair, spinning until he’s facing the two of them and crossing his arms over his torso with disinterest. “So, nudes?”
Straight to the point. Nico can’t exactly be mad at it.
Talia steps out from behind him, handing her unlocked phone to Myles. “The messages started last week, just after New Years. Straight to my number, not in DMs or anything, but the number doesn’t even come up for me to call it from another phone or anything, just says unknown.”
Myles takes her phone and plugs it into his setup without even looking at whatever she has opened on it, and Nico watches as the screens come alive with mirrors of the device and some other apps that launch as soon as it connects. 
“That’s more helpful than you think, they have to use an app to be able to anonymously text you, makes it easier to identify them.”
The way Myles talks is monotonous and detached, but the way he works is anything but. His fingers move quicker than Nico’s eyes can track on his keyboard, typing away at whatever as different things flash up and leave his screen. It like something straight out of a spy movie.
“So we can find out who it is just from that?” He asks, arms folding over his chest as he watches in almost-awe.
“Not exactly. If it is a hacker, I could identify their signature. Doesn’t mean I could identify them, but we can work around it potentially.”
Talia throws herself down on the couch behind them exasperatedly, sighing loudly and making her displeasure known. “You told me you could track them down, that’s what I’m paying you to do.”
“I told you I could help you, I didn’t say I could specifically track anyone, that’s not how this works.”
“How does it work then?” Nico asks.
Myles wheels his chair to the side to make room for Nico to get closer, and starts walking him through the process, pointing through the different apps he uses and explaining how he uses them. One deciphers which app the person used to message Talia. Once that’s been deduced, he uses another to enter a backdoor into that app’s servers, perusing through them until he finds the account that sent the text, making sure the date, time and then content line up. Once he’s found the account, he can see the other texts sent from it, and a gallery spreads across two screens, with maybe hundreds of pictures, videos, messages and transactions all to or from that same account.
“You’re telling me you have the power to do all this and you don’t use it to like rob banks or something?”
“Ethical hacker, clue’s in the name.” Myles shrugs. Nico looks back to Talia, her jaw set as she picks at her nails out of boredom. It’s probably taken about fifteen minutes for this guy to work an absolute miracle, and she looks like she couldn’t care less. “We use all this information, and the access I have on the server, to shut this dude down and cut his con before he can do it to anyone else.”
“Whoa whoa,” Talia shoots up, “Won’t that make him mad? Make him just post all the photos?”
“I doubt it,” the hacker comments, bringing up a couple of the photos on the screens, some of Talia, some of another girl, making Nico divert his eyes. “They’re not even real.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Excuse me?”
Talia and Nico both question at the same time, leaning in to get a proper look to confirm what is being told to them. The other pictures Myles had brought up, the ones of other girls, are actually kind of the same. The same poses, the same backgrounds, the same outfits, or lack thereof, just different faces and different hair.
“They’re called deep fakes. Photoshop, essentially.” He has that aloof tone to his words again, and Nico can’t quite believe how simple it seems for him to say. “They put a bunch of your pictures into an AI generator and give it instruction, like put this face on a body posed like this or wearing that. I’d assume the video they have is the same.”
“How is that even possible?” Talia gasps, pushing herself forward and snatching the mouse from Myles’ grasp. She clicks into what she assumes is the video, and it starts playing before she can think better of it, thankfully without any sound. 
It’s Talia - that much is obvious from the initial close up of her face - but Nico doesn’t recognise anything else about it. He doesn’t recognise the room she’s in, the bed she’s on, the things she’s doing. He’s never seen this before. It’s definitely not one of the videos she had sent him, and when he looks closer, he realises the little moles on her ribs aren’t even there.
None of it is real.
“You said he sent you the photos? You didn’t realise they weren’t the ones you took?” He can’t conceal the bite in his tone, his brows furrowing as he looks at her in disbelief. She’s flown out here, disrupted his peace, blamed him for blackmailing her, and she can’t even recognise what is or isn’t her own body. 
“They looked real, I-,” Her shock disappears as quickly as it had come about, her mood shifting and a glare all of a sudden being directed at her ex boyfriend. “I wouldn’t have accused you if they didn’t look real, Nico.” She snaps, frowning at him like this is his fault. “You have no idea what it’s like to be threatened like that, I won’t have you blame me for panicking.”
Slivers of guilt seep into his subconscious, and he takes a deep breath, diverting his gaze uneasily and letting out a big sigh.
He knows he should be a little more compassionate, but there’s panicking, and then there’s this.
She had accused him of ruining her life.
“What about the rest of it?” Nico asks, “Like how did he get her number or have my address? You said he had other information?”
“He did,” Talia nods, looking over to Myles.
“The address he probably got when he got your number, and he could have got that from anywhere. Could be something as small as you ordering something online and the store having a data breach, or clicking a link that shared your IP address, and getting your phone information from that.” Myles starts his typing again, keeping a tight grip on his mouse so that it can’t be snatched again. “I could probably find out actually, they’re pretty easy to spot, do you clear your history often?”
“I wouldn’t even know how to do that,”
“Perfect,” Again, his fingertips work at lightening speed, and Nico watches as instagram opens on one of the screens. “Yeah, a DM sent to you from… Devils_tea. You opened a link to a shared drive to upload some pictures, the drive probably had malware and the pictures have location metadata.”
Nico rolls his eyes, that small ebb of pity washing almost completely away, and before Talia can stop him, Myles carries on. “Some of the pictures you sent them are the ones they used for the AI photos, look your face in this one is the exact same as this photo they threatened to leak.”
Nico recognises these photos. The ones that had been plastered all over social media when their relationship had leaked. Pictures of them back in Switzerland, on a weekend trip to Ibiza, selfies of them in his apartment, and even a picture of the two of them with his parents back at his family home in Valais.
He has been far too oblivious to Talia’s games for far too long, he realises. 
Of course she had been the one to leak everything - who else would have had those photos - but he hadn’t even considered it would be her; she had faced the harshest aftermath for it, why would she subject herself to all the subsequent grief that came with people knowing about their relationship?
Thank God for this guy’s lack of social cues, Nico thinks, or he would never have known that for as long as they had been together, she had been violating his revered privacy and trust.
“Nico, that wasn’t-,” Talia’s panic is evident, wide eyes, trembling hands raised in defence, “I must have been hacked,”
“Actually, there’s no-,” Myles begins to interject, fingers working again to fact check, but Nico doesn’t need him to validate what he already knows.
“Shut up,” Talia snarls, with a finger pointed at him, “You don’t know what you’re talking about, we’re done here.” She reaches forward to snatch her phone back, yanking out the wire that connects it to his monitors and throwing it onto the desk. “We’re leaving, and if you think I’m paying you anything, you’re deluded.” 
Talia marches past them and straight out of the condo, slamming every door she possibly can behind her. Nico can only cringe as the sounds of her stomping footsteps echo until they fade out - until she’s probably outside and waiting for him back at his car.
“Doesn’t she want me to shut this thing down?”
“I’ll pay you.” Nico sighs, reaching into his pocket for his phone and trying to push down the feeling that arises when he’s met with a blank lock screen.
Poppy hasn’t messaged him. 
Not that he deserves for her to make it easy, to let him off the hook and pretend he hasn’t royally fucked things up with her.
“If you stop him, does he still have all the photos? He could still release them?”
“Yeah, but they’re pretty easy to validate as fakes, especially when you have the source material. I don’t think this guy is sophisticated enough for a full blown hack into her phone for the real thing. I couldn’t find evidence of any breach of her cloud or her device.”
Nico nods, but the information does little to quell the anxiety that squeezes his chest in a vice-like grip. 
This whole morning has been nothing but a giant waste of his time. From the second his eyes opened, to this moment right now, he’s made nothing but mistakes.
Not putting his phone on sleep mode before he and Poppy went to bed had been a mistake. Taking Talia’s call had been a mistake. Not waking Poppy up had been a mistake. Leaving without a note, without a text, leaving at all - it had all been one error after another, and all he has left to do is face up to the fact.
He can’t do anything to dwindle the panic rousing in every fibre of his being, the scarring marks left by torturous lashings of regret that whip at his skin.
He’s never felt so ashamed of himself, in such disbelief at his own decisions.
Why didn’t he just wake her?
She’s the most level-headed, acceptable person he knows. She would have understood. He hadn’t had a reasonable explanation at the time, and he doesn’t really have one now - but she would have accepted it, whatever he could have told her, she would have listened, waited until he could give her more.
He needs to see her, to explain, before it’s too late.
If he thinks about the feeling settling in his stomach, if he can compare it to anything, it’s like running from a blazing inferno of doubt and insecurity, licks of fire racing to catch up to him, the soles of his feet pressing into the sizzling ground - and Poppy is the cool embrace of safety.
She is light cracking through a window he just needs to break through to make it out.
If he can get to her quick enough, if he runs, and runs, maybe he’ll make it before he’s jiggling at a red hot handle that won’t move, won’t give, won’t budge.
If he can just talk to her, maybe the morning from hell will be outweighed by the days of resilience, weeks of efforts, years of loving her in whatever capacity, and the promise of something better.
He just needs to get rid of Talia.
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The car journey back to his apartment is carried out in a deafening silence. She had tried to talk to him when he’d made his way out of Myles’ condo, when he had found her waiting by his Mercedes with crossed arms and a sour look on her face, but he’d told her he didn’t want to hear it, that they’d deal with it in private.
He hardly wanted a showdown with her in the middle of the street.
And so, she sat in his passenger seat, jaw set, glaring out the window and letting out the occasional huff or puff for attention that he wasn’t entertaining.
The elevator ride up to his place had been the same. Silent, filled with the type of tension you could cut with a knife, and all he could do was ignore her continued petulance and take deep breaths to calm himself down. In through his nose, out through his mouth, overlooking the way she tapped her foot in his peripheral vision, and almost audibly rolled her eyes every few seconds. 
“Would it have killed you to defend me in there?” She scoffs as soon as the door closes behind them in his apartment, “You just let him accuse me of all that stuff and completely invade my privacy!”
Nico screws his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose.
He can’t blow up, can’t stoop to her level. He won’t feel good after the fact. He knows how Talia operates, should have known she’d immediately play the victim card, and he isn’t falling into the trap of arguing to the point of being in the wrong.
He’ll say something he regrets and she’ll use it to her advantage, somehow.
“You asked him to go through your phone, Talia.” He sighs, making his way over to the kitchen and getting himself some water. Chugging at it does little to soothe the burning feeling prickling at the back of his mouth, or the itch of his tongue to spit out a scathing retort. “He’s shut down the guy behind it, he can’t message you or anyone else with any more threats, you should be happy.”
“I should be happy?” She follows him wherever he tries to get away, crowding his space and jabbing a pointed finger into his arm. “You have no idea what I’ve been going through this past week. I thought my career was over! How was I supposed to know it was fake?”
“You didn’t even look at the pictures-,”
“Because I was panicking! I was upset, you can’t expect me to be able to recognise what’s been photoshopped when I’m scared like that!”
“But you can fly straight over here and pin the blame on me for ruining your life? You weren’t too upset to point the finger, Talia,”
“Don’t be an asshole, Nico, it doesn’t suit you.” 
“I’m being the asshole? You don’t even care about the trail of destruction you leave behind you, do you? You send private pictures of us, of me, of my family to random people online who you don’t even know, for what, Talia? For money?”
“I don’t need their money-,”
“So it was just for the attention? You get to parade our relationship around like it means nothing more to you than a title, and once you get your fifteen minutes and a few more instagram followers, you just jet back home and dump me over a text?”
“Oh my God,” she cries, flailing her arms dramatically, following him yet again as he makes his way into his living room, picking her stuff up after her that she had discarded here before they left and throwing it into her travel bag. “Stop playing the victim, for Christ’s sake, you’re hardly heartbroken over it. I know for a fact you’ve been hooking up with someone, one of the girls messaged me that they saw you leave a party with her on New Years!”
“So that’s what this is?” Nico snaps, pointing to her, to her stuff, “You think I’m moving on so you fly back out here and spring this bullshit on me, try to make me feel bad?”
“You have some nerve, Nico,” Talia scoffs, folding her arms across her chest and levelling him with a darkened glare.
“I have nerve? You’re the one who broke up with me out of nowhere and think that you can just march back here and make demands, Talia, blaming me for something that was entirely your own doing.” He’s getting sick of walking on egg shells around the topic. If she hadn’t have been messaging people she wasn’t supposed to, this would never have happened - it’s no one’s fault but her own, and as harsh as it may be, he wants to wash his hands of the whole thing. “Calling me in the middle of the night, telling me I ruined your life, saying I need to give you money?”
“Out of nowhere?” Of course she would only pick up on that, he thinks. “My God, you are so self-absorbed.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Do you think that dating you is easy?” She questions with a measured step toward him. “Do you think I want to spend my life waiting around for my boyfriend, only for him to only ever come home grumpy,” another step, “Or whiny,” and another, “Or too tired and achey to do anything? And that’s when you do come home at all and aren’t half way across the country with the communication skills of a candle. It’s a constant uphill battle trying to get even a second of your attention, Nico, so God forbid I tried to gain some kind of advantage from being with you.”
Her words are starting to cut, but he tries not to react, tries not to bite back. He can count several ways in which she gained an advantage being with him, just off the top of the head - a girl like Talia is never shy of attention. Her courting gossip blogs and sending them private information is probably just scraping the barrel of the ploys she made for exposure while she was with him.
“I didn’t break up with you out of nowhere, I put up with you and the whole circus that comes with you for months, but God, is it exhausting being with you.”
“You knew what you were getting into, Talia. You knew my job, knew my life.” They had met initially through mutual friends - hockey friends of his back home, even - and she has other friends who happen to be wives or girlfriends of athletes. She can’t say she came into the relationship completely oblivious to the downsides of dating a professional player.
“Not really,” she shrugs, “All the other guys can find some sort of balance, but not you. All the other girls get a proper boyfriend, someone who spends time doing what they want to do, who sticks up for them when their psycho fans start to turn on them, who doesn’t keep them hidden away like some dirty secret.”
“That isn’t fair, I can’t control that stuff, Talia, it’s not my fault.” He wants to point out that she was the one engaging in their gossip and riling them up, but he can’t keep harping on about something she refuses to acknowledge. He doesn’t have the time, patience or energy for it anymore.
The initial ‘leaking’ of their relationship had caused their first major fight. Fans online had somehow - although Nico can now hazard a guess as to how - found out about the two of them, had dug into Talia, her background, her family, her job, and had found some pretty toxic posts on her social media. They had been old posts, and she had told Nico that wasn’t the kind of person she was anymore - and he had no reason not to believe her, had never seen or heard her act in the ways she had online in what she called her misguided youth - but someone in the PR department at the Devils had cottoned onto the topic, and had warned Nico of speaking out in her defence when the pitchforks started to raise.
He’d told her he supported her, but he couldn’t do so publicly - not without upsetting people within the organisation he had worked so hard to gain the respect of - and she had told him she understood. They hadn’t been together that long, it would have been a little unreasonable for him to put her above his work in the ways she was expecting, but she clearly doesn’t see it that way, now.
“Maybe not, but if I’d have known that being with you meant having my life invaded, my career ruined, I never would have followed you back here, Nico.” She sounds more solemn now - regretful, even - and as deep as her words cut, she says it like a piece of advice, “I just hope whatever poor girl you’ve got tangled up in your mess this time knows what she’s getting herself into.”
“And what’s that?” His throat feels tight as he speaks all of a sudden, his resolve in defending himself fading, and he tries to gulp down whatever lump is forming there but the feeling doesn’t budge.
This is what she’s good at.
Turning the tables. Reducing him to uncertainty of himself, of his actions, of his memory of their time together.
“A one-sided relationship with a guy who will never be able to put her first.”
There’s a point in every game he has ever had the misfortune of losing, as the seconds count down in the final third, where he has to come to terms with the fact that there’s no possible way for him to win. It’s sort of comparable to the way his insides churn when he’s on a plane and it drops into descent, like his body is falling at a different speed to his surroundings, or the feeling he gets in his gut when he’s hiking, and he dares to take a peek over the edge of whatever mountainside he’s trekking up, where his body can predict the fall, and his mind has set on there being nothing he can do about it.
This feels like all those feelings.
“Whoever she is, and I know she exists, she doesn’t deserve that. It’s not fair.”
Nico’s heart pounds in his chest, echoing and thrumming in his ears until all he can hear is the beat reverberating, ricocheting around his skull.
He can put Poppy first.
So many parts of their lives are intertwined, it would be so easy to make it work. They work together, they live close, he speaks to her more than he speaks to anyone else in his circle. They’ve spent more time together as friends than he has with any other girlfriend he’s had.
He’s wanted her for years, of course he can do it.
Except, deep down, he knows he can’t. Being in a committed relationship with someone is an entirely different ball game to a friendship, no matter how close he and Poppy have been over the years.
He knows there’ll come a point soon into the season where he has to knuckle down and focus, can’t let anything or anyone distract him, and he’ll close himself off. It’s what he has always done. He gets in his head, starts to carry too much weight that he can’t shift until that final buzzer blows - and he can only hope that it happens with his team in the playoffs. Winning, thriving, succeeding. And for that to happen, he can’t prioritise anything other than the game he’s already dedicated his life to, his training, and most importantly, his team.
It isn’t about what he wants.
What have you done? He thinks, his chest aching.
Talia is right.
Poppy doesn’t deserve that.
She doesn’t deserve him only being there in the physical sense, if she even gets that at all. Doesn’t deserve him getting snappy and stressed, doesn’t deserve him not being able to give her time, or give her attention or affection like he wants to, or like she’s worthy of.
“I need to go.” He manages to choke out with a shake of his head, shouldering past her to pick up his jacket - needing to be out of this conversation and away from Talia. “Leave the keys, I don’t want you here when I get back.”
He needs to see Poppy.
He never should have left her - he wishes with everything in him that he had soaked up the time he had with her before everything came tumbling down around him. And somewhere deep within him, there is a fragile, wilting piece of hope that clings to the belief he can make things right. He just needs her to hone in on it. If anyone can reach into the deepest cracks of his insecurities, can show him he’s overthinking things and everything is not as hopeless as he has made it out to be, it will be Poppy.
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Poppy
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The first time Poppy had ever fallen asleep beside Nico was at a movie night in Jack’s old apartment he shared with Ty Smith. Jack had invited more people round than could reasonably fit in their living room, and so everyone was smushed in - each chair and every inch of floor space used to its full capacity. 
Nico had attempted to save Poppy a space, to give him credit. He had scowled at each of his teammates who tried to throw themselves down in the tiny slot beside him - prime space, corner of the comfiest couch, facing the tv directly, a small table to the side where one could keep their drinks and snacks - only, by the time Poppy got there, he had barely gotten away with man-spreading to make room, so the small section of the couch between Nico and the arm rest had become her designated spot.
It was cosy, to put it nicely. He had to swing his arm over the back so that she wasn’t being assaulted by the hard dig of his shoulder with every laugh, and her closest leg was pretty much on top of his for most of the film.
She’d known the guys for almost a year - had been working in media, attending every game, home and away, and had integrated herself into the group pretty closely - and she felt pretty comfortable around everyone.
It wasn’t the kind of dynamic she had anticipated falling into when she first got the job with the Devils. She was supposed to start getting serious about her life - cracking down on mingling with co-workers and throwing herself into new social circles, and focusing on building a career for herself, climbing through the ranks and attaining the kind of success and happiness she could shove in her family’s disapproving faces - but the guys had charmed her.
Jack had been somewhat relentless in his pursuit of Poppy’s friendship. He rarely took no for an answer when it came to inviting her out. He was new to New Jersey - a much younger player in a slightly older team - and his rookie season had been rough, so it came naturally to Poppy to want to provide comfort. She introduced him to some of her friends, showed him her favourite spots close to his apartment, found him a decent barber, picked up extra fruit whenever she went to the farmers market near her parent’s house and took it over to his and Ty’s place when she came back home so she could mother him into having his 5-a-day as if he didn’t have access to the best nutrition coaches in the country. Despite her best efforts, Jack had weaselled his way under her skin in the way only a brother could.
Nico’s charm was entirely different.
Nico’s charm came in the form of convenience at first - in the oh I live that way, I can drive you and I have some time, I can do some media stuff for you type of way. Convenience blended into companionship - I haven’t eaten either, we should go for lunch together and I’ve been wanting to watch that movie, do you want to watch it with me?
It turned into grabbing food together, even on days neither of them were working - breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, even coffee or sometimes drinks if they could meet up with the rest of the team. It turned into him spending time at her place, whether it was helping her paint her apartment, putting up her new wardrobes, or just binging whatever crazy long series Poppy had decided to start over from the beginning - she provided him with a sense of familiarity and calm he couldn’t really find in anyone else he had met in his time in the states. She became his person, his home away from home, away from home.
And he became hers. 
There wasn’t as much she had to escape; her job not as strenuous, the expectations of her not as high, but when things built up for her - when her mother became overbearing, or her latest endeavour into a relationship crashed and burned - Nico was there. He’d make sure she had a distraction, made sure she was looking after herself, and, in turn, would look after her as well. He made sure she got home safe on nights out, or when they returned from a roadie and landed late - he would always make sure to see her off into the comfort of her own home before he went back to his own. 
And that first time she’d fallen asleep beside him, he’d done the same.
He’d wrapped an arm around her to make her as comfortable as possible for as long as he could, and when the movie had finished - when her face was burrowed into the side of his chest, soft snores falling from between her lips - he gently drew her back to consciousness with his hand stroking at her cheek.
She’d been a little startled, hand shooting up to wipe at her chin and thankful she hadn’t been drooling on him - although with the easy smile he was giving her, she had thought he of all people wouldn’t have minded. 
“Movie’s done, do you need a ride home?” His voice had been low and soft as not to worsen her apparent disorientation, and his hand was still lingering by the side of her face.
She had nodded, blinking away her sleepiness, and working her way up from the couch and onto her feet, stretching out her muscles as Nico did the same.
The two of them bid their goodbyes to the rest of the guys, made their way together to Nico’s car, and he had driven her back to her apartment, chatting on the drive about work and training. 
Poppy had been cramming to prepare for her interview for the Foundation at the time - had been getting herself seriously worked up, staying up late, getting up early, barely allowing herself any time for anything fun - and Nico had seen right through her. 
He’d stopped her before she got out of the car, had held her hand, rubbing at her knuckles with his thumb, and had told her that she should get some proper rest, and that she was going to absolutely rock their world in her interview in a few days time. And, knowing she was going to ignore any instruction he gave to make herself some decent dinner and go to bed early, had ordered her favourite Japanese takeout to be delivered a good half an hour after she got inside, with a text that followed telling her to sleep straight after she had finished.
She’d never expected to drift asleep with him on Jack’s couch - had never expected to open her eyes to the sight of his looking so warmly back at her.
And she hadn’t expected the same thing this morning, because, as her eyes drifted open to the intrusive light peaking through the cracks in her curtains, it wasn’t the first time she had woken up.
The first time had been to subdued movements, a slight groan of her bed frame, and the soft pattering of footsteps leading away. It had been to a hushed voice, the creak of her bathroom door, the flush of a toilet and the uttering of a name she had hoped she would never have to worry about again.
Talia.
The rest of his words had been uttered in his own language, but that she could understand.
She had acted purely on fight or flight instinct, laying back and pretending she was asleep - although as soon as she did, she regretted it, her mind racing at the million and one other possibilities she could have gone with. Sitting up, waiting for him to come out and asking him what was going on being the most rational.
But when had she ever gone with the most rational thought?
She tried not to react as she felt his presence, felt the soft press of his lips to her skin, or the placement of her bunny in her arms. Tried not to follow him as soon as he departed her bedroom, beg him to come back and whatever was going on could wait until the proper turn of the morning. Tried not to get up and go after him when the click of the lock to her main door echoed throughout the empty apartment.
And she tried not to cry as she laid in bed, overthinking herself back to sleep, thoughts racing to the point of exhaustion, and hoping when she woke up again it had just been a god-awful dream.
But it hadn’t.
The spot beside her in bed is empty, not even a crease in the pillow to prove he was ever there - only the t-shirt of his she still adorned, the one that when she takes a deep inhale, still smells like him, and the distinct aching between her thighs.
She finds more evidence of their night together in the bathroom, where she undresses herself with sore muscles and glances in the mirror to see the spattering of purple marks forming on her chest and neck. Her fingers trace over them lightly, her fleeting touch bringing vivid images forth of his lips pressing to her skin, practically able to feel the pressure of her flesh being nipped and bitten again.
He had been so attentive to her - so in tune with what she needed and wanted, and so ready to give her whatever that may be. He’d been gentle at some points, and purposeful at others, and every little thing he did, he did it with sweet disposition.
The kind of man who treats a girl like that doesn’t just leave her in the dead of night with no good reason, right?
Her mind races despite her body going into auto-pilot throughout her morning routine. Her shower is over in the flash of an eye, she strips her bed, starts her laundry, makes herself some tea and gets herself dressed - all the while weighing out all the possibilities of what could have taken him away from her, and what she would be able to understand. 
That quickly turns to her imagining the worst, and a tight, constricting feeling starts to consume her chest. 
There isn’t a single part of her apartment she can get away from the thoughts buzzing around her brain - her kitchen marred with the memory of what had happened on the counter, her couch, her bedroom, her bathroom - all carrying distinct memories of Nico that she needs to bench until she knows the truth.
She mistakenly thinks her escape might lie in her phone. There might be a text there waiting, explaining everything and relieving all the anxiety that has welled up in her very core.
Nia’s warnings from the night before don’t ring quick enough in her mind as the screen comes to life, the immediate barrage of notifications flooding in.
2 missed calls from Mom
Mom: Just calling to remind you of proper table etiquette in case it has slipped your mind, I won’t have you embarrass me in front of a Lyon.
Mom: Cutlery going from the outside in, hold your wine glass by the stem and dab with your napkin, don’t swipe!
Mom: Also let the man tuck your chair in and pay the bill, this 21st century woman nonsense is very unbecoming!
Mom: And I don’t want to have to bring this up but for the love of God, Poppy, have some class. I don’t want to hear mutterings of your promiscuity at the next luncheon.
Whoever taught her mom to text deserves a prison sentence, she thinks.
Tucker Lyon standing a girl up and ghosting her attempts to contact him is what’s unbecoming, not her trying to pay her half of the meal.
She can picture her mother as she reads the texts, sipping on her Manhattan on the couch in the great room, her dad already having retreated to bed at that time, and her having nothing better to do than sit and stew on her daughter’s sex life.
If she knew what was really going down last night, her mom would probably have a conniption.
Knowing she’ll no doubt be getting a call later that evening, Poppy swipes away at her text thread with her mom, immediately checking the notifications she hasn’t long received from her best friend.
Nia: hey if you happen to release yourself from Nico’s wandering hands at all today me and Kelsey are grabbing breakfast by my work!!
Nia: if you need refuelling we’ll be at Marco’s at 9 😘 
Perfect. Therein lies her escape. Breakfast with her best friends, where they can hopefully talk her down from the ledge she’s precariously placed herself on.
A catch up with her girls, and then she can distract herself with work.
Poppy: I’ll be there!!
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“Hasn’t he text you or anything?” Nia asks, covering her mouth as she chews on her breakfast bagel, the three girls sat around a table inside their favourite cafe close to Nia’s office.
When Poppy and Nia had first moved in together, they rented an apartment in Hoboken, not too far, and their tradition of grabbing breakfast at Marco’s carried on despite Poppy living further down the river and working even further away in Newark. 
Kelsey had lived in Manhattan at that time, but she stayed over so often with the other girls that she practically spent majority of her week there, and so Poppy and Nia’s routine became hers.
Poppy had given the two of them a brief rundown of her night with Nico, a safe-for-work version of events, all leading up to the mysterious early morning phone call and swift departure.
“Nope,” she sighs, swiping to refresh her messages as if she hasn’t put her phone on loud just to be alerted when he does reach out.
“Have you text him?”
“Nope,” she repeats, putting the phone down and leaning back in her chair, running a hand through her already messed up hair. She’s going to have to throw it up if she wants to look any sort of presentable when she gets to work later.
“Is he usually this pathetic at communicating?” Kelsey asks, manicured nails swiping at a bunch of Sweet’n Lows like she’s trying to play Tetris with the packets. 
Kelsey hasn’t met Nico before, not that Poppy can remember.
Despite considering her one of her closest friends, their personal lives have never quite intertwined like that - not like hers and Nia’s.
In college, things were different. They were coming into their own together, figuring out just what they wanted their personal lives to be, and so Kelsey, Poppy and Nia would all share pretty much everything, just to have someone there to validate their feelings.
But that changed once they graduated.
Kelsey moved in with her boyfriend, Liam - who just so happens to be Poppy’s idea of hell-spawn.
The kind of guy her mother would probably love.
Liam worked on Wall Street, couldn’t go five minutes of conversation without talking about stocks or investment funds. His native language was risky money moves and belittling remarks, and he treated Kelsey like an accessory to parade around in public and discard in private.
Poppy had tried a few times to open Kelsey’s eyes to the way that it was, but it soon became apparent that she had to let her friend make her own mistakes, and some parts of their lives didn’t have to cross over.
They broke up around Thanksgiving, and Poppy had tried with all her might not to show her relief, but it has made her somewhat resentful when it comes to other relationships - like no one can be happy if she isn’t.
She knows it isn’t malicious, but she restrains from letting Kelsey all the way in, all the same.
“Not really,” Poppy lies, not wanting to clue her in on the Big Freezewhere he didn’t speak to her for months on end. It doesn’t entirely help her case. “I just don’t get why he’d sneak out to see her of all people, he told me they weren’t ever that solid, that he wasn’t happy with her.”
“Ooh, what if she’s pregnant?” Kelsey is entirely oblivious to the horrific realm of possibility she has just opened Poppy up to, evidenced by the casual chuckle and subsequent sip of her coffee. “Maybe she’s back to baby-trap him.”
Poppy thinks she would have to flee the state.
Nico is a family guy - if Talia is pregnant, he’d force himself to love her again, if he ever even stopped, for the sake of their gorgeous brown eyed, floppy haired baby, and push Poppy to the side just like he had before. And she’ll have to watch him from the sidelines, yearning for what she had just managed to touch the tips of her fingers to before it was violently yanked from her grasp. 
Maybe she’d have to flee the country even - move somewhere remote where she doesn’t even have the chance of being reminded of hockey, let alone of him.
Somewhere with no coffee shops that she’d enter, and the smell of fresh pastries would remind her of all the breakfasts they had together. No railways, where she’d be reminded of his love for model trains every time she came across the tracks. No weird club music that he loves so much, or dorky wizard franchises he chastises her for never having seen.
Maybe Antarctica. They only have penguins there. No real civilisation that she knows of. No brown haired, dark eyed Swiss Gods with deep, honeyed voices that make her knees weak and dimpled smiles that do even worse.
She wouldn’t be able to cope with losing him like that, living her life in an endless mental cycle of what ifs and maybes.
“Kelsey, I beg of you to read the room,” Nia chastises, swatting the girl on her arm before taking Poppy’s hand in her own. “Don’t listen to her, she just wants us all to be single at the same time.”
“Sue me for wanting to have fun! It would be just like college, you and me full-body plunging into the dating pool. Imagine the chaos, Pop, you don’t wanna be tied down to a guy hung up on his ex right now.”
“Dating pool?” Nia scoffs, turning to glare at her, “You’re hardly dry from your last relationship.”
“I’d rather be a grape than a raisin, Ni.” Kelsey chides back, and Poppy can’t help the twitch of her lips at the horrific comparison. 
“You’re really gonna listen to a girl who says that?” Nia asks, unable to mask the glint of humour in her eyes, and Kelsey bites back a smile, too.
Despite the ache in her chest at the thought of any of it - of Nico leaving her this morning, filling her up with empty words and false promises, potentially knocking up an ex girlfriend he is still secretly hung up on even though he told her otherwise - she manages to crack a full smile.
“You are terrible at analogies, Kels,” Poppy tries to hide the grin behind her cup, sipping at her tea and letting the warmth of it soothe the pain in her throat. 
“I’m trying to encourage you to be a strong, independent woman here!”
“She is a strong, independent woman,” Nia defends, “She also happens to be a chronic over-thinker with a deep seated fear of confrontation.”
“I don’t fear confrontation.”
“Then why are we here chit-chatting about hypothetical scenarios when you could just text him and ask what’s up?”
“Maybe ‘cause that’s scary?” Poppy scoffs, only half joking. “What am I supposed to say, hey I just so happened to eavesdrop on your private conversation before you fled my apartment this morning, and despite me not understanding most of it, I definitely heard you mention someone, so could you just let me know if your gorgeous model ex girlfriend is pregnant with your perfect specimen baby?”
“Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out, you don’t even need us.”
Poppy rolls her eyes.  
She could text him. Could be casual about it, a good morning or even an are you okay? Those don’t warrant the alarm bells she’s afraid of raising - the ones that blare out with the siren sound of run, this girl is unhealthily attached to you already!
But she doesn’t want to be the pathetic girl chasing after the guy sending her clear messages that he doesn’t want her.
It’s easier said than done not to overthink the whole thing - not to second guess everything he had said, or everything she had done last night.
She feels like she had rushed things. It was so impulsive, so charged, and after spending the majority of her week away from him, she just hadn’t been able to help herself. And that makes her feel like a hypocrite. She had told him that night he had first kissed her that things between them had gotten intense. It had been the whole reason for spending a few days outside of each other’s company, and in the first possible instance, she had thrown herself at him.
It was desperate.
And maybe that scared him.
It sure as hell scares her.
“I don’t know what to do,” She groans, throwing her head into her hands and scrunching her eyes shut to try and drown out the endless doubt. 
She feels two hands rub at either sides of her back, “Listen, Pop,” Nia is the first to attempt to console her, as always, and Poppy holds her breath for the harsh reality check she’s about to throw her way. “You know I am the one person who would usually be trying to convince you to cut your losses and run when it comes to guys who are no good, but this is Nico. I’ve watched the two of you ignore your feelings for far too long to let you get in your own way, now.
“And you’re forgetting I saw him last night, before you got there, there isn’t a chance in Hell he would have left you like that without a good reason. I don’t for a second think he’s still hung up on her.” Nia casts a side eye to Kelsey.
The only problem is that Poppy isn’t sure there’s a reason good enough. Not when it comes to Talia. Not when the memory of those months of radio silence is still so fresh for her.
“I have to go to work in a building where his face is plastered everywhere, Ni, I can hardly forget his entire existence until he deems me worthy of an explanation. Who leaves after a night like that without even a note or a text?”
“An idiot,” Kelsey mutters around her drink, rolling her eyes when Nia sends her another death-glare.
“I’m not asking you to forget, I’m telling you to wait.” Nia frowns, but her tone remains consoling and warm. “You need to stop letting what this thinks,” she flicks at Poppy’s forehead, “Get in the way of what this knows.” She points to her chest on the left side. “You know him. You know how much he likes you.”
She does.
She knows Nico, she trusts him.
She can only judge him based on his actions so far - the ones that tell her that he cares. He leads with his heart, it’s his most attractive attribute. He’s gentle and loving and she needs to focus on those things over anything else.
“Ugh, corny,” Kelsey drags, and despite her repeated efforts to discourage her, Poppy knows she isn’t being entirely serious. “If he has any non-stupid hot athlete friends though, I’m first in line when the two of you kiss and make up for double dates.”
Guilt pricks slightly at Poppy’s chest - for making her recently single friend sit here and listen to her complain about something so monumentally small compared to the breakdown of the long-term relationship Kelsey had just endured. Even if it was perceivably toxic.
“You’d make such a good WAG, Kels.”
It’s a poor attempt to make up for it, but it seems to console her friend all the same, a giant grin breaking out and flashing her perfect pearly whites.
“I know.”
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Poppy tries to distract herself with work. Tries to make her way through her inbox of seemingly never ending emails and her list of ever-growing tasks. She types up lengthy responses, puts together a presentation, makes a bunch of phone calls she’s been putting off for God knows how long, sorts all her invoices out - she even sends a fax. In the year 2024. It’s her most productive work day she thinks she’s ever had.
She zeroes in on the ground every time she moves through the building. Ignores the pictures that line the walls of the Rock, pushes down the memories of all the times she’s walked these very halls by Nico’s side, and she thinks she’s done just about enough to clear her mind for the time being.
She hasn’t thought up some heart wrenching scenario in at least an hour by the time she’s wrapping up for the day.
She’s making her way back to her office after dropping some files off for Elaine when she catches sight of a mop of curls over the top of the chair by her desk.
Luke is sat in her chair when she enters, swivelling around and staring at the ceiling.
“You’re gonna make yourself sick doing that, you know.”
“You’re such a mom,” he scoffs, standing up and clearly trying not to sway, “You ever tried having fun? I think I saw a glue stick on a table out there,” he points through the door into the wider office space, where there are a few, less private cubicles and a common area. “We should go sniff them, let loose a little.”
“Is that why you’re here on your day off? To huff glue?”
“Yeah, I don’t get to let loose enough. Being a rookie in the NHL is hard, Poppy,”
“Bummer for you.” She pouts, mockingly, swerving past him as he rounds her desk and sits on the other side, flicking at the bobblehead version of his older brother that stands by her computer. “If you’re chasing a high can you do it with one of the other departments, it’s not a good look for the Youth Foundation.”
“I won’t tell if you don’t.”
When Luke had first joined the Devils, she hadn’t expected that she would warm to him the way she has - but, surprisingly enough, considering the fact they’re brothers, their relationship recently has started to mirror her and Jack’s.
Luke is funny. He’s sarcastic and a little silly, and it can be nice to have him around when work gets a little stressful. He doesn’t let the pressures of his own career outweigh those of hers, and, despite the gap in age, she actually enjoys his company.
But he never seeks her out like this.
Their interactions have always started through other people. Group conversations that dwindle to just the two of them, or he usually accompanies Jack to bug her and carries on when Jack’s ever-so-busy schedule takes him elsewhere.
She can’t think of another time he’s just shown up in her office alone.
Especially on his incredibly rare day off.
“Why are you actually here?” She asks, casting a suspicious but half-playful glare his way as she starts to pack up her things. 
“Came to see if you wanted to join us for dinner.”
“Aw Lukey,” she reaches over her desk to pinch his cheek, “I’m flattered and all but I’m a little too old for you.”
“Ha ha,” he swats her hand away, “Us. Me and Jack. Maybe a couple of the others if they’re free but you can pick where we go if you make a decision quickly, we were thinking a steakhouse.”
She narrows her eyes at him, expecting him to crack a joke about her being old, but he just looks back at her awaiting a response. “Why?” She drags out the question, her movements stopping completely.
“Maybe ‘cause humans need sustenance to live? What do you mean, why?”
“Why would you want me to tag along on your bro date?”
“Don’t call it a bro date,” Luke cringes, “Just remembered you were working today and we were in the area, don’t know why you’re being weird about it.”
“You’re being weird. You guys never let me choose where we eat. Don’t you remember that time we grabbed dinner when you guys drove me home and Jack told me to stop being a pussy about my seafood allergy ‘cause he wanted sushi.”
“Don’t blame me for the crimes of my brother, Poppy, he was obviously joking.”
“I had to eat tofu, Luke, I don’t find that very funny.”
“Are you coming or not?”
“That depends, how do you have your steak?”
“Well done.”
“Oh! Then absolutely not.”
“Remind me never to try to be nice to you again.” He scowls as they make their way out of her office, and she locks up behind the two of them.
“Gladly, it’s creeping me out.” She grabs at his elbow before he can carry on, stopping him in the otherwise empty common area where she knows no one is around to listen in. “Is something going on, seriously?”
Luke rolls his eyes, but she knows him well enough that it’s only done in an attempt to avert from her gaze. 
Bingo. He’s hiding something.
“I just thought you might want some company.” He shrugs, shoving his hands into his pockets and twisting his lips to keep from saying much more.
“Why?”
If Poppy wanted to spend her life getting a straight answer out of people for a living, she’d have become an interrogator. What is it with these guys and their inability to answer a simple question?
“Jack said you left the party last night with Nico.”
Poppy’s eyebrows scrunch so close together that she can feel a deep crease form between them. What on earth does that have to do with asking her to dinner? Or being overly nice to her?
Unless-
“You’ve seen him?”
“This morning.”
“Oh.”
All of her efforts from throughout the day seem to have been for nothing - an immediate rush of insecurities flooding her mind.
Where did he see him? What did he say? Was he okay? Was Talia there?
She feels like she can gauge an answer from the way Luke looks. Sheepish, almost, like he doesn’t want to say something he knows will hurt her feelings.
She had to have been with him. He wouldn’t just show up to her office like this if it wasn’t something that would seriously hurt.
She wishes she wasn’t the kind of person who did this - who filled in the gaps of conversations and always came out with the worst possible outcomes - but she can’t help it. She’s been doing it all her life, and there’s rarely ever an instance where her instincts have led her astray.
She knows it’s some weird part of her mind protecting her, but she needs to do something here. Nia’s words from earlier ring like a warning. Don’t let what her brain thinks get in the way of what her heart knows.
Her heart knows Nico wanted her. Knows Nico liked her. Knows Nico wouldn’t do anything to hurt her.
She needs to figure things out for herself and stop running, stop letting her mind fill in the gaps of a situation it can’t even comprehend to begin with.
She reaches her arms around Luke’s shoulders, stretching up on her tip toes to pull him into a hug before rubbing her knuckles into his curls, affectionately.
Luke Hughes is sarcastic and silly, and he cares enough about her to not want her to be alone if she’s going through something.
“Thank you for the offer, Luke, but I’ll be alright.”
“Are you sure?”
She nods, a tender smile tugging at the corners of her stubborn lips. It takes over her face, eyes glinting fondly and cheeks warming. 
“Yeah, you can walk me to my car if you’re that worried about me though.” She loops her arm through his elbow as they make their way to the parking lot, and when they get there, he makes sure she’s in her car and has set off before him and Jack leave.
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As if her day can’t get any worse, the elevator in her building is cordoned off with tape and a sign when she gets home, and she has never regretted moving up a floor as much as she does when she’s trudging up 6 flights of stairs.
She’s exhausted. Emotionally and physically, and she just wants to throw herself into bed and pretend the last 24 hours were a terrible dream.
Only, as she rounds the final corner to get to her door, any hopes of that go straight down the pan when her eyes land on Nico, standing in front of her door with his hands buried in his jacket pocket.
He looks tired too - hair messed where he’s no doubt been taking his cap on and off for however long he’s been stood here, running a hand through the tresses until they’re all askew. 
His shoulders are slumped, and he doesn’t even greet her with that pretty smile he usually gives her.
His lips do curve up a touch - limp and half-hearted, not even enough for a dimple to form - but it doesn’t provide the comfort she had thought it would.
She feels anxious. A culmination of the day’s emotions washing over in one go. Sad, regretful, nervous, disappointed - all things she shouldn’t be used to feeling when it comes to Nico, but are all too familiar when she takes the last few months into account.
“Hi.” She gives a weak smile of her own.
“Can we talk?”
She wishes he’d have just said hi, back. That might have relieved the tightness in her chest just a little.
Nothing good ever comes of can we talk?
He steps aside as she approaches, maintaining a safe distance as she opens the door and enters her apartment.
The Nico from yesterday might have brushed past her, the graze of an arm or a lingering hand, but this Nico doesn’t. He barely even meets her eye.
He closes the door behind himself, watching as she discards her bag and keys to the console table on the side, and while she’s turned away from him, she tries to let whatever emotions need to come out cross her features where he can’t see them.
She needs to be cool about this, she thinks.
If she doesn’t get her back up, doesn’t get agitated, she won’t scare him off.
“Are you okay?” She asks once she’s turned to face him, not liking how he stands unmoving by the door. He hasn’t made any effort to settle in - his jacket still on and his hands still hidden in the pockets.
“Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that?”
She realises now that she can get a good look at him that the expression he wears is one of shame. Guilt. Apprehension. She needs to be careful and toe the line before he gets consumed by it, she realises.
She steps toward him a little, and he doesn’t back up - not immediately, not obviously - but he hardly welcomes her approach, either.
She doesn’t like feeling this way when it comes to talking to him - feeling uneasy and unsure, but there’s a part of her that’s tired of having to prompt him for answers.
He had been the one to leave this morning. Why can’t he just come out and tell her why?
“I’m alright,” she shrugs, not wanting to scare him off with the truth. “Super tired, though, can we sit?”
She wonders if he thinks about the same things she does as they make their way to the couch. Wonders if he can feel the scratch of her nails on his torso, or the brush of her lips against his, as they sit in the spot where not even 24 hours ago, their bodies had been intertwined.
He doesn’t sit right beside her as he normally would, and she finds herself missing the way his thigh usually brushes against her own.
She doesn’t know where to start or what to ask, and so she basks in the silence for a little - finding comfort in the fact that, despite the mess they’re currently in, they aren’t quite at the end yet.
But a part of her feels it coming.
She’d known it this morning if she lets herself listen to the rational voice in her head. As soon as she’d heard him say her name, as soon as he’d left, a part of her knew that was it, and maybe if she’d let herself believe it at the time - hadn’t talked herself down and convinced herself she was being irrational - she could have protected herself from all the ways this is going to hurt.
“I’m sorry.” He says, and when she looks up, he’s looking down where his large hands are now clasped together in his lap.
“For what?” She manages to choke out.
“Last night, I,” she digs her nails into the palms of her own hands to stop herself filling in the gaps as he figures out what he wants to say, but it’s no use.
He’s sorry for last night.
Last night, he made a mistake.
Last night, he was drunk, he was confused, he was just looking for something or someone to keep him occupied.
“I care about you so much, Poppy.”
That sentence shouldn’t be the one that fills her with dread, but it is.
“You’re my best friend, and I love you,” he does look up as he says this, eye meeting hers in an attempt to convey his honesty, but she sees more of the truth in his glassy gaze than she hears in his words. “This morning, I panicked, and I just needed some time to figure out what I want.”
No, no, no.
She’d rather he tell her what actually happened than do this. Than pretend he left because he doesn’t want her.
“I love you-,”
“You said that, already.” She can’t help the bite in her tone as she prepares herself for the hit. The I love you, but.
“You’re so important to me. Being your friend, it’s like it’s what keeps me sane lately.”
She chews at the inside of her cheek as she feels the tears start to well at her lash line.
“Poppy, I don’t want to mess up what we have,” he shakes his head as his gaze drops, dark eyes darting to focus anywhere but on her own, pleading and watery as she watches him slip away. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You don’t think this is hurting me?” She feels weak as her voice breaks, “You don’t think this is already messy?”
She reaches out to take his hands in hers, digging in to unclasp them, to try thread her fingers through, but he doesn’t make it easy.
“Nico, I love you, too, you know I do, we can figure it out, you don’t have to run away from me.”
It’s a desperate attempt and she knows it is, but she needs to know she tried. When she’s sobbing into her pillow and crying herself to sleep tonight, she needs to know she didn’t just let him go without a fight.
“I can’t give you what you want, I can’t be in a relationship, I’m no good at it.” 
Regardless of what she had told herself earlier, about taking what he says at face value, and trying not to fill in the gaps like she does so often with everyone else, she can’t help herself. When he says, I can’t be in a relationship, he means with her. He can’t be with Poppy. He would be no good with Poppy.
“Why are you doing this?”
“I told you-,”
“No, you said before that you’ve wanted this for as long as you’ve known me, you don’t just wake up and change your mind, not after-,” Poppy starts to feel panic building within her like a flipped over sand timer. Rising and rising until she starts to feel nauseous, getting harder with each second not to jump to conclusions. 
The voice inside her that tells her he got what he wanted and decided it wasn’t for him sounds caustic and bitter, and if she hadn’t wound herself up so much about this whole situation over the course of the day - the past week, even, or the months before - she might have been able to fight off the way it so easily convinces her.
“I have to put the team first, it doesn’t matter what I want, I have to focus on them, on hockey.”
She’s too caught up in her own emotions to notice how weak he sounds - glassy eyes unable to catch the glint in his. All she can hear, all she can see, is the minute hints of a cover-up - that she isn’t getting the whole story, that he’s lying to her, and that the excuse he’s giving is cowardly.
He still hasn’t mentioned the call, hasn’t mentioned Talia, hasn’t explained why he left her, why he didn’t say anything, why he didn’t come back.
“And you didn’t know that before?” She scoffs, pushing herself up off the couch and stepping away from him, “I can’t believe you would do this to me.” She wipes the tears from her cheeks as soon as they fall, but she can’t rid her skin of the feeling that they were there, her flesh damp and sore.
“I know we took things a little too far last night, but that doesn’t mean-,” She almost thinks he notices how bad that hurts her, referencing the night they shared as a mistake - an instance where they got carried away, and not where they followed through on years worth of built up tension and adoration for one another. She doesn’t even have to fill in the gaps, this time. Took things a little too far is clear enough. “We can still be friends. I want to be friends.”
“Friends?” Poppy jeers in disbelief, turning completely away from him now and missing the tears that drop from his own cheeks - missing the way his chest cracks and stretches open in a last ditch demonstration of his vulnerability, his desperation not to lose her completely. “You should go.”
“Poppy,”
“I can’t,” she tries so hard not to cry, knowing she won’t be able to stop, but the words come out in a choked sob, and her voice carries on in the whiney way she always hates. “You told me you wanted more, you said I was yours, and I’m supposed to just act like it never happened? Just accept you didn’t actually mean the things you said?”
“I meant them,” he says, defiantly, so sure of himself that it makes her head spin. “I wouldn’t-,”
“No, you didn’t. You’re a liar. You were either lying then, or you’re lying now. I don’t know which is worse. I can’t be your friend. I can’t pretend like you can that I don’t feel the way I feel.”
“Please, Mohn,” His fingertips just manage to reach out to land on her forearm before she shucks him off, wincing as if his touch has pained her.
“Don’t.” She takes an immediate step back, arms crossing over herself as a defence mechanism, body language screaming at him to go away, and she watches his pleading eyes drop to her arms just as she feels the cold of the metal there - so in tune with her every thought despite his denial of their true connection. Her arms move before her mind can make the decision, before it can remember what even sits on her skin, and her shaking fingers fumble to unclasp the jewellery adorned on her wrist. “You should take this back.”
Nico shakes his head, stepping back and away from the outstretched hand that holds her gemstone bracelet like it’s an actual danger to him. “No, that’s yours, Poppy.”
“I don’t want it.” She knows she’s the one that’s lying now. She wants the bracelet. She wants him. She doesn’t want him to leave. She wants to be his friend over being nothing. 
But she doesn’t want to hurt.
Looking at him hurts.
Remembering last night, remembering their kiss, the things he has said, the things he has done, it all hurts, and she can’t keep hold of a constant reminder of the pain, can’t wear it on her person at all hours of the day just to know deep down that the man who gave it to her will never want her the same way.
“I want you to leave.”
“Please,” he begs again, head tilting as devastation floods his features, brows pushing together, tears welling at the corners of his eyes, “We need to talk about this-,”
“No, you were right, we went too far, it was a mistake.” Her voice breaks as she says things she knows she doesn’t mean, but he’s already put it out there, so she doesn’t see the harm in echoing his own opinions. “There’s nothing more to talk about.”
She can’t look at him anymore, and so she drops her gaze to his hands, stepping and reaching forward and forcing him to take the bracelet from her before she rounds the couch and heads to the door.
If he isn’t going to give her the whole truth, she isn’t going to entertain part of the story, and she needs him gone so she can give in to the way her body wants to fold in on itself.
It takes him a minute to gather himself, but she refuses to look his way, waiting by the open door to her apartment and staring at the floor in front of her until his shoes appear.
“I do love you, Poppy. I’m leaving because I don’t want to upset you any more than I already have, and I’ll give you space if that’s what you need, but I’ll be here when you want to talk about this. I mean it when I say I can’t lose you.”
 She doesn’t say anything. She can’t say anything.
There’s a stabbing pain that’s building and building in the centre of her chest, and she doesn’t even think she can breathe in his presence.
He clasps a hand around her upper arm, and leans into her, his lips pressing a firm kiss into the crown of her head, and he lingers there for a moment before he retreats. 
She manages to push the door closed behind him, the click of the lock louder than ever, and waits a good few minutes in silence before her body is wracked with a silent sob.
The one time she had tried to be brave and fight her own intuition, and this is where it gets her.
So much for Nico wouldn’t do anything to hurt her.
Next Chapter
Taglist: @alwaysclassyeagle @bunbunbl0gs @idgaf-if-youre-here @youflowerr-youfeast @thearchersstuff @bellsdi0r @wonderheartz @jjgsunflower @butterflies35 @kenziepickle @josierosie @laheyxlover @mrsmattytkachuk (sorry if your tag hasn't worked btw)
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hishighnesstheprincess · 10 hours ago
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so what's your overall thoughts on the movie??
General: sa2 still clears and specifically I think the sa2 lore for the ARK trio (Shadow Maria and Gerald) is a lot better, but this was pretty good (sometimes even great) for a movieverse (loose) adaptation of sa2. I did not like Gerald though, I think his crusty ass should have been left in the 70s
Specific thoughts under the cut (spoilers obviously)
My main criticisms rn is that it basically just feels like a watered down version of sa2, from most of the main story beats to the lore to the characters etc. Obviously I was not expecting them to have the same amount of depth that the games managed to give to Shadow's story from both the extra content that comes along with the games (like the manual that confirmed Maria's illness) but I feel like cutting out stuff like Maria's illness and her wish just left the story feeling neutered in some very important ways. The other big thing I didn't like was Gerald in general. Like yeah he was kinda funny the first two acts, but then he keeps the goofy schtick up while Sonic and Shadow are trauma bonding and kicking ass in space and idk. If they wanted to show him as a more evil version of Eggman maybe have him just actually be more evil for the final act. Ideally he should have behaved more menacing after dropping the "You're no Maria" line. Also the pacing was fast as hell, and apparently the film cut relatively important stuff like explanations for how Gerald was alive at 110 years old (he was licking that Shadow quill apparently) and also led to stuff like Shadow's entire arc being kinda rushed.
Aside from those though... I kind of loved it???? Big surprise coming from me I know, and I do wonder if it's just recency bias, but I think this is easily and by far the best project the films have put out. If you've seen both trailers for this film you can predict how 95% of the plot is going to go along with the character arcs, but they're still decently effective (for everyone except Gerald). The goofiness does get to be a bit much sometimes and my god I wish they would just let movie Sonic be quiet for once in a while, but towards the later half it starts getting really good. The parallels between Sonic and Shadow are well-made and impactful. Super Sonic and Super Shadow are hype. The action is fucking fantastic (if you go to these films just for spectacle you ABSOLUTELY want to see this one). And the found family stuff is the best it's ever been. If you like Wachowski sibling content, and specifically Wachowski sibling angst, you will be feasting. Tails and Knuckles fans, GO TO THIS MOVIE. I won't say why but you'll fucking love it
Depending on my mood, it's a 6/10-8/10 from me
Random thoughts
The non-game human characters are the best balanced that they've ever been
The game human characters are not well balanced at all lmao
Even if movie 4 will inevitably be less hype than movie 3, I can honestly see it maybe being the best so far which is 100% my own bias
Amy's design is cute as hell and Metal's design is awesome as hell
I'm kinda glad Jim Carrey is (presumably) gone ngl
I hope they keep the energy Sonic had in the third act and mid-credits for the rest of the franchise, even if it will obviously be less intense than when he was literally trying to kill someone
I am going to make so many fanfics where movie Sonic suffers bc I adore him so much (/negative) (/positive)
I think it would be best if the next movie was just Sonic, Amy, and Metal. I love the sibs but this being in live action, if the cast keeps getting inflated every individual member is just going to have so much less time. Maybe Sonic and Amy get kidnapped to Little Planet or something
I want them to keep her crush on Sonic but also her spunky and somewhat violent and irrational attitude. If they kept Knuckles gullibility they should also keep her flaws
Shadow and Maria's story may be infinitely more compelling in the games but them in the movies is just more entertaining idk what to tell you
They gotta give Maddie something to do. She is literally just Tom's +1 at the moment please god give her something to do
I do not feel bad about the GUN commander guy at ALLLLLLLL lmao i think he shoulda died choking on his own blood. bitchass
you still don't need to watch the knuckles show
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adolin · 2 years ago
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Do you have any tips/resources on writing smut? I've never really written it, but I need to include a little in a fic I'm writing rn and yours is very good.
Anon! Thank you so much, this is Extremely flattering ❤️ Honestly, my #1 rule to Writing Smut is that actually anything can be hot if a scene is written to be arousing. It's all about the setup.
Some things that work for me:
EMOTIONS. ime, smut scenes should cause some level of emotional response in the reader. It can be the POV character experiencing strong feelings and that coming through in the narration; it can be a taboo or hard kink that’s enough to guarantee some kind of reaction; it can be an emotionally cathartic scene or character study through sex. It doesn’t have to be a lot! But there has to be Something that makes the reader invested, a takeaway that you couldn’t get from a purely objective description or looking at a picture.
FLOW. You’re either trying to make the reader horny and/or you’re trying to make them interested in what the characters are doing and feeling. Lean into that when crafting a scene! I find that varying the length of sentences in a paragraph helps (building up to a crescendo) and so does the deliberate use of terminology to set up a specific mood (more descriptive euphemisms vs. crude slang as the POV gets more overwhelmed, alternating lush prose and crass descriptors to create some contrast.)
CHARACTER-APPROPIATE VERBIAGE. This is a big one! There are NO forbidden smut words, actually. I have read super hot smut that hinged on the repeated use of some deeply unsexy terms. It’s ALL about the narrative voice. Try to construct a scene that’s immersive, with a narrative voice that suits the characters and the story, and the type of vocabulary that suits the POV and setting. Ime, anything and everything can be sexy if the mood is right. Yes, even the word “penis.” YES even funky euphemisms.
PURPOSE AND PACING. Why is the scene there? Try to strike a good balance between descriptions, feelings, and words. If the characters stop mid-sex to talk, it’d be harder to get back into a sexy mood (why I’ve been stuck on this one WIP for months. RIP) On the other hand, sometimes it’s fine to skip moments / descriptions, or even end the scene mid-sex.
(This is especially important in chaptered fics, in my experience. Sometimes there’s a long elaborate build-up to a get together and then all the emotions fizzle out during The Sex Chapter, or a plot-heavy story, and then the story slows down to fit in 3 orgasms per character. It’s fine, often better, to just stick to one orgasm, make it extra hot, and skim over the others)
WRITE DRUNK EDIT SOBER or any variant thereof. Write in comic sans and edit in times new roman. Write horny edits in public. It’s really easy to overthink smut and in my opinion, it Really helps to fully commit to a shitty first draft—no quibbling over word choices or positions; just don’t look at the screen and bang out 500 words. (Ah-ah, bang.) Write on your phone if you want! Put it away for a while then edit.
SMUT IS NOT SEX ED. Realism matters less than feelings do. I don't need to know every detail unless it's relevant to the development of the scene. Unless it’s something glaring like someone is suddenly naked or used soap as lube, no one is going to nitpick how realistic it is to hold X position for Y minutes or how many spankings a human being can endure. The scene works narratively >>> the scene can be recreated by random non-athletes having sex. It’s fic! If someone is taking it as a Guide To Sex that’s not on you.
Other resources: This is a good essay directly from 2005 era livejournal. Some posts about vocabulary: on kissing, smut thesaurus, more words! (use with caution, don't take anything as a hard rule etc.)
Also I just think I'm funny:
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GOOD LUCK WRITING IT LMK HOW IT GOES
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moe-broey · 1 month ago
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What do you guys think. Even though I have like a million other things swimming around in my head. I mean, maybe there's an order of operations I can take here too........
But should I finish my Book 3 replay?? Left off where Gustav dies for real, badly. And also very funny occurrence where it was ALL coming back to me, actually. Like remember how I said I forgot about the stick??? Yeah. Turns out, everything with Gustav there just was too little too late for me. And I remembered it all coming back to me. Like wait. I DO remember this. And I remember EXACTLY how I felt. Exactly how I feel Right Now. Which is. Man Fuck you. Fuck ooooooff. I'm over it. LMFAOOOOOO
OR. Honestly I have ALSO been in the mood to revisit Book 5 actually. Like I keep thinking back to Reginn, and I feel like I need to refresh my memory. Alfonse character study reasons. That moment where he's harsh w her has ALWAYS stuck in my mind, I'm Always thinking back to it, but. I remember jack shit, actually. Could be time for a refresher.
Should I be bravies and finish -- actually I don't think I'm emotionally prepared to. But I do miss Ratatoskr. I miss her so much. I'm also still scared about Henriette. I'm half debating if I should just ask you guys if she dies. Just to rip the bandaid off. I know of one character death, and honestly. I really didn't expect that one to make it out of the book alive, anyway. I feel like that chara unfortunately had really loud blaring death flags from the start.
At this point now that I think about it I do think I should just get Seidr's book over and done with. Like. I didn't want it to be over, I vaguely know that people weren't super satisfied with the ending. Which, actually feels like enough information for me to feel okay about just finishing it up now. Like... at this point I think I'm okay letting it go. And I know where to keep my expectations. I think I could finish it without too much incident. For a reference point: I left off around where Seidr is going on her quest to kill all the other versions of herself. I think it was Kvasir specifically, I left off at.
But man going back to the "maybe there's an order of operations here" bit. I am SO ANAL. About making the Most of my medication. This means I have a somewhat strict routine where once I'm ready to start my day, I'm drawing. No matter what, I'm drawing. And as you all know, I am CONSTANTLY. HOPPING BETWEEN PROJECTS. And rn I'm in a spot of Too Many At Once. I DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START... what to invest my time in to make the absolute Most of it......,. literally out here min maxxing.
And then in ALL of this. I wanna get to some stuff in my drafts.... but now I have an order I wanna do that for blog flow reasons too.......... but dif things take dif energy........ wuagh.
I'd make a jokey poll but my thoughts are too messy. Does anybody wanna be nicies to me and give me some thoughts. Please. 🧍
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buttercupbread06 · 2 months ago
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HELLOOOO HIIII sorrysorry, idk how this works exactly but uhhhhh yea <:3
1) Does ur OC have a voice claim? If so who? [any]
3) What song describes your OC? [any]
14) Who's a character your OC cannot stand! it's on sight when they see them! [any (but curious abt Michele)]
15) Will your OC ever retire? Do you see them making it? [either Gonzalo, Michele or Adri]
20) If they fight, what's their weapon of choice? [any, curious on Mika tho 👀]
27) What's their spirit tamagochi? or an animal you associate them with [any (although I have an idea of most of them dkxndkfn)]
29)Imagine a mood board for your OC! What's on it? (Make it if you want!) (not necessary, just sillying rn)
hii thanks for writing the questions i love you
1). Gonzalo kinda sounds like the singer in Dance With Me (Topline Addicts), but only that song in specific for some reason?? Michele sounds like Snufkin in the English dub (I dont even watch Moominvalley, I just saw a clip once and thought "yeah that's my daughter"). I haven't found Mika's exact voice irl yet, sadly.
3). Gonzalo is very Sucede/Desarraigo (by Extremoduro) coded, but I'd like to mention Everything She Wants (Wham!), High and Dry (Radiohead) and Lágrimas Desordenadas (Melendi). Very father of him for the most part, I like to think. He also likes all of those, by the way, Extremoduro and Radiohead are his favorite bands (GOD HE'S LIKE ME FR)
Mika depends on the time of his life, honestly, but I relate Using You (Mars Argo) and Cynical One (TV Girl) to him. There's more, though, I just don't want to yap too much.
Extra: The Mind Electric (Miracle Musical) for Michele, Calif��rnica (La Gusana Ciega) for Adriana, and basically anything sung by Betty Hutton could be Becky's :33
14). I'm going to be very honest, DMC doesn't have enough characters for Michele to hate someone. However, she IS bitter about Fortuna as a whole because no one even tried to protect them as a child. Sure, it was supposed to be a secret, but giving him away that easily and never wondering where the kid went is... Interesting.
Adri hates Kimball AND Caesar, as she should, but that could apply to basically any Legion dude/NCR soldier. I don't think I've ever told you this, but Mika has beef with Leo's parents especially after Leo actually gets famous (basically because they didn't support their son enough and he was there to see it, and because I believe they'd be fake about it years after and Mika just wants to strangle them with a coat hanger) (he keeps it to himself but he calls his mom to talk 40 minutes worth of shit right after they leave lmao).
20). Michele has a sword (canon), Gonzalo technically owns a glock 22 because he's a cop but to me his canon weapon is his stupid little revolver in FNV, Becky likes energy weapons, Adri prefers dynamite and Mika doesn't fight or kill people but if he did he'd get an AK-47, I'm sorry.
27). I just looked through every single Tamagotchi thingy and I've decided to go with animals. Mika: Weasel
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Gonzalo: St. Bernard dog
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Michele: Something between a barn owl and a dove
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Becky: Milksnake
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Adriana: Either a coyote or a Mexican pink tarantula (it's not even pink wtf :c)
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29). I'm not doing that right now but I might reblog this post with stuff I found on Pinterest/pictures I took that remind me of them.
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hornkerling · 3 months ago
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🌵🌻🌿
cactus - share a link to a playlist you love. This is where I admit I mostly just live in 'liked songs' on spotify or various daylists, these days. I still have a real fondness for @sekritjay's follow forever playlist from 2016, as it puts me back in a very specific mood and that was a great year for me. I do still make playlists for fics as I write them, but most are private rn
...I had one for the final push for thesis edits that I am fairly sure I can never listen to again.
sunflower - tag someone you appreciate but don't talk to on a regular basis. You'd absolutely be tagged! Along with anyone I'm still mutuals with on here, honestly. But sometimes, when we share a fandom, @riana-one will just fly in overnight and drop the loveliest reviews on my AO3. Not just on the fics overall, but on every chapter, and just know...it has always made my day whenever it's happened in the past decade. Every time. And other days, when I remember it happened. You are a delight.
odd pinnate leaves - give some advice on writer's block and low creativity - ...start a new project? No! Bad advice! Except when it isn't. Sometimes, throwing myself into multiple projects actually works for me, because I can switch between. This especially works for me when the projects are quite different. Poetry uses a different part of my brain to fic most of the time, painting sits in another space. Other times? I need to take a year month off because even looking at a creative piece makes me break out in a cold sweat.
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takaraphoenix · 5 months ago
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hi, this isnt about fandom but I saw your life story and im somewhere around mid or my twenties rn and it feels unreal. I don't have a job, don't know what I want to do with my life bc I have like 10 different passions not including drawing which I like only in specific moods, and my relationships with most of the passions I have is me bicycling through them, all 10s, and I decided, whew I don't know what to fucking do! I got bach on business bc I thought it was a generic degree for a generic person like me who was on a bad place in hs (depressed and all) so I just took the deal for business school bc I thought it was generic enough and it seems everyone I knew nudged me there. My family works in banks, has finance or business degrees and maybe its weird im the one artsy kid who has relatives knee deep in banking business industries and doctors and science fields then I'm the one artsy kid who has no idea what to do bc I can do a lot of things, likes all of them enough and decided idk anymore... how do you discover what you want to do and how did you start to work for the company?
I discovered what I wanted to do fully on accident honestly. Like, with two useless Bachelor's degrees and no work experience, there isn't a whole lot you can do. Temp agencies always hire and I kind of... jumped into the cold, deep end on just trying.
I hated the agency, let's be clear. That was. That was a shit-show. But the job I got through the agency showed me that yeah no, this is fun, I can do this, I like doing this.
So, after, I started looking for jobs in that vein.
I do think that the temp agency was a good way of getting a feel for things, for me at least.
And then I just genuinely got lucky by my alma mater being very, very open. The fact that they hire people without work experience on the philosophy that you have to be taught how to do your individual job anyway and that the qualifications required for the job title are usually fairly useless because the individual job does differ from what you learn there? Which is a mentality I think more employers need.
The best advise I can give really is to just... try. Because you won't know if you like something or not until you did try it.
Maybe not immediately dive into full employment on everything? Try internships, maybe? Do an internal inventory of what you can realistically see yourself doing every day, for the unforeseeable future, make a list of the things you can and can't see yourself do and then, well, look into what kind of jobs require the things you enjoy. That's what I did, at least.
I hope I could help somewhat and I hope you will find your way <3
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forest-hashira · 8 months ago
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fallon!!!
how the boys react when one of them has to go on a mission and the other one is at home with you? (this can go as horny or as sweet as you want)
kay!!! i'm so sorry for answering this late gkjshdjkgshgkjhd but i need to think abt then rn i've had A Day
before one of them leaves, they shower the other two of us in kisses and promise to come home in one piece (mostly for my sake bc i have Anxious About Everything All The Time Disease). after that, it depends on which one of them is home with me. either way i can say we're probably not having sex lmao i am just not in the mood v often
if it's me & satoru at home, we're probably curled up on the couch playing a cozy game together, like animal crossing or stardew valley (me on my switch lite, him on the big switch connected to the tv). if i don't have the energy to play a game, we're probably watching a(t least one) ghibli movie and eating enough sugar to give us instant cavities.
if it's me & suguru, though, he probably coaxes me out to get some sun, because he knows i'm a homebody and am inclined to stay inside unless i have to go somewhere specific. so we'll go to a cafe near where we live & sit at one of the tables outside if the weather allows, or maybe take a little walk in the park with my dog. and then when we get home he's making dinner & i'm allowed to have a glass of wine if i want (only one though, i can't handle more than that), and we're listening to a podcast together to wind down.
now if we want to get smutty...
the most likely scenario is me feeling particularly touchy/amorous with sugu after dinner & my glass of wine honestly. he's very much a gentleman about it, because he also had a glass of wine but he's not tipsy like i probably get before i eat. once he's sure i'm really in the mood, he makes some cheeky comment about being ready for dessert before going down on me AHAHA. after that we're prone boning (his size kink goes nuts for it) & then spooning and falling asleep (but not before he reminds me to go to the bathroom so i don't get a uti). in the morning he's making me breakfast & i'm sitting in his lap wearing one of his shirts while he feeds me bc i'm sleepy.
but if toru and i banging it's probably bc he's being handsy as hell and it gets me all worked up. we're going missionary and giggling through a lot of it. sometimes he gets carried away and i have to remind him i'll cry and not in a good way if he overstimulates me. after we're done we're taking a bath together, he's almost certainly washing my hair (with suguru's fancy products bc he's a little shit and also insists i deserve the best), and then honestly we're probably going back to playing cozy games or watching movies. sex is like... a side quest for us AHAHA maybe that sounds bad but he's very good at carrying on like normal after sex.
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hannie-dul-set · 8 months ago
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hi again! sorry, ik i just submitted an ask, but the thought crossed my mind - would you ever write dystopian/apocalypse for any group? like has it ever crossed your mind or is it not something you're into writing about? or or do you read that kind of thing as well? i've always been a sucker for the maze runner/all of us are dead kind of thing and i was just wondering bcs i honestly just think you'd devour with the heart-wrenching action-y stuff even though a lot of your works are light-hearted (kinda? not really?) and funny bcs your descriptions of emotion and imagery are crazy (better vocab is escaping me rn but i mean CRAZY) and i honestly think if any dystopian au i read on tumblr were to make me cry it'd be one that comes from you (this is all out of curiosity and nothing more btw and ik i haven't worded this v well so pls feel free to ignore!)
oh, you bet i've written dozens of dystopian/apocalyptic aus in my head before! only....in my head because of a very specific reason HHAAHAH 😭 i'd like to label myself as a mood writer, meaning i only have the ability to write certain genres and moods and i REALLY need to be in a specific headspace to write more serious/emotional scenes in order to pull it off but.........most of the time i'm either feeling silly/stressed/angry/delusional so it's near impossible for me to stay fuelled when writing those kinds of things HAHAHAH 😭.
i do have a few word vomits and ideas in my gdocs (while some are still trapped in my brain, never to see the light of day). one of which was birthed after i bingewatched markiplier's lethal company playthrough for the nth time. it's a txt au, beomgyu-centric (are we surprised!) but like all the rest of my dystopian/apocalypse au ideas, they're likely never going to come to fruition 😔😔.
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joocomics · 9 months ago
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ahh ty for responding!! ur like the sweetest ever ughh 😭😭 i actually have a blog rn called lunicho but honestly im not the most proud of the writing on there so im trying to work on my writing before starting up this blog! i'm moving my riize and boynextdoor writing to this blog and leaving the other blog for other groups that i wanna talk about! i'm kinda in a middle stage rn with my writing but i'm kinda getting it figured out!! do you have like a creative process that you go through? like do you plan your fics or anything because i want to become more efficient with my writing, i take a very long time to post and write and i feel so bad :((
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giving u all of my love 🥹🥹 also we're both jooyeon girlies so i'll stop by with some pics or thoughts about him soon!!!
of course omg i would love to talk to you more so pls know you’re welcomed here anytime!! 🥹
ahh, good luck with your new blog! i’ll be looking out for your work i’m sure it’s gonna be great ~
tbh i don’t have anything specific that i stick to when it comes to writing… which when i think about it now is kinda strange bc when it comes to other things i always have to have some kind of plan/a list or anything that can guide me so i can be more efficient and productive, but when it comes to writing i just make sure to ALWAYS write down any ideas that come to mind in one document, and when i’m in the mood to write i go through them and pick whatever sparks my creativity in that moment and go from there (yall have no idea how many random conversations i have in my notes that just sit there 🫣)
i’m a mood writer 100% and that’s why i avoid sticking to plans or schedules or i will just get burnt out very quickly if i have to work on something that doesn’t excite me as much as other ideas that day, or if i don’t feel like writing at all, cause i have those days too ofc
i know it’s easier said than done, but don’t ever feel bad or guilty for taking your time with your works!! we’re here to create and have fun, so your own enjoyment and health comes first. try out different creative approaches, see how you’d feel and do what works best for you! i’ve realised that i write easier when i don’t stick to one particular thing/process, but i’m sure there are many ppl who are totally the opposite. don’t be hard on yourself okay, your readers will understand and will still enjoy what you put out <3
i’m rambling now, but i’m gonna share one more thing in case it helps someone? for me the beginning of the story is always challenging and i’ve realised that starting with a dialogue helps me get into it. most times i end up deleting it lol but just writing any kind of dialogue helps me start from somewhere, that’s something i always do if i get stuck on a specific part of the story too… music is also a must when i write! it keeps me inspired, sometimes it gives me ideas too, and i write easier and quicker when i listen to songs that have a similar vibe to what i’m working on
oh this got long sorry 🫣 but that’s all i do tbh nothing special! what about you? ~
omg a fellow jooyeon girly?? WE LOVE 🫶🏼 i rarely receive thoughts about him he deserves our love and attention!! i’m sending u lots of hugs 🥹
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cryiling · 1 year ago
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in honor of totk NOT winning goty 🫡 here is my notes app from when totk first came out and I wrote all my thoughts abt the game down
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today totk got released!! and I played for 8 hours straight 😭 I'm not suuper far in the game yet, I sort of just started the rito quest with tulin, but here are some things I love and dislike about the game so far:
first of all I love the archaic outfit 😊 however I'm very sad that it only does 1 protection because I wanted to wear it all the time AJDBAJDB
I love everything about the zonai, like the way they look, the music associated with them, the way they talk at the end of a shrine, the way you can tell something is of zonai make just by looking at it, like that's how you know a concept design is well done ✋ I'm so fascinated by how rauru looks, he's just so amazing
I do hate how extremely similar aspects of the great sky island are to the great plateau, though. "room of awakening" bro r u serious rn 😭 the way rauru follows you around like the king good bye. I just feel like this could have been done a little more uniquely so that it didn't feel like the great plateau with a texture pack slapped over it
there's also some things that I felt botw just did so much better than totk. like the way rauru's ghost would disappear felt very cheap and uneventful, like why does he just fade to 0 opacity and nothing else happens ?? at least with the king his ghost faded with the little blue flames and sparkles, it made it seem more interesting
I hate the inventory layout I'm sawryy 😭 the botw inventory looks very sleek and easy to comprehend, but the way the totk inventory is designed just feels very cheap and elementary to me. not the scrolling on one page instead of having multiple pages, that's not my issue. just the color design and how so much more information is crowded into each tiny box when you are selling things, it just confuses the player with too much info
uhh what else. oh! I also hate the animation for when you get the abilities at the beginning, and when you get those lights of blessing or whatever (honestly I hate that name too, why is it so long I literally can't remember it 😭). like why do the orbs with the abilities and blessings look so 2d and unfinished? they look like they were slapped on top as a fanmade effect rather than actually being a part of the game, and every time I see it, I feel removed from being immersed in the games because it's distracting
but I totally love the way the zonai statues are at the end of the shrines!!! the way they talk is SO 🙏🙏 like I'm totally obsessed with it. also!! this is very specific, but I love the music that plays during shrine battles, like why does that song go so hard fr
omg something else I love is the pony points system it's so cute 😭✋ and honestly it's a great incentive for me to use the stables, I don't think I used them that much in botw so I definitely appreciate this new addition
AND MY HORSES ARE HERE TOO IM SO HAPPY 🥺🥺
however I am devastated that we can't pet dogs ☹️ like was no one at nintendo listening to us when we were all asking abt it hello ??
this is more of a personal preference rather than a game quality thing but I AM SO HAPPY THERE'S PIRATES IN THIS GAME AAAAAAA i can't wait to go to lurelin village I rlly hope they let me join the pirates 🙏 (hi it's me from the future here, girl wtf why are the pirates literally just MONSTERS ON BOATS 🙁 give me real fucking pirates you cowards)
omg yeah I was obsessed with the frozen rito village ost, it had the core elements of the ost from botw but with that lonely haunted vibe and I was gonna cry omg it really set the mood and I loved listening to it 😭
ohh yeah something I didn't enjoy was how it felt like I was being overloaded with so much plot-heavy info, especially once I started the rito village quest. like yeah I get maybe playing for 8 hours in one day is probably gonna fry my brain and attention span but it just felt like they were telling me to do all these things and I just felt so overwhelmed that I literally had to put the game away and stop playing for the night 😭 I think if things were spaced out more for what they tell you then the plot might have been more digestible
oh yeah this is minor but I don't like how when you go to a new place it says "discovery!" and also when you cook a new food it says "new!" like it felt very commercial and broke the immersion in the game for me, there was literally no reason for it to be in the game? (upon playing the game further I've decided I don't mind the "discovery" notif. but I still don't like when it says "new!" on a food I cooked sorryyy)
OMG WAIT SOMETHING I LOVED was how link cycles through humming different things when he cooks!!! it's so cute and I love him for it 😭
also I loved the function of when you open a chest and get a weapon but your inventory is full, instead of having to close the chest drop a weapon and reopen the chest, they added the feature where your inventory pops up and you can drop a weapon while still in the chest so you don't have to switch back and forth. it was so relieving for me ✋
umm I definitely feel like there was more I wanted to say, I just forgot 😭 but let me just say, despite me having a lot of negatives on here, I still really enjoyed this game, and honestly aside from the things I mentioned I disliked, I love pretty much everything else about the game!! there's so much to love and appreciate, I really can't list it all or else I'd just be listing literally every aspect about this game ajdhskfj. so yeah. while I'm disappointed that I found parts of totk to be lesser than what I had hoped, I am still overall ecstatic about this game and I'm so excited to see what else I'll discover in this game!!!! (hey it's me as of writing this post, I definitely wrote this last paragraph to avoid getting bullied for not liking a lot of things LOLL)
hey I'm back (not as of writing this post, like a couple months after initially starting totk), listen ok I hate these stupid sage powers like 💀 they're literally not useful at all, I think tulin's is the only one I use regularly, and even then I'd rather have revali's gale bc at least it goes up ??
I've been watching other ppl play and I realize that actually yunobo and riju can kinda be useful when fighting large groups, like if you just activate yunobi's ability you don't really need to aim him, and he'll hit a bunch of monsters. same with riju, just activate her and shoot somewhere random and it'll do damage. but other than that, like sidon and mineru are useless 😭 also I get rlly annoyed when I'm trying to pick things up and tulin gets in the way like GIRL GO AWAY ugh it would just be so much better if the abilities were activated like the champions instead idk
ok I'm obsessed with the way rauru's ear twitches LOLL THAT'S SO RANDOM but in the memories it's just so satisfying to see
hm idk how to explain this but there's some aspects of this game that feel very aoc to me and it annoys me. like, the defend kara kara bazaar + gerudo village quests, and that one thing in hateno with the stupid pumpkins, idk but it totally threw me off guard with having to fight with npcs, like it felt very jarring to have in the middle of totk. i never liked aoc or any hyrule warriors games so that's probably why I don't like this very much, but yeah I just didn't enjoy it very much
god I can't describe how much I hate everything abt mineru I'm sorry I just hate her bc like,, bro I hate to say it but I never connected with her character at all. every part of her in the storyline felt forced, and her connection to zelda and the sages never felt authentic. also I hate the eng voice acting like why does she talk like that 😭
her talking about draconification felt sooo forced. she said "there are stories of eating the stone to turn into an immortal dragon" like that could be a solution, then when rauru asked if they could do that, she was like "however 🤓☝️ you'll lose your sense of self and it's forbidden. I thought this would give us an answer but maybe not 😞" like BITCH IF YOU KNEW IT WAS FORBIDDEN WHY WOULD YOU SAY ANYTHING 😭😭 the way she said it, it sounded like she was reading a book and learning this information as they went, which would make sense why she brought it up but turns out it won't work. BUT SHE KNEW THE FULL THING ALREADY WHY DID SHE SAY IT LIKE THAT???? god it annoyed me so much, it was such a bad foreshadowing plot point
and honestly her entire quest confused me, bc the whole first part has a very thunder/lightning theme so I thought her power would be related to that but it wasn't at all? like how come we didn't do anything spirit related meanwhile all the other sages had areas that related to their powers, ugh it felt so dumb. lightning is already heavily associated with riju + the gerudo, so it felt weird that they themed the whole first half of mineru's quest around it too.
I hate her stupid construct. IT'S SO LAME 😭 has anyone actually enjoyed fighting with it. has it actually benefitted anyone. like be so fr rn. I hated it so much that I built a freaking airbike and just flew to the final temple without fighting any of the stuff along the way bc I refuse to be forced to do things I don't like 🫶
and then at the end of the game when her spirit leaves her construct and she dies or whatever, I was just like 😐 they tried to make it emotional but literally mineru is my worst enemy and I was cheering and applauding atp. like I could care less. her character felt, idk how to describe it, like.. cringy and self-inserty? something about it felt very off to me and so I was just never able to like her. it felt like nintendo was trying to force me to like her and I was Not about to let that happen
hang on I have other things to complain about... oh yeah the STABLE TROTTER CONDUCTOR LIKE BRO 😭😭😭 why does he sound like mario, like I actually want to punch him in the face. the rest of the band is fine tho, I like their music 🤞
hm something I'm annoyed about is how much harder it is to find the dragons now. in botw their flight pattern was more predictable, but here like istg I can never find them when I need them 😭 it's just vv inconvenient
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ok I'm back back. I think that about covered all my thoughts BUT one more thing. the map is so fucking cluttered. something that was done so well with botw was the openness of everything, it really fit the vibes and it immersed you in the expanse of the game. but the totk map was WAYY too busy 😭😭 not only with the purah pad map (which btw I still think sheikah slate is a better name) but just in general when you're walking around hyrule. there is Too Much going on and I don't like it
LAST THING although tbh this could be a whole separate rant. the way the purah pad is compatible with zonai technology makes no fucking sense???? like there is NO logical explanation for how it can mark waypoints at zonai shrines
in botw it made sense, because the shrines were sheikah-made and so was the slate, so ofc the sheikah would have built them to be compatible and programmable with one another. but the zonai shrines??? first of all they're just rocks on sand. no sort of technology the purah pad can latch onto. second, you activate the shrine with the ZONAI ARM, not the purah pad. literally no connection is made. this is such a small thing to fixate on but every time I think about it I am filled with inexplicable rage
I have a whole OTHER rant on why the sheikah tech disappearing makes literally No Sense but. this post is long enough as it is. if u want I can make a separate post but I think this is good enough for now 🤗
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koizan · 1 year ago
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Was Tagged in this post by @azonine and my edible hit a while ago. let's go for it everybody thank you beloved
Last Song: my sister and i were listening to our spotify blend earlier and i think it's updating itself bc i could've sworn the last thing i remember was something like passion by nicki minaj with a pink album cover but i can't find this song so i think i made it up. likely what i actually hear was Bomb Intro / Pass That Dutch by Missy Elliot. it's my sister's contribution but i vibe with it. apparently we're an 83% match which is interesting. she also keeps making fun of me for saying ethoslab is attractive but i'm literally right. sorry you wouldn't understand
Favorite Color: BRIGHT red slightly pink. i never used to say i have a favorite color and i lost my shoe. i've found it. anyway i gravitate towards red, especially that shade. i also love just black of course but that is a safe color that goes with anything. but red. that's bold. also many flowers are red. flowers are gorgeous. every single one. godbless they make the world cooler
Last Movie/TV: The Wilds. one of those cancelled lesbian shows. unfortunate. it's not as good as Yellowjackets though. i think they spend too much time on everyone's backstories but they're honestly not that complex like half of season 1 is leah having a breakdown over that guy and they want to be like leah is an obsessive person but they only show the one thing like. her other obsessions are so much more interesting i don't care about mr pedophile writer guy i literally do not care. let her go insane she deserves it for being bisexual. the last movie is possibly blue beetle which was alright for an airplane movie, wish i could pause it though. why tf is it a channel? who put live channels on planes? who did that? you deserve SUFFERING. also, while i was writing this i realized i actually later watched the new percy jackson episode with my sister so that actually but i don't remember anything from the books and unfortunately the show is clearly directed towards the same age range as the original series and it's like. good for what it is but selfishly i wish it was cooler for me specifically. rick riordan is cool though
Sweet/Spicy/Savory?: sweet or savory depends on my mood really. but savory maybe? although i am searching it up and now i am confused about the definition. i love the savory crepes (the philly) from crepevine it's possibly my favorite meal ever. would love to eat crepevine every day all day ever
Relationship Status: newly single. please hmu if you like taking care of pathetic people or alternatively have a lot of money
Last Thing I Googled: "vegetable list" to answer the llff qotd which i keep saying in my head as "quote of the day". before that. soojin g-idle. queen. you would've killed it in queencard i know it. also as you can see above i am in fact single
Current Obsession: i think my depression is currently bad enough to prevent me from a single obsession currently. i searched the wilds on tumblr a couple times but it's like 90% people complaining about canceled wlw shows bc tumblr search is unusable. i wouldn't call it anything close to an obsession though, it just happens to be what i'm currently binging. most recently though - poppy seed pets. also rewatched a couple community episodes. such a good show my god. wish alison brie was asian. also i have been thinking about tattoos a lot. specifically my new one which was my first. got with friends. very cute (: further i am going to be so abnormal about the boys s4. i don't have a kin list but i'm starting one rn putting jordan li at the top. minecraft character bdoubleo100 second. king from the owl house third. not for size reason we just both get disrespected. taking recommendations for additions that aren't a random small animal you saw on instagram - please keep in mind that i am 7'4" in real life and extremely intimidating. i am also considering adding nora from the wilds (autistic) and abed community (autistic) and todd sanchez bojack horseman (aspec but actually we're not that similar. i think i am just thinking about him. what a lad.) and perhaps. asian lesbian from scream queens because i too think chanel no. 3 is hot. actually every character from community except pierce is relateable. also generally any character that is "bad" representation of a minority group and knows it but i haven't seen much of that kind of character. they should make more of them for the bitches like me who are simultaneously whitewashed and a stereotype
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jils-things · 1 year ago
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Free gushing about pokeships?? COUNT ME IN I'm in a talking mood rn SO
I don't think I talked a lot about it but Amelia does travel all of the regions because she is a researcher and works on the pokédex :> And after the events of Unova, N goes with her because he wants to meet more pkmn and help them and then their relationship starts to bloom and YEH <3 Also perfect excuse to draw them in different outfits
Also regarding your last post I AGREE, SO MANY GOOD OPTIONS FOR DATE PLACES. Nimbasa City with the couples-only Ferris Wheel? Every couple in the pokeworld has to go there!! (If they're not scared of heights) ok maybe I'm biased because of N but uhm-
One of my fav places is Ecruteak city because of the pretty autumn colors <33 And that Fairy forest place in Galar (Ballonlea) it's so magical!! Or a museum date in Nacrene city! or any other museum I think there are a few
Ok now I gushed more about the pokeworld than my pokeship and this got quite long I'm sorry Although I think every place is very nice when you can spent time there together <3 (... phew that was cheesy)
SOPHIA YASSSS HELLO!!!!!! AMELIA LORE AMELIA LORE YES YES 💚💚💚💚💚 I LOVE OC RESEARCHERS YAYYY!!!! okay, but n would be a GREAT help there too y'know? i know there are many researchers who study on a specific thing with pkmn but i think n is a great assistant needless of the theme of the research because he can quite literally interact with the creatures!! i think amelia has a great advantage there, and it would make researching all the more fun and adventurous if you ask me!!! they're so perfect for that <333 AND SO REAL SO REAL the bridge to help deepen their relationship is their shared interest to appreciate pokemon ehehhee but they end up learning more about EACH OTHER AYO ... 😳😳😳😳
ALSO YES YET AGAIN I FORGOT ANOTHER LANDMARK THE NIMBASA FERRIS WHEEL OIUUHHHGHH BEST PLACE BEST PLACE and as you said, TWO PEOPLE GO IN ONE 😳😳😳😳 EHEHEHEHEHHRHSHE if one of them was afraid of heights would the other hold that person's hand to comfort them?? 🥺🥺🥺💚
I GOTTA CHECK BALLOLELA SINCE IM NOT SWSH INFORMED YET BUT I TRUST YOU SINCE YOU HAVE A GALARIAN BF THERE 🤭🤭🤭 EHEHRHSHEHA fairy forest sounds so MAGICAL AAAAHHH YESSIR. the autumn place in ecruteak city so real. its always the more natural areas in pkmn that are just... so perfect for being alone together. and i wholeheartedly agree with that spot... 11/10 i also love autumn despite not actually experiencing it but i know its cozy <3
AKSHHSHAJSJSJDJJA HONESTLY YOU CAN JUST TALK ABT ANYTHING PKMN RELATED IM JUST HERE FOR THE GAME IN GENERAL <3 it also goes to show just how FANTASTIC some of the landmarks are, and its hard not to love them!!! EVERY PLACE IS A GOOD PLACE IF YOU THINK HARD ENOUGH 🤝🤝🤝 THANK YOU FOR SENDING AN ASK THAT WAS FUN TO READ
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weekdaygladers · 6 days ago
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heyy!
yes I think many people just love to hate on anything that young girls and women love. Especially when it comes to fandom stuff too. But when you look at it - men with their football and soccer clubs are literally the biggest fanboys in the world lol
I always love when I see people find deeper meanings in lyrics and can relate to stuff. For me a lot of the time when listening to music it's really "no thoughts head empty" lmao I'm just vibing a lot of the time.
Yeah there are a two lyrics first songs that come to my mind rn - the archer and I look in peoples windows. I think it's cool that you can actually grow into loving a song even though you initially didn't like it very much!
Since you're a big fan of p!atd - how did you feel back when me! feat. Brendon Urie was announced? I can image you must've been hyped! And how did you end up liking it? Honestly i think it's just a fun little song now, perfect for boosting your mood.
- secret santa 🎄
hii
agreed!! it’s hypocritical at best, just hatred for women at worst
lmao i’m usually head empty no thoughts too until i latch onto a specific lyric or moment. i’m not smart enough to analyze lyrics and dissect them tho.
ooh, those are very interesting song choices! for me it was (surprisingly) mirrorball and false god, and now they’re both on my top 20 songs. the melodies didn’t sit right with me for the longest time until one day they clicked.
i was honestly shocked! i was so used to p!atd being relatively outside of mainstream pop, and then boom, there he is!! part of me found it funny that it said “brendon urie of p!atd” since, at the time, he was the only member of the band. it would’ve had the same effect if it just said his name or the band’s name. but that’s really neither here nor there.
i was hyped tho!! i was so curious about how the song would sound, what the aesthetics of the mv would be or what parts he would sing, etc. i liked it okay, i wasn’t super into how bubblegum pop it sounded and found the lyrics a little cheesy. i went through a cycle of liking it then hating it and now i’m back to liking it (in a semi-ironic way sort of).
i hoped taylor would sing it for one of her mexico tour dates since, you can’t spell mexico without “me” but sadly she didn’t. i do have to say that i made like 3 bracelets that said “mehehehe” and a matching set of “hey kids!” and “spelling is fun!” in honor of my new appreciation for the song
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