#is that it reminds me that time is passing

[chuluoyi]

✎ a birthday to remember

- gojo satoru x reader

what is the so-called grand surprise does your husband prepare for your birthday?

genre: 18+ suggestive content—minors do not interact!—massive fluff, comfort, pregnant!reader, (cough) pregnant sex

note: hi peeps it's been ages since i last wrote gojo :') and love entries on that matter *sobs* but here it is... my birthday has passed too but here's to any of you whose birthday is near!

a part of gojo's love entries

general masterlist

“Sensei— happy birthday!”

This year, your birthday happened to fall on a workday.

If it were up to you, you would have taken the day off. However, Satoru had been assigned to Osaka and wouldn’t be returning until weekend, so taking leave and staying at home would most likely make you feel lonely.

Not only that, with you entering the fifth month of pregnancy, you figured it was better to stay active. And by the end of the day—you didn’t regret coming in at all. The students were all so sweet, they even chimed in to get you a pretty maternity dress to wear. You couldn’t wait to tell Satoru about them tonight.

You skipped happily toward the parking lot, but right when you turned the corner, suddenly—

“Wifeeeey!”

“Oh my god!”

You let out a loud gasp and took a step back, taking in the view. A sea of colorful balloons, with a man in suit standing right in the middle of it—

Your husband. In flesh. You blinked once, twice— thrice.

“Satoru...?”

He poked his head out of the string of balloons, a beaming, million-dollar grin lit up his face at the sight of your shocked expression. “Wifeeey! Happy birthdaaaaay!”

Before you could even process his sudden appearance, he had you in a chokehold, engulfing you in a bear hug and nuzzling his face against yours with childlike enthusiasm, the faint scent of his cologne filling your senses.

“What are you doing here?!” you half-shrieked, the surprise spilling from your voice.

He pulled back, frowning dramatically. “Ehhh? You don’t want me to be back?”

“Yes—”

His eyes widened as if you’d just committed the gravest betrayal. “You big meanie!”

“No,” you quickly retracted, trying to hold back your own smile at how comically dejected he was. “I mean… aren’t you supposed to be back on Sunday?”

“Heh heh, nope! I lied~” Satoru chirped, his grin returning in full force. “It’s my wifey’s birthday—how could I not come back for you?”

In that moment, your heart fluttered. He was probably saying it for no reason, but the fact that he really did fly back from Osaka just to meet you for your birthday meant a lot to you.

His big, warm hand then gently caressed your visible baby bump, his grin widening when he got a kick. “Ah, right… Hello to you too, baby! Did I startle you too? Sorry~”

You rolled your eyes, retorting, “He is terrified.”

Satoru leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper directed at your belly. “Don’t worry, baby. Papa’s here now, and he’s got balloons. That makes everything better, right?”

“...how long have you been standing here with these balloons?”

“Hmmm, not long. About an hour, maybe?”

“You shithead—why didn’t you just come inside?”

Satoru’s gasp of mock offense made you laugh despite yourself. “And ruin the surprise? My wifey deserves the full dramatic effect!”

Being Gojo Satoru’s wife certainly came with its fair share of patience-testing episodes, and sometimes you wanted to return him to Yaga for additional lessons of discipline.

But it was candid, over-the-top acts like this that reminded you just how lucky you were to have him.

Satoru brought you to a high-end restaurant for your birthday dinner before the two of you finally returned home.

And the moment you opened the door, you were greeted by countless balloons floating on the ceiling and the ground, the fairy lights illuminating the room in a cozy glow.

You were taken aback, mesmerized by the sight. “When did you even have the time to decorate the house?”

He grinned, looking far too pleased with himself. “I have many little helpers—”

“Don't tell me it's Ichiji and Nanami? Satoru, you—!”

“I promised Nanami I wouldn’t make him blow up balloons! Though I might have heard him grumble something about being above this…”

"You're unbelievable..." You let out a resigned sigh, yet still smiling as you stepped further into the living room, now bathed in the soft, golden glow.

Satoru observed you with a quiet smile. His pretty wife, and the small life within you. He adored you the most out of everyone else in this twisted world.

Click! Click!

"Huh?" You turned to him when you heard the distinct sound of a camera shutter.

Satoru was holding his phone, an amused glint in his eyes. “Just capturing the moment, you know. You, the lights, and baby. It's perfect.”

You giggled. “You really can’t help yourself, can you?”

He shrugged, that signature grin returning. “What can I say? You’re beautiful.”

Later, you'd find out that one of the photos would be his lock screen from now on. It would be the first thing he saw every time he unlocked his phone.

Satoru brought out the box he had prepared, handing it to you with a sly grin. “Look, sweets, before we go to bed, I have one more gift for you—and you have to wear it now.”

You arched an eyebrow, curiosity piqued, as you took the box from his hands. The moment you opened it and pulled out the contents, you froze.

“—?! Satoru!”

A scarlet lingerie set. The bra features intricate lace trim along the edges, and the matching panties are equally bold, with a sheer lace overlay. Your cheeks flushed as you glanced at Satoru, who was watching you with an winning grin, clearly pleased with his choice.

“What?” he challenged. “They'll suit you, c'mon.”

“You're absolutely shameless.”

“But you love me anyway~”

You let out a defeated sigh, glancing up at him, already realizing there was no way out of this now.

“You’re lucky I’ve hit my head somewhere and married you.”

. . .

He was right. It fit you perfectly.

The moment you got out of the bathroom, Satoru could feel himself getting hard already. You looked like a vision, the deep red seemed to highlight your every curve, turning you into an effortless seductress.

And not only that, you were adorable too— fiddling with your fingers and touching your rounded belly, barely hiding how self-conscious you were.

"Don't just stare at me..." you mumbled, glaring at him.

He reached out, gently brushing his fingers against your cheek, his touch tender despite the fire in his eyes. “You’re making it hard to look away, you know.”

His hands then trailed down, skimming the sides of your body, each touch lingering just long enough to make your breath hitch. It was almost as if he was unraveling you, piece by piece, and you weren’t sure whether to pull away or pull him closer.

And wait... was it just you or were the space between your legs indeed getting hotter and wetter?

As if reading your mind, suddenly two of his fingers touched your barely clad pussy, and you gasped. That's right— there is indeed a hole in this freaking lingerie!

"Are... we...?" you swallowed, your gaze meeting his.

"Can I?" he asked back, voice husky. His crystal clear eyes burning with lust as he assessed you— from your eyes, lips, and then the inviting sight of your cleavage.

Did you want this?

Of course you were. Your birthday was still far from over, and you missed him too.

In response, you pushed his already hovering fingers inside you, making you hold your breath. From that point on, Satoru knew what you wanted.

Without another word, he rubbed soft circles around your clit, and you let out an unabashed moan at the contact, clinging to his shoulders for support. "Ahh..."

He teased you for a while, before slowly entering his fingers into your throbbing folds, and you were close to collapsing if it weren't for his secure hold over you.

"You're so, so damn naughty..." he whispered lowly in your ear. It was taking everything he had not to lose it right then and there. He wanted you to be as comfortable as possible, but the sight of your writhing face and that baby bump was damn distracting and ignited the beast inside him.

He made you pregnant already, but there was just this primal desire— wanting to mark you more...

His fingers slowly pumped in and out of you, dragging them deep but just not deep enough—

"Please..." you scratched his back unwittingly, frustrated at his shirt that got in the way. "I-I... want... you..."

How sweet. Satoru relished in your titillating breaths and chuckled, vigorously continuing his dirty ministrations.

"Say it louder," he growled in your ears. "Can't hear you."

The bastard. You yanked his hair and made him catch your teary gaze. "I... want you..."

Sinful desire flared to life at your words. "Your wish is my command, missus."

Satoru suddenly pulled out his fingers—ignoring the whine you accidentally let out for being empty all of a sudden—and admired the sheen, sticky whiteness on them.

"I barely did anything and you're this wet already," he snorted, tasting it. "They're right about the pregnancy hormones."

He placed his hand on your waist, pressing a kiss on the firm skin of your belly, before undoing his belt and trousers and pulling out his hardened member.

The sight made you actually gulp, especially when he pumped it. He pulled you to his lap and guided his pride to your sopping entrance. The moment he inserted himself, he let out a groan of relief, while you arched your back and hissed, "Ngh!"

Satoru captured your lips, his hand pressing against your aching spine. He pulled you closer, urging you to take him completely.

"Ahh— ugh... mrgh!" you sighed against his neck as soon as you did, trying to even your breath. This was something you had done so many times before, but why was this time felt like an awakening of some sorts?

"Most beautiful," he breathed in your ear wickedly. "Don't worry, leave everything to me."

He rocked his hips against yours, one hand on your back and the other gripping your thigh. With each salacious thrust, you mewled and he panted, keeping you steady all the while.

He could feel your baby bump rubbing against as his toned abs, going along with the rhythm. Satoru grinned proudly, noticing how much it had grown over the past few months. The baby must be healthy in there, huh?

The relief somehow spurred him into pick up his pace, thrusting you more deeply than before. You almost squealed.

"You know what?" he grunted, mind hazed. He didn't really realize what he was saying to you, to be honest. "You're the prettiest when you're like this— round and full, with my kid."

You only caught the lewdness in his words, but you weren't able to ponder about it as he suddenly buried his face into your supple breasts.

"Look at them, getting bigger too— these days..." He sucked on the sensitive skin and you gasped in pleasure, crying out afterwards when he fondled them with both hands.

Your senses were overly heightened and you knew you wouldn't last long. Satoru too knew he was nearing his orgasm as he tore your new bra and sucked on the mound, furthering your never-ending moans, causing your eyes to roll back as the blinding pleasure overtook you— pushing you to cum right then and there.

In the next second, he pushed you into him impossibly deeper, and his hot release gushed inside your womb. You writhed at the sudden fullness, before getting limp and collapsed into him, not even realizing that you had squirted all over his lap and dress shirt.

Your husband glanced at you, in disbelief himself at the messy scene, but utterly satisfied as his bright eyes twinkled. "Heh..."

You were awoken at three in the morning, and the first thing you noticed was that you were in Satoru's warm embrace.

His arms were wrapped around you securely, holding you close as if he were protecting you even in his sleep. You must have passed out afterwards, as all you recalled was the numbing exhaustion.

Yet you knew for certain that Satoru had cleaned you up, dressed you in your pajamas, and even placed a heat pad on your hips to soothe you.

(He remembered the one time you woke up with cramps right after a raunchy night before)

Your husband was a cheeky shit, but for you, he was willing to go extra miles. It was an overlooked fact sometimes due to how unserious he was, but each time he did and you were reminded of it, your heart always soared.

Looking up, you found his peaceful sleeping face, and not for the first time, you couldn’t help but marvel at how truly handsome he was. A soft smile tugged at your lips as you gently caressed his face.

"Hmm...?" he frowned adorably, and you almost giggled. But when he cracked his eyes open, you almost regretted it—oh yes, he is a light sleeper.

"Sweets...? Can't sleep...?" He turned to you, voice thick with sleepiness. "Anything wrong?"

"No, I'm just watching you." You smiled, poking his cheek. "Go back to sleep."

"Really? Nothing's amiss?" His hand gently slid to your belly, giving it a reassuring rub. "You have to tell me if anything’s not right..."

"Hush, I'm fine."

After making sure you were indeed fine, Satoru tightened his arms over you and pressed his eyes shut. You wrapped your arms around his back in response, feeling his steady warmth. Right in this moment, you were overwhelmed with this gentle, soft feeling— love, the kind he gave you so freely and candidly.

Your birthday had passed, but if there was one wish only he could fulfill, surely you could still ask him, right?

"Satoru..." you muttered, feeling the cool breeze of the air conditioner lulling you back to sleep. "Will you stay with me... forever?"

A smile curled on his lips at your question, his eyes still closed. "Silly girl, it's your bedtime, so why ask that?"

You thought he wouldn't answer it as he didn't say anything more. But right before you drift into deep sleep, he pressed a sweet kiss to the crown of your head, giving you his promise— one that felt truer than anything else he had said to you before.

"I will... so you must stay with me too, got it?"

[salemlunaa]

🎀 NEW IDEA: ASK CHAT GPT 🎀

ꨄ Use AI to your advantage when it comes to manifesting and shifting…

Although AI can get a little weird and scary sometimes, it’s actually such a great way to get information, motivation and inspiration all in one

Instead of hounding bloggers for the same thing all the time. Go to Chat GPT.

Now, how about i give you a few examples, let’s imagine someone called maya 𖨆

maya is having trouble because she feels like when she tries to induce the void, she always falls asleep and that’s taken away so many years from her dream life

she asks Chat GPT: “I keep falling asleep every time I try to induce the void, I feel so frustrated all the time and I need some help”

Chat GPT answers: “Hi Maya, falling asleep during void practice is common, so don’t be too hard on yourself. One way to combat this is by practicing at a time when you feel awake and alert, like in the morning or after a light exercise session. Another tip is to sit up in a comfortable position rather than lying down, as it can help you stay focused and avoid dozing off. Keep practicing with patience—it’s all part of the process!”

now let’s imagine joey 𖨆

joey is feeling frustrated because he feels like he hasn’t progressed, he’s been in the community for 2+ years and really wants his dream life

he asks: “I’m feeling so frustrated and upset, like I want to give up, I’ve been trying to induce the void and get my dream life for over 2 years, I need motivation”

Chat GPT responds; “Hi Joey, I know it’s tough, but remember that persistence is key—sometimes the journey teaches you just as much as the destination. Instead of focusing on the time passed, celebrate the fact that you’re still trying, which shows incredible resilience. Take a short break if you need to, and reconnect with why you started. Visualize your dream life vividly, and remind yourself it’s worth the effort. Progress might be closer than you think!”

now chloe 𖨆 is feeling really powerless lately, circumstances hit her hard on some days and she feels stuck, she wants to be reminded how the void is so possible and so easy and she’s so capable of it all

she asks: “Can you remind me how powerful I am? Some days circumstances hit so hard and it gets thought!! Can you explain manifesting from a logical point of view to remind me how easy it all is?”

Chat GPT responds: “Hi Chloe, let me remind you of this simple truth: you are the creator of your reality, the God of your world. From a logical point of view, everything you experience stems from your thoughts, beliefs, and focus. Circumstances are just reflections—they only hold power because you give it to them. Shift your focus, and the reflection changes effortlessly. When you truly accept that you’re the one in control, nothing can stand in your way. You’ve always had the power!”

Now you can see how well it works!! You can even use them to give you affirmations, help you with vaunts. You can be as specific as you want, trauma dump as much as you want and say whatever you want without crossing boundaries or being judged. You can use Chat GPT to script, i’ve used it so many times and it has given me so many ideas. And your script will still feel like your own, just see it as your collaborating with Chat GPT and that it you helps put your thoughts into words.

You can even use it when you’re having one of those days and just need to be reminded of the fact that you’re in charge. You can even use it for some tough love or to comfort you as you vent.

Like guys you can do so many things with this, I love Chat GPT so much we’re locked in like this:

LMFAOOO IM JOKING (or am i? 😏)

But in all seriousness, some of you need this. Flooding bloggers asks and dms with questions that they have repeated the answers to multiple times, asking things you damn well know the answer to or just asking for motivation repeatedly can take away from people who actually have a good question to ask and actually need help. Like fogging up a blogger’s inbox repeatedly venting about the 3d, or asking “hOw Do I gEt iNtO tHe VoId?” knowing damn well you know the answer to that, will prevent a blogger from noticing someone who actually has a good question that many people might also have and would actually spark an interesting discussion.

So just ask Chat GPT, it’s okay to have doubts creep in from time to time, it’s okay to need a reminder of basic things, it’s okay to forget how powerful you are sometimes, but you can literally ask Chat GPT to help you with that and it will. Instead of waiting around for bloggers to answer your dm or ask just to say the same thing, you can get actual help, and get it when you want it and how you want it.

Why don’t you ask “explain the law of assumption to me like i’m 5”

“explain the void state to me from a scientific view to help me believe”

“give me some dream body affirmations”

“i’ve been so demotivated, remind me who tf i am again”

“I’m going to come from a filthy rich family when I permashift, can you give me some £10Million+ per year jobs that my desired parents can do”

“I feel so lazy today, bully me into inducing the pure consciousness instead of procrastinating”

you don’t need to harass bloggers for these things when you can have immediate access to the answers you seek.

ꨄ 🧸🎀 Go download Chat GPT and knock yourself out!! 💋

[ahqkas]

BRUCE WAYNE never thought something as simple as a walk through the park could undo him so completely. he had been passing through on his way to a wayne foundation meeting, a brief moment of peace in his usually packed schedule, when his eyes caught the scene.

a toddler—no more than two, maybe three years old—stumbled through the snow, mittened hands clutching tightly to her father’s pant leg. she was bundled in a too-big scarf and a pink hat, hear head tilted to gaze at the snowflakes around her, her cheeks red from the cold.

he froze, mid-step, completely caught off guard by the wave of baby fever that crashed over him. it wasn’t like he hadn’t thought about children before. he already had a house full of them—though they came to him much older, with the weight of trauma already etched into their young faces. but this was different. she was different. he imagined a tiny girl like that in his life, her small hand slipping into his with absolute trust, her laughter filling the empty corners of wayne manor.

by the time he returned home, the manor blanketed in snow, his gloves still clutched in his hands, his thoughts had become a single drumbeat: i want that.

he found you in the library, a fleece blanket draped over your legs, a book in hand as you sat in your favorite chair by the window. the firelight flickered over your face, softening your features, making you look like you belonged in one of the stories you loved so much.

“you’re back early,” you said, voice breaking the stillness. you glanced up from the book and your lips quirked into a smile that stopped him in his tracks. “everything okay?”

he didn’t answer right away, his gaze tracing your features like he was committing them to memory. finally, he crossed the room, shedding his coat as he went, draping it across the back of the chair opposite yours.

“i saw something today,” he said, his voice low, almost thoughtful. bruce knelt before you, one hand resting on the arm of the chair as the other gently took the book from your hands. you let him, brow furrowing slightly as you tilted your head at his actions.

“what did you see?”

“a little girl,” his eyes locking onto yours. “she couldn’t have been more than two. she was holding onto her father’s leg, bundled up in a scarf that practically swallowed her whole. she was laughing.”

his words lingered in the space between the two of you, thick with unspoken meaning. your expression softened as you realized where this was heading, fingers brushing against his hand where it rested on your chair.

“she reminded me of something,” he continued, his voice dipping lower, rougher. “or maybe she made me realize something. i want that, with you. i want us to have a child—a little girl, a boy, i don’t care. i just . . . want it to be ours.”

your breath hitched in the back of your throat as your cheeks flushed—not just from the fire, but from the intensity of his words, of the way his eyes burned into yours like he could see every part of you—the future and the past. “bruce . . .” you began, voice barely above a whisper, but he leaned closer, cutting off whatever protest or question lingered on your lips.

“it’s all i could think about on the way home,” he murmured, his forehead brushing against yours, his voice dropping to a husky, intimate tone. “how much i want to see you holding our baby, to watch them grow up with you. to give them everything we didn’t have.”

you swallowed hard at his words, your soft hand sliding up to cup his cheek, thumb brushing over the faint stubble there.

“well, it’s a good thing we’re snowed in tonight.”

bruce froze for a moment, then a slow, knowing smile curved his lips. he rose to his full height, pulling you gently to your feet, the book forgotten as it tumbled to the floor.

“is that so?” he asked, his voice like velvet, rough and warm all at once.

you didn’t answer with words, just slipped your hand into his, your gaze steady despite the flush painting your cheeks. your husband pressed a lingering kiss to your forehead, then your lips, before guiding you from the library, the firelight casting long, flickering shadows in your wake.

and as snow continued to fall outside, the world quiet and still, the manor felt a little less cold that night.

[nadvs]

the act of unravelling (part two)

pairing rafe cameron x pogue! female reader

rating mature 18+

summary you never expected you’d get tangled up with a kook, least of all, rafe cameron. one night, you make a life-altering decision to get revenge on someone you both despise. after you vow to keep what happened a secret, your relationship begins to twist into something more.

tags very dark! violence, homicide, drug and alcohol use, parental neglect, mental illness, s/a, trauma. no smut.

< prev

Rafe stands and looks down at the body, his fists clenched tightly. Reality is setting in now. He could go to prison. His future could be ruined.

He’s perpetually at the mercy of his impulsivity, thinking only of the minute he’s living in, burdened with the consequences later. But still, even with his head a little clearer, he doesn’t regret this.

Ripping away the life of a man who wronged him was a thrill. He spends every day feeling like he’s losing and the power he had in his hands tonight felt so fucking good. He won for once.

You feel heavy as you push yourself up off the floor. You wish you could curl up in your bathtub under hot, gushing water, washing away everything that happened tonight.

The corpse is harder to look at with every second that passes. You glance up at Rafe, blood splattered on his face as he stares down at what he’d done, at what you’d done, chillingly unfazed.

“We can’t leave anything that’ll point back to me,” he mumbles, his voice low over the fireworks still crackling outside.

“Or me,” you have to remind him tensely.

His eyes land on yours. He’s always only looking out for himself. He doesn’t know what it’s like to have to worry about someone else.

“I’m serious,” you urge. Your survival instinct rushes through you for the second time tonight. You refuse to let Rafe throw you to the wolves. “I saved your life. You owe me. I won’t take the fall for this.”

“Well, neither will I,” he snaps.

“You shot him.”

“I could say you did,” Rafe replies. “And it’d be your word against mine. What then?”

You scoff, in disbelief of his selfishness.

“I saved your life,” you repeat. “Does that mean nothing to you?”

Rafe swallows hard. He’s not sure many people would do what you did for him tonight. They’d watch. They’d let him die. The possibility that you might feel something for him makes his chest twist with an unfamiliar warmth.

“We’ll look out for each other, alright?” he relents, letting his guard down for a moment. “Let’s just clean this up.”

Your phone buzzes in your pocket again. You pull it out, seeing Pope’s name. Twelve missed calls.

You hope your friends don’t get so worried that they come up here, ignoring the Off Limits sign Porter had put up across the stairs. But they don’t know where you went. You’re almost certain.

“My friends keep calling me,” you whisper.

Rafe’s jaw tightens. His friends aren’t worrying about him.

“You can’t answer them,” he snaps.

“I know.” You let out a shaky sigh, tucking your phone back into your pocket. “We have to be fast. What do we do? Do we bury him?”

Rafe takes a beat to think.

“We dump him in the ocean,” he finally says. “We go to the marina and drive my boat out far enough where nobody will find him.”

“How do we move him so nobody sees? We can’t go through the house. We might run into someone.”

Rafe looks to the glass door on the other end of the room, the balcony offering a view of the inky night sky.

“There,” he says. “We’ll push him off and put him in the back of my truck.”

You consider it. Of the limited options you have, it seems like the only one worth trying.

“Okay. We have to clean the blood off the floor,” you say. “And everything we touch needs to be wiped. Maybe there’s something with bleach in it around here?”

For the first time since you entered this room, you feel hope. There’s a chance, a real chance, you could get away with this. You look back at the desk Rafe ransacked.

“Pick that stuff up,” you say. Frustration rolls through him. He never liked being bossed around. “I’ll try to find something to clean with.”

“Don’t let anyone see you,” Rafe mutters.

“How stupid do you think I am?” you huff before you turn towards the door.

You tiptoe through the second story, peeking into a bathroom cupboard. When you find a spray bottle that reads Cleaner and Bleach on the packaging, you grab it and head back to the room.

You and Rafe move quickly and quietly, using clothes you found in the closet to wipe everything with bleach. After a loud, consonant cracking of fireworks that you assume is the grand finale, the show ends. And you know people are on their way back to the house.

The neighbor’s private beach can’t be that far away. You have a minute. Maybe two.

You’re glad Rafe thinks to find the shell of the bullet. He puts it in his pocket. You spray the bleach over the floor again, cleaning every drop of blood you can see.

“Tuck this stuff under his shirt,” you say breathlessly, handing Rafe the bottle and the blood-soaked clothes.

You can’t do it. You know you’ll need to touch him when you move him, but you’d rather limit the contact you have with his body. Even dead, when he can’t hurt you, touching him is terrifying.

You pick the gun up off the floor, then open the balcony, relieved you can’t hear any voices yet. You peer over the edge to see the sandy ground. The balcony overlooks the side of the house, dark and secluded.

Rafe grunts as he drags the corpse out onto the balcony. You have to muster up every bit of strength you have as you help heave Porter’s body over the railing. He falls with a hard thud, facedown in the sand.

You have to jump the balcony. You can’t risk going downstairs. Rafe is wide-eyed as you hitch your leg over the railing, looking down with shaky breaths.

“Wait,” he whispers. “Let me go first. If you break something, we’re fucked.”

He shifts down as low as he can before letting his feet hang over the edge. He lets go, dropping hard, his ankles pinching with pain from the impact.

“Okay,” he says. “Go.”

You feel a splinter dig into your palm as you clutch onto the wooden railing with one hand while the other holds the gun. You make the split-second decision to keep the balcony door open to air out the smell of bleach.

You hope you cleaned away every drop of blood in the room. There’s no going back to it now.

You sink, hanging as low as you can, looking over your shoulder before you drop. Rafe’s arms wrap around you as your feet hit the ground, his chest hard against your back, breaking your fall.

“If someone comes,” he whispers in your ear, “run.”

Waiting for him to get his truck is torture. The humid night air presses against your face and you can’t bear to look down at the body on the ground.

Rafe returns and you move quickly, straining as you carry the body over the uneven terrain, the soles of your shoes slipping on the sand.

Once the body is in the trunk and Rafe unfolds the cover, blanketing the cab and concealing the evidence, you feel a shred less frightened.

You glance back into the darkness just in case. A glow of a phone screen is in the sand. Rafe is already behind the wheel, demanding that you get in, his voice carrying through the open rear window.

You feel for your phone. It’s still in your pocket.

“Do you have your phone?” you whisper.

He responds after a moment, “Yes. Get in.”

“I think his phone fell on the ground when we were carrying him,” you say. “We should–”

Faint laughs in the distance interrupt you. There’s no time to run back and get the phone without being seen.

“Get the hell in,” Rafe mutters angrily.

You obey, swinging open the door, barely closing it in time as Rafe peels away. Your muscles prick from the weight you’d just carried as you drive past the partygoers coming back from watching fireworks.

“Holy shit,” Rafe chuckles, near elated. “We did it.”

You stare ahead, your head foggy.

This will haunt you for the rest of your life. The thought forces a torrent of dread through you worse than you’ve ever felt before.

What if you’d run out of the room when Rafe and Porter came in? What if you’d left Rafe to deal with the body on his own?

What if you’d never gone upstairs?

You’re destined to agonize over the what if’s of tonight forever.

You gaze down at the gun in your lap and hold your hands out in front of you, skin stinging from the bleach. You’d wiped away the blood, but you think you’ll always see it on your hands.

You figure out that it’s a good thing you left Porter’s phone. If he was sharing his location, you’re sure the police could track where it was last before you threw it into the sea with him. They’d know exactly where to look for his body.

“We should shut off our phones,” you realize. “I think they can track GPS history from cell towers.”

Rafe digs into his pocket, glancing down to watch the screen go black.

“How’d you think of that?” he mumbles with a laugh. “Is this not your first time doing this, Pogue?”

“Nothing about this is funny,” you reply.

“Relax,” he says. “We got away with it.”

“You can’t be so sure,” you say. “One fingerprint in that room and…”

You can’t think about it.

In the paroxysm of emotions you’re already feeling, guilt digs a hole into your stomach when you see Pope’s most recent text before you power off your phone.

Answer the phone. We’re worried.

·········

The clock on Rafe’s dashboard reads 10:44 when you reach the marina. He parks right by the main dock. The place seems quiet, the water crowded with seemingly unoccupied boats.

“I’ll take a walk around to make sure we’re alone,” he says, pulling his key out of the ignition.

The car door slams shut and you’re left with a gun in your lap, a body in the trunk, and your tormenting thoughts.

Maybe you missed something back in that room.

You picture Porter’s phone lighting up in the sand. His last text to you said to come upstairs. When the cops inevitably start searching for answers, you’ll be questioned.

A minute later, Rafe swings open your door, pulling you out of your daze. You meet his glare, his hair tousled and sweaty.

“We’re good,” he says. “Move.”

Having to haul the body over the dock past darkened, quiet boats is unnerving. Ater you leave it at the back of Rafe’s boat, you stand behind him at the helm.

Your arms are crossed and the gun is tucked by your elbow, because if you learned anything tonight, it’s that you can’t trust anyone.

Rafe’s still a man. A man who takes what he wants when he wants it. A man who killed someone because he didn’t obey him. He could hurt you if he wanted to. It’s best not to be alone with him.

“I should wait in the car,” you mumble. Rafe shakes his head in frustration, driving the boat forward. The boat’s motor hums as you rock with its movements.

“No,” he mutters condescendingly. It reminds you of why underneath the stubborn pull you’ve always felt towards him, you’ve also harbored a quiet fear. Rafe is violent. Possibly enough to hurt you the same way Porter did.

You feel for the gun again. If two men have to die tonight, so be it. The fact that your mind went there chills you.

Rafe looks over at you, lips twisting in annoyance.

“Don’t feel bad for that asshole,” he mutters. “He asked for it.”

It’s the worst possible thing he could’ve said. Your throat is raw with the threat of tears. Asked for it. Would he say the same about what happened to you?

“I don’t regret it,” you tell him, sure that he’s assuming that that’s why you’re so tense. “I’m just worried we missed something.”

“If we did, nothin’ we can do about it now,” he says. You look ahead at the dark sea, moonlight shining over the water’s ripples.

“We need to figure our story out,” you say. “How’d you end up upstairs? Did anyone see you?”

“I stopped him while everyone was going outside to watch the show,” he recalls. “Told him to show me where he was keeping his coke because I heard he was selling again. It was loud. I don’t think anyone heard, but maybe someone saw. I don’t know.”

“Why do you sell?” you ask, face pinched in confusion. “Why did you even care that he was selling, too? You don't have enough money already?”

“I gotta keep your tips coming, don’t I?” he says smugly. You scoff, jarred by his blasé attitude, despising his cold arrogance.

He notices the angry scowl on your face. He’s convinced he’ll never break through the hatred you have for him.

“I want to make my own money. That’s why,” he admits. It’s half the truth, but it’s good enough.

It’s surprising to hear that Rafe, a man you thought coasted on the wealth he was born into, possesses a work ethic. Even though he uses it to deal drugs.

“Did anyone see you go upstairs?” he asks.

“I don’t think so,” you say.

“Why were you there?”

You chew on your lip, the truth sitting on your chest like a ton of bricks. There’s no point in telling him. He thinks your motive was the same as his. Money. And you’ll let him believe it.

Besides, talking about it now, merely an hour afterwards, will only make you cry again and your head is pounding from how much you’ve already wept tonight. How could you possibly say it out loud?

“To buy pot. Then I smoked too much and passed out.” You keep talking before he can ask anything else. “Are we far out enough?”

Rafe looks back to make sure the marina is out of sight before he kills the engine.

Pushing Porter’s body over the guardrail is harder than the other times you’d carried him tonight. The water is rocking the boat so much now that you’re far into the ocean. Your breath is strained as you heave him over the metal, his body hitting the water with a loud splash under the bright moon.

Rafe pulls out the bullet shell in his pocket and tosses it in the water. You know you have to throw the gun in, too. It’s hard to. But you do it.

Rafe looks over the edge now that everything is sinking to the bottom, his forearm brushing against yours. He notices how quickly you jerk away, refusing to let him touch you. The pull he feels towards you is obviously one-sided. Your eyes flit away when you look at him.

“You have blood on your face,” you tell him soberly. His temper flares, feeling stupid for thinking a girl could feel anything but afraid of him after he shot someone right in front of her. Even though she was the one who told him to do it.

You might have a deadly thirst for revenge in common, but that’s where the similarities end. He stalks past you to wash himself off in the bathroom below the deck.

You let out a shaky breath. The unexpected contact with Rafe startled you. After tonight, you’re sure you’ll always be scared to be around men you don’t know all that well. Even the ones that seem decent are just lions in sheep’s clothing. The monster that proved that to you is below the ocean’s surface now.

You look into the murky water, and despite the fear and the anxiety and dread weighing on your heart, you’re glad that this is how it ended. Porter paid the ultimate price for what he did to you. He doesn’t deserve to live, to smile, to feel anything ever again.

·········

You and Rafe sit behind the hull, the boat swaying with the tide. You start to piece together an alibi and decide to admit you were upstairs together. If even one person says they saw either one of you go up there, you won’t be caught in a lie.

As you talk, Rafe can’t take his eyes off of you. You’re clearly scared, but trying to stay level-headed. He doesn’t get how you do it. He’s always been bad at keeping his mind steady. He never had a reason to even try.

“So, I went up first after he texted me to come buy from him,” you say, hoping your voice doesn’t shake. “I got high and passed out. Then you came up with him to find his stash. We’re obviously going to have to come clean about the drugs.”

“What do you mean obviously?”

“You’re going to be a suspect the second the police start talking to people,” you tell him. “Everyone knows you had an issue with him. And why. You can’t lie about the coke. And they’ll have evidence that I was buying weed from him. We have to be honest about it. They’ll find out anyway.”

Rafe sighs, knowing you’re right.

You hug yourself as a cool breeze carries over the water. The weakness in your gaze reminds Rafe of the way you’d cried on the floor earlier tonight. Before all this, he only ever saw you as strong-willed and sharp-tongued.

Even though calming a man like Rafe down when he’s angry sounds like it’d be impossible, you figure it’s the only direction your alibi can go.

“We’ll say I talked you down and…” You shake your head. “It doesn’t make sense that we’d stay up there. I think we say we left him in his room and sat on the beach alone in front of the house to watch the fireworks from there.”

You worry it’s not enough. You’re certain that no one who knows either one of you would buy that you voluntarily spent time together.

“Maybe the cops would believe we hung out,” you mumble, “but nobody else would.”

Rafe stills. His friends like to give him crap about how much time he spends talking to you when he supposedly hates Pogues. If he told them he was with you all night, they’d say they saw it coming.

“They could,” he says after a few seconds of silence.

“My friends would never believe it,” you scoff. He purses his lips, pissed off at your tone, at the clear implication that you talk shit about him with your friends.

“It’s our only option,” he mutters sharply.

“You’re right,” you give in. “Then what? We went home before people got back? I guess that way if anyone saw us leave together, we have it covered.”

“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “That’s the story.”

“Okay. It’s not great, but it’s the best we can do.” You check your phone for the time, only to remember it’s turned off. “Can you drive me home now? I’ll say my phone died. You should do the same when people ask where you’ve been.”

Rafe doesn’t admit to you that nobody was checking up on him, that nobody ever does. He only stands up to drive back to the dock.

·········

Your first priority when you get home is to text your friends, guilt consuming you now that it’s been over two hours since you last saw them and they have no idea what happened to you.

You turn on your phone to see a string of missed calls and texts from the guys. You open the group-chat and type: I’m so sorry. I’m okay. Got too high and lost track of time. Home now.

They video call you to be sure that you really made it home safe, drunkenly rambling on about how they assumed you went to see the fireworks early, leaving them to search the neighbor’s beach for you.

As you listen to them talk over each other on the phone, it’s the first time you see your reflection since you left the house, when you were oblivious to the fact that the impending hours would change you forever.

You can see it in your eyes that you’re not the same. You can only hope that they don’t catch on.

·········

It’s been three days. You haven’t been sleeping. You’ve hardly been eating. And no matter how many times you tell yourself there’s no use in thinking about how different the night could have turned out, it doesn’t stop your head from spinning into hypotheticals.

All you told your friends was that you were with a boy and that they didn’t need to know any more. Because they all see you as a sister, they were happy to be spared the details.

If only they knew. A few nights ago, you promised them you wouldn’t talk about Rafe ever again. You never would’ve thought the reason would be because you’d committed a crime together.

You’re back at work. Smiling and chatting and serving drinks and acting like everything is fine is harder than you expected.

The thought of seeing Rafe again is oddly comforting. No matter how twisted it is, you have a bond now, held together by secrecy and shared trauma. He’s the closest to knowing what you’re going through.

Even though you were afraid of him on the boat, when he dropped you off, he waited until you got into the house before he drove off. Maybe he sees you as someone he needs to protect, even if it is for his own selfish reasons.

No matter how unhinged he is, having someone like him in your corner is comforting after what you’d suffered through.

You spot Rafe sitting alone at the near empty club bar on your way out and your heart settles, but when you catch a glimpse of the flatscreen mounted on the wall a moment later, it drops. You knew it was inevitable, but it doesn’t make it any better.

Rafe swallows bitter whiskey, gazing up at the tv. Under a photo of Porter reads MISSING as his parents speak to the press. What if he went missing? Who’d care? What would his dad say – at least it wasn’t Sarah?

He looks down at the bartop. The thrill of what he did has faded. It’s not a surprise. His life is nothing but a cycle of short-lived highs.

When he sees the look on Porter’s parents’ faces on the tv, jealousy and loneliness screw a hole into his heart. He knows it’s fucked up to envy the man he killed. He doesn’t care.

His eyes drift over the bar to see you standing on the other end. You’re in shock as you stare up at the broadcast, looking guilty as hell. He glares at you until you finally meet his eyes.

Rafe curtly gestures to you to sit next to him. Even though he looks mad, you’re relieved to close the distance between you.

“You’re being obvious,” he says quietly once you sit next to him, an edge to his tone.

You look back to see only a few other people sitting in the restaurant area behind you, far from earshot. You won’t be heard, but you both know you have to speak vaguely just in case.

“Someone I know is missing,” you reply. “It’s normal to be worried about that.”

“What do you know about normal?” he scoffs.

You lock eyes, sure that you’re both replaying the night in your minds, sure that you’re both far from sane after what you did. His gaze is cold, a reflection of how angry he is that you’re not handling what happened as well as he is.

“Great talking to you,” you snip sarcastically, shifting to stand up.

“Wait,” he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. He looks at you again, this time with a bit of the hardness in his eyes gone. “We need to talk.”

(to be continued)

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[0mg-bird]

bombshell of the bau was soo good, I need more of those two pls!!!

Aghhhhhh thanks! Okay, upon popular demand, here’s a part two.

Bombshell Of The BAU~ Part II

Spencer Reid x Fem!Agent Reader

Summary: With all the attention you get, it’s hard to hide something as scandalous as what you and Spencer have going on. Often times, it comes down to stolen moments and too close calls.

But you don’t expect the team to find out the way they do.

Warnings: Tehehehehe. Okay, 18+ content, suggestive material, smut, MDNI, um they’re so cute! Morgan being a c!ck block on like too many occasions, slight voyeurism kinda?? Exhibitionism kinda? Two second mention of Reid’s addiction. Reader gets hurt by UbSub but she’s fine. Idk, enjoy.

“You sure you don’t want a drink?” Emily asks as she walks with you down the hallway.

You pull the clip from your hair so it softly falls down around your face. A sigh leaves your pouty lips that are long gone of lipstick.

“After the day I had? I’d much rather take a very long shower, order room service on Hotch’s dime and watch Sex and The City.”

Emily laughs. “That sounds pretty perfect to me. Hey, did Morgan really make you crawl up in that attic?”

A shiver runs through you. “I don’t want to relive that trauma.” You claim.

She rubs your arm affectionately. “Well, you try your best to recover.”

“I’m a fighter, I’ll be okay.” You say dramatically, flicking your hair out of your face.

Emily drops you off at your door. “Call me if you need anything.” She says.

“Aw, sugar, I can always count on you.” You place a kiss on her cheek, the way you always do as a goodbye to your female agent friends.

You dig the room key from your pocket and press it into the slot. Though, you don’t push the door open, you instead look to the elevator where Emily disappears in, headed down to the lobby where most of the team resides.

When the coast is clear, you briskly turn further down the hall, passing multiple doors until you come to stand at the right one. Sparing another glance over your shoulder, you raise your knuckle to the wood.

The door opens after two knocks, and that arm raised in the air is grabbed and tugged, making you fall swiftly into the room.

You let out a soft giggle, though it’s cut off by an equally smiley kiss.

The door clicks shut behind you as you wrap your arms around his neck.

“Spence.” You sigh dreamily against him. “Long time, no see, handsome.”

He pulls back to look down at you, that lopsided smile you love so much, playing on his lips.

“I saw you this morning at the station.” He reminds, letting his hands roam up your sides to hold your face.

He’s learned how to be comfortable in his actions, knowing now that you aren’t going to push him away when he reaches out. For three months, the two of you have been hiding this well kept secret, and maybe it was wrong to keep something like this from the team but…

Both you and Spencer agree that it’s nice, having something to yourselves.

So that’s why the two of you steal away any moments you can, like being on the same hotel floor after solving a case.

You give a pout. “But I’ve been stuck with Morgan all day. He was so cruel to me.”

Spencer matches your rutted lower lip. “Oh, he was cruel, huh? How was he cruel, angel?”

You love it when he calls you that.

Your hand slips into the hair on the back of his head, it’s definitely gotten a little longer.

“Made me follow him all around town, boosted me up into an icky crawl space to search for evidence.” You explain, trying to kick your heels off.

“Oh, you poor thing.” Spencer jokes, his thumb rubbing your cheek.

“It was a miserable, miserable day.” You sigh, dropping a few inches in height once your shoes are off. “But I’m here now and let me tell you, I’ve been thinking about you all day.”

Spencer gets that slight blush he always does. “Have you?”

“Mhm.” You nod, pulling him down for another searing kiss.

Instantly, lips are parting and he’s tasting that unique-to-you taste of your tongue. Maybe it’s a placebo effect, but after awhile, he’s addicted to that sweet flavor that lingers on your lips.

You sigh and melt into him, ready to forget about all the work the two of you went through today. Taking your hand, you grasp one of his and bring it down to your belt. He gets the hint, then quickly tries to get you out of the clothes you can’t bear to be in any longer than you need to be.

While you pull his tie loose, he pulls the concealed carry holster from where it was tucked inside your waist band. He sets it on the nearby table, then pulls your shoulder holster off. You chuckle against him as you pull his own fire arm off and join it with the other two.

“So many guns.” You comment.

Without a risk in the way, he untucks your blouse. “Occupational hazard.” He adds.

Slowly, articles of clothing are making a home on the floor, and once you’re down to your underwear, you’re falling onto the bed with a laugh.

“You’re on my hair.” You wince.

“Sorry.” He adjusts, gripping your waist as he flips the two of you over.

Knees on either side of his hips, you’re free to do the thing you’ve been thinking about all day. Your favorite thing is the little gasp Spencer gives you when you first create a dizzying friction against him. You absorb it with your mouth on his, hands on his cheeks, manicured nails slightly pressing into his skin. You still haven’t figured out what flips inside of you, or what it is exactly that he does that makes your brain think ‘I want to eat him’.

“What time are we flying out tomorrow?” You ask, placing his hands on your hips.

His fingers flex into your skin, and drags you against his lap.

“7:00.” He answers, knowing how much you hate early mornings, and long flights home.

“I have a bone to pick with that Hotchner guy, I think he’s out to get me.” You huff. “He ships us out when the sun comes up, he puts me with Morgan all day, and he never lets me hang around when you’re doing paperwork in the briefing room.”

Spencer, much more brave now, trails his lips down your jaw and neck.

“That’s because you’re distracting.” He states.

You gasp. “I am helpful!”

“Helpful when you have your hand between my legs under the table?”

You giggle. “I’m helpful in more ways than one, baby, and you are no better than me.”

With a slight disbelief of his eye, he pulls away from tracing your pulse with the tip of his tongue, and shakes his head at you.

“How am I no better?”

You slightly tug at the ends of his hair. “Spence, you almost got us caught when you shoved me into the conference room on your lunch break and Emily was looking all over for me.”

He smirks, feeling all too proud of himself for that bold move. “It was my lunch break…I was having lunch.”

Ever since Spencer learned how much he enjoys his face between your thighs, it’s like he’s a junky all over again and can only go so long without making you fall apart for him. You remember thinking that there was no possible way the two of you could get away with it as he pushed your skirt up and sat you on the edge of the table, kneeling before you. You also remember thinking this was one of the hottest things he has ever done.

In the beginning, you were worried that he thought you only wanted sex. The sex, it’s great, it’s …well, it’s wow. But being with Spencer means laughing more than you ever have, spending days off together, holding his hand in public and going to as many bookstores as he likes. It’s all so much more than you ever had before.

At work, it’s the same as it’s always been, you shamelessly flirt and Spencer, being the victim of your sultry ploys, keeps stumbling his words and hardly ever raises red flags.

Sure, the team noticed that he’s a little more out of his shell, has more confidence about him, but they just think he started believing all those compliments you tell him. In all actuality, he just feels proud that he has someone like you in his life, whose socks end up in his laundry and who leaves lipstick stains on the collars of his shirts.

Fingers trace up your spine, raising goosebumps on your skin as they aim for the clasp of your bra. He’s getting pretty good at undoing the hooks.

But just before he can try to beat his time, a knock comes from the door.

The two of you pause, your lips pull back, your fingers leave his hair.

“What do we do?” You whisper.

Panting slightly from the lack of oxygen he receives when your tongue is slotted to his, he just shrugs. “Maybe they’ll go away.”

Just like that, your hips continue their motion and he’s going to free your chest.

Another knock.

“Reid, it’s Morgan.” The voice comes.

Spencer lets out a rather irritated huff, his eyes shut as he swallows hard, willing the man to just go away.

“Reid! Open the door.”

Nope, he’s not leaving.

“Son of a bitch.” He grunts.

“Oh, watch that dirty mouth, Doctor.” You tease as he pulls you off his lap.

He stands, running through mathematical formulas to try and calm down in his boxers. He scoops up a sweatshirt that lays on the back of the desk chair and pulls it on. In a panic, you roll off the bed and hide behind it on the floor, trying to be as quiet as possible.

“Reid-”

Spencer pulls the door open. “What?” He snaps.

Derek is surprised by his bluntness, but he takes in his disheveled appearance and is more confused.

“What were you doing?” He asks.

“R-reading.”

Derek looks at his bare legs. “Without pants on?”

Go away, go away, go away.

Spencer breathes out. “I was about to take a shower. Now, what’s up?”

Morgan folds his arms over his chest. “Everybody is downstairs, don’t be a loner up here.”

Spencer shakes his head. “I’m pretty tired so uh, I’m gonna turn in.”

Morgan looks at him for a moment too long. “You sure you’re okay? You seem…flushed.”

“I’m fine, Morgan, really.” He reassures.

Laying face down on the carpet for a few minutes while the two men hash out whatever it is Morgan needed to, you come to the realization that you’re actually exhausted. By the time Spencer finally gets Derek to leave, you’re sitting yourself back up on the bed with a frown.

“What is it?” His brows furrow as he sees your expression.

Never have you ever had a partner so attentive, so loving in every touch they gave you. But Spencer runs his fingers through your hair as you tell him how you long for sleep, and he reassures you that it was okay you weren’t in the mood anymore.

He brought your bag from your room to his, though you truly just fell asleep in a t shirt and panties.

In the morning, you pretend you were in your room the entire night, and you meet the team in the lobby, fresh faced and ready to fly home.

“What’s your plans for this weekend?” Morgan asks after discussing with Emily what she’ll be doing.

You, who is currently taking up too much space on the couch, look over at the pair and shrug.

“I’ll have you know I have a very hot date with my bathtub when I get home and a very big plan to clean my apartment.”

That was all a lie.

You’d be over at Spencer’s this weekend, you’d be spending all your time with him, acting like a normal couple in public, having dinner and he’d get flustered when you’d kiss him in public.

But the team can’t know that.

Spencer comes back from the back of the jet, only to see his spot on the couch has been taken by your legs. He stares at you for a moment.

“Oh, I’m sorry, did you want to sit here?” You innocently question.

“Yeah, I’d prefer to.” He nods, watching you smirk.

“All you have to do is ask nicely.”

“Please?”

You sit upright, planting your feet on the ground. “Always so eager to beg.”

Emily laughs, Spencer goes red in the face.

To them, it’s exactly how it always has been between the two of you.

He sits beside you, not too close, but your fingers twitch to reach over and touch him. Your nails go to your mouth instead to keep them busy.

Without truly paying attention, Spencer reaches over and tugs your hand away from your mouth and instead hands you a sucker he pulled from his bag.

It’s such a domestic act that though there’s nothing too suggestive about it, Emily notices. She clocks the behavior as something a little odd. Sure, you and Reid have always been close but since when has he carried around things for you?

Truly, you should’ve known that Emily would be the first to suspect something, but you continued on blissfully, believing that the team was so caught up in everything else that they wouldn’t catch what was happening right under their noses.

“The station was able to get us last minute rooms but there’s only four available, some of us are going to have to double up.” Hotch says nearly a month later on a case in a small Texas town you were only supposed to be in for the day.

But when the case turned into something far more complicated than anticipated, the team opted to stay for a bit longer.

The team shares a few looks as Hotch holds the motel room keys in his hand, all knowing that he wasn’t about to bunk in with Rossi anytime soon.

“I’m not sleeping with Reid.” Morgan declares as he begins to feel like it’s going to be assumed. “Make the girls share a room.”

All three of you begin to protest, knowing you’re fine with sharing but not fine with Morgan making that decision for you.

He holds his hands up in surrender.

JJ, always such a leader, looks to you. “If you and Prentiss want to share, I’ll bunk with Reid.” She sighs.

Spencer starts feeling like he’s a child again, watching his parents talk about custody, knowing one parent truly doesn’t want him.

The suggestion, though innocent, has your nails pressing into your palms. It’s a terrible idea in your mind, because here is a chance to stay with your golden boy for the night and it’s getting taken away.

“I’ll stay with Spencer, I don’t mind. Is that okay with you, Spence?” You turn to look up at him, innocent smile, sultry eyes.

“Oh, uh, yeah, sure. Fine- it’s fine with me…I’ll take the floor.” He stutters awkwardly, sealing the deal with a cricked smile that’s very Spencer Reid.

Hotch narrows his eye as he hands you a room key. “Keep the flirting to a minimum.”

“How can I when he just makes it so easy?” You joke, taking the key.

As you grab your bag, Morgan begins to uncontrollably laugh.

“Go easy on him.” He jokes. “He’s a romantic.”

“Morgan.” Reid sighs, following behind you.

“You have a fun sleepover! Hey, you still got that whistle? Yell fire if she gets to be too much!”

I glanced back at Morgan, shaking your head before looking to Spencer. “Come on, lover boy, I don’t bite.”

“Yes you do.” He mutters.

“Only sometimes.”

Hotch prays he’s not going to get an email from HR. He’s already hearing it from Strauss, a meeting needs to be set up for inappropriate conduct between coworkers, and everyone knows Garcia and Morgan aren’t the only ones to blame, not when you’re addressing Spencer as ‘handsome genius’ in work emails.

The door clicks shut and you turn the lock, letting out a sigh and taking in the modest room, everything decorated in a dated western fashion.

“Were you serious about taking the floor?” You ask, causing him to look back over to you.

“If you want me to, yes.”

Bless him and his gentleman qualities, it has you wanting to jump him in the most passionate way.

“Now, why would I want you to be down there when I’ll be up in the mattress all alone? Here I thought you had a high IQ.” You tease, opening your go bag. “You mind if I shower? You could join me if you want.”

The offer is tempting.

“I better stay here in case someone comes knocking, might be a little suspicious if we’re both dripping wet at the same time.” He says, feeling proud that he still can think logically, though it’s far too hard when you’re around.

A smirk pulls at your soft lips. “I thought I was the only one who knew anything about being dripping wet.”

Spencer becomes flush, his cheeks burning as he says your name, prompting you to stop your explicit behavior.

“Sorry, baby, it’s just so easy.” You come to kiss his jaw before finding your way to the bathroom.

The shower is warm and the low light in the bathroom is soothing, you rinse clean and shampoo your hair, making the steam smell like your scent. Spencer browses the minimal television selection, then fights his urge to unmake the bed because he knows you’ll want to adjust the blanket and sheets a certain way.

“The water pressure is surprisingly good.” You say after about fifteen minutes, coming out, releasing that waft of steam.

Toweling your hair, you come back to your bag to find your various travel lotions, though you don’t get very far because Spencer is looking at you like you just hung the moon.

“What?” You ask, slightly adjusting your robe with an unsure smile.

He smiles softly. “I just…it’s unfair how beautiful you are in every form.”

Your heart swoons like it always does when he’s around.

“You have no room to talk, mister.” You remind, abandoning the skin care and come to stand between his knees that he parts for you.

Your finger traces the line of his jaw as his hands gently place on the backs of your thighs.

“You’re so sexy with your hair pushed back like this. Did you start wearing it like this because you knew it would drive me crazy?” You ask coyly, half teasing, running your fingers through it.

“It’s getting long.” He says.

“Nonsense, I love it.”

“You love everything.”

“I love you.”

The two of you pause. Those are three words you haven’t exactly expressed often. It’s been said, in a ramble from Spencer where it just came out and you had beamed up at him like you’ve won a prize.

Now, you say it with certainty, and he wants to hear it again.

“I love you.” You say with more intensity, leaning down to where you have his face in your hands, holding him there as you kiss him.

“I love you too.” He mumbles against your lips.

You don’t pull away when he slowly reaches for the tie of the silky robe, you’d never reject him.

He’s already lost his shoes and socks, his tie and the top buttons of his shirt, but he loses more as you help him. Further up on the bed, you let the open robe fall off your shoulders, not feeling bashful as he studies you with his eyes.

Spencer could never look at you in anything other way than adoration.

“Hotch is dumb.” You decide in his lap, placing his hands on your hips.

“We’re taking advantage of the situation.” Spencer declares, face falling to your shoulder as you sink further down onto him.

“I feel no remorse.” You breathe.

This isn’t the first time you’ve had sex, the first time was a long time coming and it was perfect. So gentle and warm and everything the two of you craved. You laid in his sheets and traced the freckles on his skin and it’s a moment you think of often because you often don’t get them.

Now, you have a moment and are seizing it.

“You okay?” You ask with the drag of your hips.

“You’re heavenly.” Spencer proclaims, tasting the clean skin of your neck.

“Spence.” You gasp, getting the hang of a rhythm. “Fuck.” The word leaves your lips as soon as he thrusts up into you.

You and Spencer have always worked well together so this is no different.

It’s addictive, the feeling stirring in you, the shear pleasure washing over him. He knows a thing or two about addiction and he can confidently say that you make him feel far better than any needle in the vein did.

At some point, with your hands in his hair, mouth hot against his, and his grip moving you how he wants…

Your phone rings.

At first, you do your best to ignore it, but it continues in an annoying fashion.

“No.” You plead, trying to chase that oncoming feeling.

“Who is it?” Spencer breathes heavy as you reach for the device.

“Emily.”

His head falls in defeat, movements slowing, prompting you to answer.

You do your best to not sound aggravated as Emily asks if she can bring dinner by, but the idea of a burger does sound nice.

“Yeah, we could eat.” You state, free hand over Spencer’s mouth to keep him quiet as your slow movements continue.

“Let me know if you need anything else.” Emily states in a kind yet suspicious tone.

“Will do, thanks Em.”

You throw the phone away, overwhelmed and determined to reach the high that was slowly slipping away.

“I hate our team sometimes.” You determine, frustrated that you lost momentum.

Not so gently, Spencer adjusts you to be on the mattress, taking over when you threaten to call off the entire idea because there was a stumble in the step.

“They should just know not to call on the off chance two coworkers are breaking HR rules.” He jokes, entering you without hesitation, making you gasp out.

The roll of his hips is slowly bringing you back to the precipice at a dangerously fast rate, leaving your legs to shake a touch.

“Emily is going to be here soon.” You stress, digging your skull into the pillow.

“We’ll be done before then.” He assures, reaching his hand down to rub his thumb against your clit in a hot friction.

“Emily could stand here and watch for all I care.” You state, pleading for a release. “I just- I need it, baby, please.”

“I know, I know, angel, you’re going to get it.”

How could a man be so soft when he’s doing such dirty things to you? It’s a mystery you’ll never quite understand, but Spencer has always been a wonder, so this is to be expected. He’s coaxing you to the finish, letting you suck on his shoulder to keep your noises down.

And when it happens after the build up of waiting for weeks, it hits like a tidal wave, leaving you speechless, open mouth gasping silently for air. Spencer is shuddering and pressing his face into that space between your jaw and collar bone.

You half expect a phone call, some kind of urgent message that will ruin this moment but nothing comes. It’s just you and Spencer.

At some point after getting cleaned up, you lay side by side, limbs tangled. Your eyes threaten to shut at the way he traces the shape of your face.

“Sometimes I’m just waiting to wake from this dream.” He whispers, tucking hair behind your ear.

You hum. “It’s not a dream, that’s what makes this so great.”

He shifts slightly, tilting his head down to brush his nose to yours. “Sometimes I think it is, because in what reality am I really the person you choose?”

You don’t like that, it obvious on your face. “I’d choose you in every universe, even if you don’t choose me.” You say sternly, a hand pushing his hair back.

He likes when you’re genuine. Well, you’re always genuine, but you also always have a face on, one of coyness and humor. When you’re like this, emotionally bare, he likes you the most.

“I’d never not choose you.” He states before turning to kiss your wrist.

You want to comment about how romantic he is without trying, but Emily knocks like you knew she would.

The two of you spring up, thankful you’re already dressed. You take a calming breath as you head to the door, and Spencer quickly tries to straighten the wrinkled sheets.

Emily isn’t dumb, she knows something is different, but she truly doesn’t suspect anything yet, which is questionable because she has a perfect view of signs that indicate adult activities when she comes in to deliver the burgers.

She goes and tells JJ that the two of you act different, a little more guilty, but Emily doesn’t know for sure until a completely different scenario comes about.

Two weeks later, when you’re sent into a living nightmare. Hotch makes the call to send you into the Unsub’s house alone first, you do it without hesitation because that is just how you do your job when it comes to the life or death of three missing children.

“House is clear, I’m going down to the basement.” You say into the com on your vest, confirming your safety to the team.

But you speak too soon, the Unsub does something the profile was wrong about. Hotch sent you in there because he suspected the man to be submissive to confident women of higher standard.

Though you were cautious, you weren’t expecting the Unsub to attack you at first chance.

You do your best to fight back and get the kids free, but you’re completely blindsided. Who knows what would have happened if SWAT and the team didn’t storm in when they did.

When you sit in the back of the ambulance, in shock, a paramedic cleaning up the gash on your forehead, Spencer is there with concern and comfort.

“The kids?” You ask.

“They’re safe, they’re going to be okay.” He reassured, holding your hand between both of his.

“I didn’t…I should’ve-“

“Shh.” He frowns. “You did good, angel, everything’s alright. Do you feel okay?”

Your brows draw and you shake your head. “I don’t feel well. Do I look well?”

“You have a concussion, sweetheart.” He says, gently pushing your hair back behind your ear.

“Am I still gorgeous?” You ask in a dreamy voice.

“You’re always gorgeous.” He assures, cradling your cheek. “You’re just gorgeous with a head injury that you’re going to go to the hospital to get it looked at.”

Your eyes shut as you hum, the warmth of his palm runs through you. The two of you embrace gently, completely forgetting how casual you are supposed to be appearing.

The team sees it now, of course they do.

You’ll have to explain the secret you’ve been hiding from them later, but now you’re just listening to Spencer’s voice murmur to you, wrapped in his FBI jacket, fighting the urge to adjust his hair.

[thesecondhandwoman]

(SPOILERS FOR ACT THREE)

HOLDING ON TO HER

Sevika x fem!reader

Summary: It had been a few days after the fight that commenced between Noxus and Viktor’s creations, and only a few days after everyone had experienced the Arcane. Sevika was still traumatized from the experience, and desperately needed comfort. Specifically your comfort.

Sevika could feel the weight of the world bearing down on her. The words she told herself every day, the ones she used to push through the chaos of life, weren’t working anymore. Her mind was a battlefield, a storm of memories that she couldn’t fight off—memories of that moment when the arcane had taken over, when she had lost control of her own body, and when she felt her very soul pulled in every direction by something greater than herself.

The recent battle had left scars on her mind, ones that she couldn’t shake no matter how much time passed. The way her limbs had moved of their own accord, the feeling of her body betraying her, as if she were nothing more than a vessel for something dark and otherworldly. It made her sick to her stomach. Her thoughts were constantly tangled with those memories. She couldn’t stop replaying the way the arcane had twisted her body, forced her to fight against her will, made her want to fight against her own nature. But it hadn’t just been the physical invasion. The worst part was the helplessness—the suffocating sensation of being trapped in her own skin, of not being able to escape the dark, searing touch that had commanded her every move.

And now, she was here. Alone in their shared apartment in Zaun, the light from the flickering street lamps casting long shadows across the room. The smell of iron, old grease, and gunpowder that clung to her skin was still there, but it was nothing compared to the ache in her chest. Her eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, her body ached from the fight, but it was her mind that was the true battlefront. She hadn’t even been able to fully comprehend what happened when those things—Viktor’s disgusting creations—had touched her, her mind still fragmented from the sheer chaos.

Her arms were wrapped tightly around herself, as though she could hold all the parts of her that were broken into one piece. Every breath was a reminder of the weight she carried inside, a weight that had only grown heavier since the fight that commenced only a few days ago.

“Sevika?” A soft voice broke through the fog in her mind.

You stood in the doorway, your figure framed by the dim glow of the hallway light. Your eyes were soft with concern, and Sevika could see the way you moved cautiously toward her, not wanting to disturb her but knowing that she needed you. She felt a pang in her chest at the sight of you. You had always been a source of comfort for her, even before everything with Viktor. But now, in this moment of darkness, she felt undeserving of your kindness, your warmth.

You knelt down in front of her, gently taking her hands into your own. The touch was grounding, a lifeline thrown to her in a sea of uncertainty. You didn’t speak at first. You didn’t need to. The silence was heavy, but in it, you offered her the thing she needed most—presence. Your unwavering presence.

“I’m sorry,” Sevika whispered hoarsely, her voice cracking as she squeezed your hands tightly. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t get rid of it. The memories. The way it felt to not be in control. The way they… they touched me, forced me to be something I’m not.”

You shook your head, your thumbs gently brushing the backs of her hands. “You don’t have to apologize, Sevika. What happened wasn’t your fault.”

She closed her eyes, trying to push the images away, but they flooded back in an instant. The way her body had been jerked and twisted by forces beyond her understanding. The gnawing feeling that she wasn’t her own person anymore, that she wasn’t Sevika—that she was just an extension of the arcane, a puppet on invisible strings. And when they had tried to make her feel normal, to want to be free, it had felt like a mockery.

“I don’t want to feel like this,” Sevika choked out, her voice barely audible. “I hate it. I hate feeling weak. I’ve never felt weaker in my life. They… they made me want things I can’t have, things I’m not supposed to have. I didn’t even know how to fight it, and even with them gone, they still feel like they are there.”

You leaned forward, your forehead gently pressing against hers, and for a moment, everything in the room felt still. The pain in her chest didn’t disappear, but your warmth was a soothing balm. You didn’t say anything for a long time, just holding her in the silence, letting her feel you there.

She needed you, more than she ever had before, but she didn’t know how to ask for it.

“I know,” you whispered softly, your fingers now caressing her cheek with the gentleness only you could offer. “I know, Sev. I’ve been there. I felt it too… I know what it’s like when the arcane takes control. When it feels like you’re losing yourself. But you’re not weak. Not to me. You’re the strongest person I know.”

Her breath hitched at your words, and she could feel the pressure in her chest lift ever so slightly. She wanted to argue, to tell you that you didn’t understand, that she didn’t deserve to be held, to be comforted. But something in the way you looked at her—something in the warmth of your hands on her skin—stopped her.

Your thumb brushed over the tear that had fallen down her cheek, your gaze never wavering from hers. “You’re not alone, Sevika. I’m here, okay? I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere. You don’t have to carry this by yourself.”

She felt herself break, the dam she had carefully built over the years cracking open. The weight of everything—the trauma, the guilt, the terror—came flooding out in hot, silent tears. You didn’t let go of her hands, didn’t pull away. You stayed with her as she cried, your embrace comforting and steadfast.

As the sobs began to wrack her body, you wrapped your arms around her tightly, pressing her face into the crook of your neck. “It’s okay to feel like this, Sevika. It’s okay to need someone, especially now. You don’t have to be the strong one all the time.”

The way your arms enveloped her, the way you kissed her forehead softly, telling her that she was safe with you, slowly started to ease the storm inside her heart.

“I was so scared, Y/N,” Sevika whispered, her voice muffled against your skin. “I was so scared of what they were trying to make. Of what they made me feel. I don’t know how to fix myself after all of that.”

You pulled back just enough to look into her eyes, wiping away the last remnants of her tears. “You’re not broken, Sev. You’re healing. And we’ll heal together. One step at a time.”

And with that promise, she believed you. For the first time in what felt like forever, Sevika let herself lean into the love and safety you offered her. The trauma of the arcane wouldn’t disappear overnight, but she knew, deep down, that with you by her side, she didn’t have to face it alone.

You kissed her gently, a soft press of your lips to hers that spoke more than words ever could. It was a promise, a reassurance, that no matter what darkness she faced, she’d never have to fight it alone.

Sevika finally let herself rest in your arms, the world outside no longer so cold. She was safe here. With you.

[mallowsweetmiri]

I am foaming at the mouth after Potter!Reader x Remus. Like I’m literally obsessed, perfect characterisation.

I don’t know if you’re taking requests but if you are, would you mind doing a part 2? Maybe more of them sneaking around or James finding out or something I don’t know.

Secret Potter!reader x Remus pt 2

Summary: Remus can’t stop thinking about you, you can't stop kissing him, and Theodore Pompous needs to hide from James

Warnings: smutty, mentions of consent, slight corruption kink

Word count: 3.5k

—————————————————————————

Remus woke up the next morning and sat up in his bed for a full minute thinking, what the fuck have I done? He had fucked his best friend's little sister, and the worst part was, he wanted to do it again. Remus rubbed over his eyes as he got up to use the bathroom. He splashed water on his face and tried to justify what had happened. It wasn't his fault that you teased him all weekend- with a surprising amount of stealth considering James was almost always around the two of you- and then made him feel your soaking panties when he tried to ask for your consent.

"Jesus fucking christ," Remus cursed, grabbing the sink and looking at himself in the mirror. He had to get a grip. By the time he had brushed his teeth, showered, and gotten dressed, it was lunch hours. Remus and the marauders strutted cheerfully down to the Great Hall, despite being at a party the night before. This was routine. Soon they'd be scarfing their faces with toast and sausage and sandwiches.

You had woken up a few minutes later and ended up walking to the Great Hall with Marlene and a few other girls. You were mildly hungover, though by this hour, you were ready to eat. When you walked through the doors, you spotted Remus immediately. He was already watching you as you walked towards the table, sitting down next to James as you did every morning.

"Mornin'," James greeted you, smiling through a mouthful of toast. You raised your brows and tried not to laugh for two reasons. James was staring at you like an idiot, and Remus was staring at your tits.

"Good morning," you laughed, hiding the smile on your lips. You started to fill your plate, intentionally looking away from Remus. He seemed to be nervous. Then you felt James fingers pull back your hair away from your neck.

"Y/N, do you have a hickey on your neck?" James sputtered, moving in closer to stare at it. Your eyes shot up to Remus who was currently looking away from you and your brother.

"So what," you scoffed, fussing his hand away. "You're the one who reminded me of my crush on Theodore. Now you're mad at me for it?"

Remus had to admit, you were a quick thinker. James' face turned a violent shade of red as he shot up to locate Theodore Pompous at the Ravenclaw table. When Remus met your eye, the two of you almost burst out laughing at James' reaction before you sprung up to grab his arm.

"James," you scolded, trying to stifle a laugh. "Seriously, stop. You can't just berate Theodore. That's so rude and there's no reason to." James shook his head at you with an incredulous look.

"No reason-"

"James," Marlene shouted, standing up as well. "Stop it. All of us are tired of you being such a dick to Y/N. You don't see her reacting like this when you have a bit of fun." The other girls murmured in agreement as James' eye twitched.

"Yes, but thats different-"

"Why?" Marlene raised her brow, "Because she's a girl?" The was a series of oooh's and cackles from Sirius and Peter before James begrudgingly sat down and passed a dirty glance your way. At least he was settled for now. James wouldn't continue to press you with Lily and the other girls at your defense.

Lunch went on and Remus came to the conclusion that he was utterly obsessed with you. He wondered if you were still teasing him or if it was just your body taunting him as his eyes kept finding their way to your chest. You had always been drop dead gorgeous. This was fucked. There was no way he’d be able to keep his eyes from wandering to you, and there was even less of a chance that he’d be able to go to whole week without fucking you at least once. He tried to feel bad about it, but that wasn't the case. He wanted you, and there really wasn't anything that was going to stop him from seeing you again.

Remus decided to approach this logically. If he wanted keep fucking you, he'd have to court you. He wouldn't mind that. You enjoyed literature, you were funny, and you were one of the most talented witches in the school. And you were his best friends brother, if he wanted to fuck you today, he'd have to do it in secret to avoid an interfering and angry James.

That's why when he found you studying alone in the library that afternoon, he took the opportunity.

"Hello," Remus cleared his throat, approaching your desk. "Mind if I join you?" Your eyes peered up from your papers momentarily, just enough to acknowledge his presence.

"Sure," you hummed, dipping your quill in the inkwell. "As long as you don't distract me from my work."

Remus huffed out a laugh and pulled a chair up to your table. Even sitting down, his frame towered over yours. You tried to continue writing, but the task felt futile as his knee rested just inches from yours. You sighed and put your quill down, turning to face Remus. His face wore a smile as he threw his hands up in defense.

"Hey, I wasn't even doing anything," he chuckled, watching as you rolled your eyes. A smile crept up to your lips.

"Yeah, yeah, Remus," you grumbled. "Did you want to talk about something?" He huffed out another laugh and you felt his breath on your face, the close proximity making your stomach do a flip. In the low lighting, he looked heavenly.

"Yea, actually. I did want to talk to you about something," his voice lowering as he leaned in. You narrowed your eyes at him as the smirk on his face stayed put. He thought he was hot shit and maybe he was right about that, but you wouldn't let him play with you.

"Hmm, and what would that be?" you asked innocently, looking up at him with your signature doe eyes. He scoffed out a laugh.

"Well, love. To be honest, I can't stop thinking about you," he purred, his arm slinging over the back of your chair as he leaned in even closer. You stifled the urge to press your legs together as his hand played with the hem of your t-shirt, rubbing it in between his fingers.

"Can't stop thinking about how good the sex was?" You teased, leaning in with a mischievous lip bite. This made Remus laugh and you blushed at his genuine smile.

"Straight to the point then," Remus chuckled, looking around the library. "Listen, I don't want to be disrespectful-"

"Okay, let me cut you off right there," you said sternly, pushing your finger into his chest. "If you're going to be scared of my brother, then this isn't going to work. I'm looking for someone who will fuck me and not hold back. If you can't do that, then we shouldn't do this." You finished, turning back to sit properly in your chair. Remus' hand stopped you by the shoulder.

"Love, if I cared about your brother right now I wouldn't be here telling you how badly I need to fuck you again," Remus whispered quickly, his gaze dropping to your lips for a second. Your face flushed immediately as the want between your legs throbbed again.

"Oh," was all you could make out. His smirk annoyingly made another appearance as he chuckled lightly at you, again. His thumb rubbed over the cap of your shoulder as you looked at him with a permanent blush, your lips parted slightly. The smirk slowly faded off his face as he stared at you. He couldn't focus while you were looking at him like that. With that blush on your cheeks, and those plump, pink lips.

"So what's your plan then?" You said, snapping Remus out of his trance. He sat up straighter.

"Meet me in the prefect's bathroom at 9:30," he instructed, his hand moving off your shoulder as he stood up. You smirked up at him as he moved his chair back to the table next to yours.

"I'll be there," you replied, turning back to your notes.

"See you then," Remus smiled, leaving before he lost control and bent you over the table.

Later that night

You padded lightly through the hallways. Curfew wasn't for another 30 minutes, but you tried to stay quiet. Your body buzzed with excitement as you padded up the staircase to the fifth floor. It turned you on that Remus was using his prefect privileges to fuck you in private, and it turned you on even more knowing there was a giant bathtub in the middle of the room. You chuckled lightly to yourself as you came onto the floor, Remus leaning against the wall near the statue. His eyes found your hips as you approached him.

"Hi," you whispered, stepping softly towards him.

"Hi beautiful," he muttered, pushing off the wall to come towards you. You weren't expecting him to kiss you, so a gasp escaped you when he surged forward to press his lips against yours. He grabbed your cheeks to deepen the kiss hungrily. You moaned into him as your fists clasped the front of his shirt, his prefect badge moving with the fabric.

"We should go inside," you gasped, pulling away from his irresistible lips. He hummed in agreement, not quite looking at you. His hands were gripping tightly on your hips like they did the previous night, as if he could barely contain himself. It took a moment but Remus led you through the doors and into the bathroom, dimly lit from the moon and enchanted colored lights. You bit your lip as you watched the water run from the faucets and into the bath, filling the room with steam.

"Let's take this off," Remus purred, coming from behind to kiss your neck. You let out a sigh of relief as he sucked down on your sweet spot, his hands running under your shirt to lift it over your head. You happily obliged and felt Remus groan into your neck as he realized you weren't wearing a bra. You knew this would drive him crazy, and hearing him groan in your ear made you pool between your legs. He pulled your shirt off and spun you around, leaving no time before dipping down to kiss you again. You could hardly think as Remus wrapped his arms around your body, burying into the kiss like he didn't need air. It was mesmerizing, the way your body fit against his. The two of you kissed like that for a while, the steam eventually pooling over both of your skin. It took a few minutes for Remus to stop kissing you, humming multiple times into your mouth before he finally pulled away.

"Rem," you groaned, tugging on the buttons of his shirt to take it off. He was practically soaking through his shirt anyway.

"Let's get in the water."

The two of you stripped and sunk slowly into the bath, Remus' hands pulling you into his lap. When your backside made contact with him, you gasped. His length pressed against you and you were suddenly reminded of how he stretched you out last night. You were glad to be soaking in a hot bath. You barely had time for another thought when he connected his lips with your skin, your head lolling back onto his shoulder as he massaged your thighs.

"Fuck," you groaned as his hands came up to grasp your breast. He hummed in response and bit your earlobe, earning a roll from your hips. His fingers slipped down between your legs, teasing you gently.

"Y/N," Remus breathed, pausing his kissing and earning a hum from you in response. "I want to eat you out."

He didn't wait for your response as he lifted you up and sat you on the edge of the tub, dropping down to his knees and moving between your legs.

"Remus- oh," you moaned as his mouth connected with your clit. You instantly gripped his hair, your head thrown back in an intense wave of pleasure. Remus was making you feel good, and by the way he was groaning into your core and wrapping his hands around your waist, you were pretty sure he was enjoying himself too. You couldn't form words and ultimately found yourself on your back. Remus shifted up higher to kiss your clit deeper, his tongue licking and dipping into your core. His hands stayed put on your hips, his mouth working overtime to send you over the edge.

"Fuck, please Remus," you gasped, you legs locking over his shoulders and bucking up into his face. He only huffed in response as his hands snaked under your back, pulling you deeper into his mouth. You twitched in his grasp, an orgasm teetering as his tongue swiped over your clit.

"So close, Rem," you whine, gripping his curls tighter. Remus could feel you pulse under his tongue, and it took every ounce of control for him to pull away. "Wh-what?" you whine, immediately sitting up to see Remus. He sat there with his arms linked under your legs, his smirk covered in slick down to his chin.

"You want to come for me, Y/N?" Remus teased, leaving wet, open kisses on the inside of your thighs. You whined and he chuckled, looking up at you wickedly through his kisses. "Do you?" He prompted again, moving to the other leg. You groaned with desire.

"Yes, Remus. Please," you cried, tugging on his hair to come towards you again. He hummed out a chuckle into your skin.

"Tell me how badly you want it," Remus challenged you, moving his kisses closer to your center.

"Please, Remus. I want you so badly. I need you. So badly, Remus. Please," you whined, falling on your back and continuing to grasp at his head. You felt the vibrations of his chuckle next to your clit.

"Such a good girl," he mumbled, planting a kiss right onto you. You let out another guttural whine as he continued to tenderly lap at your clit and your entrance, slowly savoring your wetness. You felt your orgasm building once more, sending jolts through your body that increased in force with every movement of Remus' tongue. Your hips were bucking badly, and Remus tightened his grip on you to bury himself once again.

"I'm going to come," you gasped, barely lasting a second longer before spilling into his mouth. The intensity felt doubled this time, and Remus ate you up graciously. You were almost embarrassed by how hard your orgasm had hit you, but Remus didn't seem to mind. In fact, he was moaning into your core as he finished you up.

"You taste so fucking good," Remus groaned as he climbed over you, his tip pressing against your entrance and slipping in momentarily through the slick. You gasped and felt yourself clench around him, still sensitive from his mouth. Remus' hand found the back of your head as he pushed himself into you fully. You gasped and whined simultaneously, digging your nails into his biceps. "Fuck, Y/N. You feel even better." He began to move in and out of you at a torturous pace, his tip burying deep within you. Just when you thought he had bottomed out, he bucked into you with force and moved even deeper inside of you. You let out an unprompted noise which seemed to please Remus as he started pounding into you, forcing noises out of you that were uncontrollable.

"F-fuck, R-remus," you said, your words bouncing with the pace of his thrusts. It was unrelenting, but you were so soft from his mouth that you started to near another orgasm. Your fate was sealed when his thumb came down to find your clit, the pressure of his cock adding to the pleasure immediately.

"So pretty, Y/N," Remus moaned, dipping to press a kiss to your lips. You hungrily returned it, the two of you moaning into each other's mouths as Remus' thrust slowed and deepened. "So. Fucking. Beautiful." He pounded into you, clenching his jaw as he fucked the life out of you. You were tightening, and tightening, and tightening until the coil in your stomach snapped and a rush of release pulsed through your walls. Remus groaned loudly as you felt him collapse into you, his thrusts deep and followed by spurts of warmth inside of you. He thrusted into you lazily, kissing you and rubbing your hips with his thumbs. Like much of the night, the two of you stayed kissing unhurriedly like this. It was only when someone knocked on the door that the two of you moved from your position.

"Thank Merlin you locked the door," you muttered, pulling on your pants after casting a dryer spell over you.

"Heh, I actually didn't. It's just common practice after prefect rounds," Remus laughed sheepishly. "It must be the end of the next shift." Your eyes widened at this as the two of you finished pulling on your clothes and drying off perspectively. You kept close to Remus' back as the two of you moved to leave the bathroom. You heard Remus say something to the other prefect but you didn't look up as you followed Remus out. He ushered you towards the staircase and muttered in your ear, "That was Theodore Pompous." You stifled a laugh as the two of you climbed the stairs. Remus was grinning at the coincidence and teasing you about your old crush. The two of you laughed and blushed and talked quite comfortably next to one another as you neared the Gryffindor tower.

"Do you think anyone will be in the common room?" you asked, lowering your voice and letting go of his hand. Remus shrugged and walked behind you, guiding you to the portrait hole.

"I don't think so. There's an early quidditch practice tomorrow and it's already past curfew," he muttered, giving the fat lady the password and climbing through to the common room. Remus' face hardened when he saw James sitting on the couch, his head turned towards them. He stood up when he saw you enter behind Remus.

"Y/N, what were you doing out past curfew? I was worried. I waited up for you," James frowned at you, his eyes filled with genuine concern. You felt your face flush red, realizing why you were out late. You might as well have been wearing a sign that said we just fucked. Thankfully Remus was exceptionally good at drying charms. 

"I found her sneaking around Ravenclaw Tower," Remus said with a nonchalant nod of the head. "Thought I'd bring her back." 

"Wasn't your shift done thirty minutes ago?" James questioned, stepping closer to Remus who showed no signs of embarrassment or concern.

"Yes, but I told Theodore I'd take his shift in exchange for him doing mine on Sirius' birthday," Remus shrugged. Your mouth formed a straight line as you looked at him. Seriously? That's the best you can come up with? James looked at Remus incredulously.

"Why would you trade shifts with him," James hissed, narrowing his eyes towards him. You started to walk towards your dorm.

"Well, I'm back," you dismissed James with a yawn. "Goodnight, Jamie." James huffed and stepped in front of you, grabbing your hands.

"Y/N, you know I love and respect you," he stared, causing you to roll your eyes by instinct. "But I just want you to be safe. Don't stay out late for some prat who you've hardly even talked to before." You sighed as he looked at you with those James Potter eyes that reminded you of home.

"I know. I'm sorry I worried you," you apologized, looking sympathetically to him. "I'm gonna go to sleep now. Okay?" James let out a sigh of relief as he gave you a hug.

"Goodnight," James called as you went up the stairs.

"Goodnight," you called back, sending Remus a wave. Remus waved subtly back to you before sighing and rubbing his eyes. He hated lying to James, and he hated even more how much he felt like he was corrupting his best friend's little sister. He knew it wasn't true though. You had shown him how badly you wanted him, how much of a slut you were for him... Fuck. Remus wanted you for himself and he wanted you for a long time. He made a vow to ask you out by the end of the week, and to do it with James' blessing.

"Sorry I got a little heated, Moony," James said, turning to face Remus. "I just can't stand the thought of her alone with some random git. Thanks for bringing her back." Remus hummed and nodded.

"It's no problem."

The two of them went up to their dorm and crashed respectively onto their beds. Sirius and Peter were already asleep. Remus laid awake again thinking about you. He thought about your face when you came, and the way you blushed when he teased you. He fell asleep dreaming of you during the summertimes when you would read outside with him and woke up the next morning with a plan. 

[thethingsnerd]

This one. I like this one. Fic under the cut

“Your input is not necessary.”

It’s not the first time Bruce had said that to Dick tonight. It would be less frustrating if B was making better calls- he’s not really listening to anyone else tonight, not just Dick, and his decision making is suffering for it.

Everyone's tempers are suffering for it, too.

It starts with Oracle, who hates when Batman falls back into bad habits like this as much as Dick does, and has twice as less patience for it. She's curtly professional from the word "go" and when Dick offers to bring her a pint of cherry garcia later, Barbara tells him to shove it up his ass instead. Dick doesn't take it personally.

Next is Cass, who's always extra stressed when Barbara's upset. Even so, it blindsides Dick. They'd ended up at the same shootout, they'd efficiently gotten the surrounding civilians to safety, they'd worked together beautifully. They de-escalate the gun fight next, and Dick knocks a gun out of a gangster's hand before he can shoot Blackbat in the back. He doesn't think twice about it until Cass starts castigating him on the roof.

"I didn't need help."

"He was behind you. That's the whole point of a patrol partner, Blackbat, so someone can cover your six."

"No."

"No?"

"You were out of rhythm."

"I was not-"

"You're throwing me off."

She's running before Dick can say anything else. He could catch up with her, if he really tried, but he's still not sure what that was about. Maybe Dick is as out-of-sync as Cass insisted, or maybe Cass is feeling off-kilter herself. Either way, he doesn't go after her.

The rest of the night shift is uneventful, aside from the snipe over comms. Back at the Cave is a different story. Steph and Tim are arguing when Dick rolls in, and Dick gets all of three steps toward the computer before they round on him instead.

"Dick! Tell Tim that-"

"No, Dick, inform Stephanie-"

"Oooh full name, I'm so chastened, Timothy-"

"You should be embarrassed-"

"Okay!" Dick interjects. "What is the problem?"

Steph glances between Dick and Tim, glances at her feet, then sighs aggressively. "Nothing," she grits out. "Absolutely nothing, so for once in your life leave it alone, you busybody."

Dick watches as she stomps away. Just a bad night, he has to remind himself that it's just a bad night. Tim shakes his head when Dick glances at him, so Dick heads straight to the showers.

Clean, warm, and dressed down in comfy sweats, Dick feels much better than has all day. He'd passed Damian on the stairs, but something was clearly eating at the kid- he'd taken one look at Dick and turned sharply in the other direction. Hiding. Dick's been there, and valiantly tries not to take it personally.

He decides to make himself some chamomile (he'll never take sleeping pills again after don't think about it) and takes a moment to check in with himself. His therapist would be proud. Alfred would be proud of how nicely his chamomile turns out; Dick almost always understeeps herbal tea but tonight he's gotten it just right.

Dick sips his tea. He takes inventory of his injuries; minimal bruising, achy lower back, tender left wrist. Pretty good. Then takes stock of the rest of him; tired but not yet sleepy, agitated but not too badly. All in all, considering all the tension, tonight definitely could have been worse.

Famous last words.

Tim walks into the kitchen just as Dick gets to the dregs of his chamomile. Dick nods at him in greeting, and Tim does not take it well.

"Oh, now you acknowledge me?"

Dick does not sigh. He doesn't but it is such a near thing. "Did I not acknowledge you some other time tonight?"

"I asked you to back me up downstairs and you totally ignored me!"

"I did no such thing. You were in the middle of an argument I didn't catch the start of, so I asked what the problem was. How is that ignoring you?"

"I asked you for backup and you didn't come through," Tim hisses.

"Backup in the field and backup in a lovers' quarrel are not the same-"

"It wasn't a- a lovers' quarrel, asshat!"

"Well, how am I supposed to know when you don't say what's really going on?"

"You shouldn't need to know! I asked for backup-the only thing you're good for is backup and you couldn't even do that right!"

......yeah, alright, there's no getting around it. Dick is going to have to take that personally.

Dick deliberately turns away from Tim. He rinses out his teacup so the porcelain won't stain. Then, he takes a long, centering breath, and decides to do something he hasn't done in a long time.

"That how you really feel, Tim?" One more out.

"Yes."

Dick decides to cut his losses.

"Okay then."

"Okay?" Tim asks. Clearly still angry but now confused as well. It's a bad look for him. "This is not an 'okay' kind of situation."

"Not from your angle," Dick says. It's the only reply Tim gets before Dick makes his way upstairs.

Last time he left Gotham at dawn, Dick had nothing but a backpack and stolen emergency cash. This time, Dick is a grown man and a lot less desperate, not to mention a lot less injured, so he digs out his civilian suitcase and actually plans out what he wants to take.

He packs jackets, pajamas, shaving razors, plenty of socks- the kinds of things that are only expensive when purchased by the Wayne Estate, and that he won't buy for himself. All shoes go in a beach bag he has stashed in his closet, except for his loafers which go in the bottom of the dress bag with his most tolerable black tie suit. That had annoyed him last time, he remembers- Alfred had always been so militantly insistent on perfect tailoring that the baggy fit of Dick's off-the-rack replacement had been an unbearable insult to injury.

Other personal affects get tucked in the suitcase with care, bits and bobs, odds and ends, and he zips up everything just as the clock hits 4:00. Even the most workaholic bats should be in bed by now, or at least upstairs, so he should be good for a pop down.

Dick has a Nightwing stash on the edge of the city, and he'll get most of his kit from there, but his costume and his current favorite pair of escrima sticks are going with him now, neatly folded into a briefcase. Dick also nabs a keyring on his way out of Bruce's office.

The car keys used to stay in the garage with their respective vehicles, but one too many joyrides had prompted Bruce to hoard all the keys in a desk drawer instead. The first time Dick had seen them under the monogrammed stationary Bruce never uses, he'd laughed out loud.

It pains Dick to leave his bike behind, but even though Dick doesn't have a lot of luggage, it's still too much for a motorcycle. He'd considered which car to take carefully; no flashy sports car, obviously, but also not one that Bruce is particularly fond of. He needs a car for practical reasons, not spite, so Dick settles on the least ostentatious Audi and tries to think of anything else he might want in the next five-to-ten years.

Dick takes the box of chamomile tea bags.

__________

Donna opens her apartment door on the fourth knock. The look on her face is superficially friendly that Dick's proud of her- of course, she smiles for real when she registers just who it is at her door. Dick finds himself smiling back before he decides to.

"Hey, Donna. Mind if I crash here for a minute?"

Donna raises a curious eyebrow, and Dick bites his lips to keep from grinning. Donna ushers him inside without a word, locks her door, and all but pushes Dick into a bar stool. Donna sits herself up on her counter in front of him and demands eye contact.

"When you say a minute, do you mean a New York minute?"

Dick slides his eyes away and toward her couch. "I mean a lot of minutes. I'm cutting Gotham off."

"AAAA!" Donna picks him up and spins him in the air for several more turns than he thinks this really warrants. Then Donna sets them on the floor just to twirl Dick around even more, and he giggles. Part amusement, mostly relief; Donna wouldn't be so excited if he'd come at a bad time.

"Was the scream of delight necessary?" He asks, still laughing.

"Entirely," she says, mock serious. "This is a delightful day."

Donna sobers a bit at her own words. She eyes him more thoroughly, "It is a delightful day, yes?"

He knows that Donna knows he wouldn't decide to cut contact for no reason, that's not the real question. The answer to her question, which is 'are you reeling from what it was', is thankfully 'no'. Not today.

"Yeah," Dick says honestly. "Peachy, even."

Donna smiles at him.

She deposits him back at her kitchen counter, declares she's going to make real breakfast- apparently she's been breaking her fast with fruit jerky all week- and starts grilling Dick the same time she starts frying up sfakianopita.

"So which straw broke the camel's back?"

"My brother implied I'm mildly useless and I took offense."

"Only 'mildly' useless convinced you to get out of hell? I'm not complaining, but that doesn't sound like you."

Dick bites down the instinctive urge to deflect, to push her away. Donna wouldn't care even if Tim insulting him had been his only grievance. Donna is happy to have him here.

"Nah, it was more of a... death of a thousand cuts kind of thing. Yesterday was a bad night, and I thought about it some- which, you know how that usually goes- I thought about it, and I'm tired of not taking any of it personally. Even if they don't mean it, I don't want to put up with it. Then Tim comes in with an unmistakably personal attack and...."

"And you made the best decision."

Dick's mouth twitches up. "They wouldn't call it that."

"They have terrible decision making skills."

Donna starts stacking the sfakianopita on two plates.

"That's not true, they just don't always pay attention."

"Who does these days?" Donna gripes.

"You," Dick says.

Donna turns toward him, one hand on her hip, one hand pointing her spatula at Dick's face. "You don't make it easy, Dick."

Dick shrugs emphatically. "What can I say? I was born difficult."

"Not difficult," Donna shakes her head. "Just challenging."

"And you like a challenge?" Dick grins.

Donna bops him on the shoulder with the spatula. "Get it right, Dick. I love a challenge."

Well, doesn't that make Dick feel warm and cozy? Donna smirks at him like she's won something (she has and they both know it) and turns to root through her fridge for cheese. Dick gets out of his seat to find the honey while she does.

__________

Dick crashes on Donna's couch for exactly nine days before she tells him they're getting a new place together. Dick tells Donna that he always intended on getting his own space- a misstep, since Donna argues that's exactly why they should get a new apartment. A two bedroom, where Dick can have more privacy.

"I don't want to impose, Donna."

"Have you ever considered what I want?"

Dick sighs. "What do you want, Don?"

"I want company. It's been a lonely year, D. I enjoy when my friends impose."

There's not much he can say to argue that. Isolating himself never leads Dick anywhere good, anyway.

Between apartment hunting and catching up, Donna and Dick fight supervillains. New York City never lacks for things to do- smugglers to send packing, wannabe world conqueror to thwart, assholes to kick in the face. Dick had honestly forgotten how fun it is to patrol during the day.

He adds some some gold back into his costume. Dick's surprised by how much he likes it- it was his idea, yet when he catches glimpses of blue and gold and black all blurring together in high rise windows, beside Donna's sea of stars, Dick feels more like himself than he has in long, long time.

He starts picking up a lot of dropped habits. He makes dinner; real dinner, like Madam Vasilyev used to make on the train's little stove, and like he would sometimes make for the Titans for family team dinners. It's so much easier to make things when it isn't for him alone. Donna is happy to let him, having no great love of cooking herself, and always supportive of non-cape hobbies.

She's full of surprises, though. Dick had tried to teach all of his friends at least one or two meals they could make from scratch themselves, just in case. He hadn't thought about whether any of it had been retained, though, not now, so many years removed. Not until Donna one day bestows upon him a pot of chicken paprikash and he almost cries.

It's delicious. Just like his parents used to make, whenever they could find a grocer who sold paprika. Just like he taught Donna to make it in the Tower an entire lifetime ago.

"Did I get it right?"

"Did you make it with love?"

"Of course."

"Then you got it perfectly right."

Other than dinner, he starts gardening. Nothing serious, but the new apartment has a couple of windows, so Dick plants a window box full of herbs.

He plants cilantro first. The seeds were on sale at the hardware store, so the whole box was just cilantro, for a while. Donna buys live basil from a grocer she likes, so one of the cilantros gets pawned off to a neighbor, and their pasta sauces taste awesome.

It's not the most exciting hobby, but it gets him out of bed on Bad Days.

Those days, it's hard to do anything at all. It hits him, when the clouds are just the wrong color, that he and Bruce are on the outs again. He hates being on the outs with Bruce, hates that it means another bond between them has snapped. Makes him catastrophize about whether or not this is finally the fence that can't be mended.

At least it's not nearly as bad as it was Before. Dick hadn't understood, back then, what Bruce's problem was. Now that he's older he knows Bruce had never had to let someone walk away before- even with Talia, B had been the one to walk away first- and took Dick's bid for independence badly as a result.

He'd swung by Gotham exactly once for Jason, and stole the kid away to Tower at every opportunity. He'd made sure Jase was present in Dick's space the way Dick was no longer welcome in Bruce's.

He'd gone back to Gotham exactly one other time, after Bruce held Jason's funeral without so much a ping on Dick's pager. All that accomplished was losing Dick his house key. Until Tim barged in.

Donna and Dick were winding down for the night, enjoying a nice bottle of wine and a shared bowl of plantain chips, when Dick makes another decision.

"Donna."

"Dick." She tosses a chip in the air so she can catch it in her mouth.

"I've had an epiphany." He swirls the wine in his glass playfully. Donna leans forward in her chair.

"Do tell."

"Every time I don't want to talk to Bruce, he finds a new stray child to bring home. And I always go, because what I am supposed to do? Not keep an eye on them? But Bruce has a billion orphans-"

Donna snorts. "A billion?"

"Okay, fine, half a dozen orphan children roosting in his house full of ghosts, and it's probably inevitable that there will be another and you know what, sister?" He drains the rest of his wine glass while she stares at him.

Donna seems to consider him, or maybe she zones out, but after a moment she similarly liberates her glass of its wine.

"Lay it on me, Robin."

"I'm not going back this time. Not until someone actually apologizes, not if there's a new bat, not if there's another secret baby, not for any of that bullshit. Tim's as old as I was when Tim first came around, so he can deal with it. Or Cass. Or Babs. Or Bruce can keep his act together for longer than two weeks at a time I don't care. I won't be lured back for family drama. Not this time."

Dick stops to breathe. A mistake, really, as it's the perfect opportunity for stinging anxiety to start buzzing under every inch of his skin. He's an idiot. What a stupid thing to say, what a stupid idea to even have-

Donna is in front of Dick. When did she get out of her chair?

"Richard John Grayson."

"Donna Hinckley Stacy Troy."

I've come to a decision, too. Tell me if it's a good one."

Then she pulls him into a hug. Dick swallows heavily and lets himself be held, for a while.

"Good decision?" Donna asks.

"I think so," he says. He wraps his arms around Donna, reciprocating- God, how long has it been since he's had a reciprocal relationship? Donna squeezes and he throws the thought out of his mind. The awful pull against his insides has subsided, so now he's just warm and loose.

"Donna, do you like my decision?"

"I really really do."

__________

When they were still in Donna's old apartment, various Gothamites tried to contact him. A lot of voicemails are angry and accusing. He listens to them once just in case and deletes them right after. He gets texts from Tim that he knows are meant as olive branches, but they're all offers of joint patrols, or going over case files together, or similar Mission oriented activities.

It's hard to turn him down, especially since he knows Tim won't understand. It's easier to ignore Bruce's messages, sparse as they are, demanding explanations.

Cass had broken into Donna's apartment. Donna had been out with a friend she met in her photography club, doing yoga maybe? Dick had been making egg fried rice for lunch when a wild Bat appeared.

Dick had smiled politely, which seemed to confuse her. Dick had offered to share his lunch, which seemed to make her feel better.

They’d eaten in silence for a while, Cass occasionally staring hard at him while Dick waited for her to make the first move; exactly how Dick would treat a hungry kid he didn’t know. You never know what will spook a stranger, after all.

Bowls empty, Dick had gone to pick hers up to wash when she caught his wrist.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to wash up after our lunch.”

Cass squints at him, exaggerating her expression to make sure he gets her memo.

“You know what I mean. Don’t pretend.”

“I’m not pretending to do the dishes,” he answers calmly, blandly.

“Stop pretending you don’t know me!”

“What would you prefer I do?”

“Go home.”

“No.”

That doesn’t seem to be what she’d expected him to say. She’d expected pushback, for certain, but flat refusal, nothing else? An unwelcome miscalculation.

“Why not?”

“At the moment, I won’t feel at home in Gotham. As far as I’m concerned I’m at home right now.”

“Liar,” she’d hissed. Dick was watching, tho, and saw the confusion in her stance. Her eyes told her he wasn’t lying at all. Deliberately on Dick’s part, not entirely truthful, yet not entirely manufactured- the apartment may not be special to him, but Donna always will be.

“I have no reason to go to Gotham right now.”

“Your team is there.”

“I’m not on Team Bat at the moment.”

“You can’t quit-“

“Cassandra. My roommate will be home soon. I suggest you leave now, if you have nothing to say on your own behalf.”

It’s a low blow to call her a messenger, to write her off as nothing but a mouthpiece for Bruce or Tim or maybe even Damian. Dick wouldn’t feel bad about it if they weren’t close, so he won’t feel bad about it now; she’s the one who didn’t want partner, Dick’s just respecting her wishes.

Cass stares and keeps staring so long he’s worried she’ll refuse to leave, but then they both heard footsteps in the hall, and by the time Dick turns back toward her she’d already gone.

The next morning, Dick had a new message from Bruce. It was an email, that time, instead of a text, which more than anything actually written lets Dick know Bruce has caught on to what’s happened. What is still happening. The email begins ‘Mr. Grayson-Wayne’ and Dick doesn’t read a single word further.

__________

Wally visits the new apartment shortly after they move in. Apparently, Nightwing being in town again has caught the interest of an opinion columnist or two, and Wally had wanted to see him with his own eyes.

“You’re hanging out with people again!”

“I never stopped,” Dick protests. “We see each other once a month, Wally.”

“Scheduled visits- ugh, it’s like you were in prison, and I only got to see you during your time in the yard.” All of this is dramatically declared as Wally flops on their couch, taking up space and definitely bothering the neighbors.

It should annoy Dick. It should at least hurt his ego. Instead, it makes him bloom into a smile, and throw himself onto the couch next to his friend.

“Donna and I have been having a great time without you,” he teases. “We could have an even better time with you, if you’re up for it.”

“Dickie, I thought you’d never ask.”

The Flash joins Dick and Donna for a fight every now and then, patrolling as often as work and Central City will allow. It’s good- it’s really, really good.

“Why did we disband?”

“Because we grew up?”

“Terrible decision.”

“Adulthood is overrated.”

“I don’t know, I certainly wouldn’t want to be a teenager again, would you?”

“Nah.” “NO!”

Wally looks away from the conversation he started, and his eyes find the window box. “Hey Ds, is that a garden?”

“It’s mine,” Dick says. “Right now it’s just cilantro and basil. I’m open to suggestions.”

Wally gives him a once over, looks again at the plants, then changes the subject. The next time Wally comes over he’s holding a pot of chives.

A couple of months later, there’s a siren hiding out in the Harbor. It kicks Dick’s ass and Donna almost drowns. It occurs to them that they are idiots, and that they should’ve called Garth. Garth, thankfully, both answers his communicator and has time for them, so they get to watch Tempest absolutely destroy the siren.

Afterward, they go for pizza. They ask Garth if he would want to come around more often maybe, just because?

Garth smiles brighter than the moon.

The first time they stop a supervillain downtown together, it’s all the papers will talk about the next day. Someone got an excellent picture of all four of them in action. Flash is about to pounce, so he’s still enough to see. He’s tagged in with Donna, distracting the giant rat monster from the air so Flash can trip it into the river. On the bank, left of center in the photo, Tempest and Nightwing and are on standby. Garth will drench the awful thing, all fifteen stories of it, once it’s close enough to the water, and Nightwing will fry the thing with all the electricity his sticks have got.

They work together smoothly, and they cheer when they win, and the papers all ask, ‘Titans Back Together?’

After a while of mulling it over, they unanimously decide to answer ‘yes’.

Listen I love the ‘dicks being ostracized from his family and self destructs’ trope in fics however

I would like an inverse just once (I could write it but I want this fic to be good so I can enjoy it and I am not the greatest writer) where everyone blows up at him and flat out lays into him and he just goes… okay… if that’s how you feel?

Takes himself off of the patrol routes and rosters. He’s off the emergency calls and his ‘call for city wide emergency’ has been down graded to ‘call for world wide emergency’ he’s no longer on comms with oracle

He stops offering assistance to the other kids teams, doesn’t send info for investigation and doesn’t go within 100feet of Gotham.

Takes himself off the den-mother, baby sitter, trainer for all the younger teams lost that involve any and all bats

In the beginning he vacates his apartment and temporarily moves in with Donna in New York and things are good because of course they are. They’re Dick and Donna a world doesn’t exist where they aren’t okay.

And then his presence in New York leads to a lot of the og core five titans interacting and they realize that they miss each other like hell and start to work together more and more. Until news sites are like ‘teen titans grown up??’ ‘Original titans spotted doing hurricane aid in Florida!’

Because Dick loves his family but he knows when to bow out. And he chose the family he made in the new teen titans.

And then one day one of the bats track him down in nyc and breaks into what is now Dick and Donna’s apartment and are ready to argue that they need him back and need him there for a huge Gotham wide event.

And Dick says ‘sure okay let me get my stuff and we leave in half and hour’ as soon as the first sentence is out

No convincing or begging or asking for money (cough Jason cough)

Dick is patched into their comms and he’s working efficiently except he’s not… acting like himself.

He’s collaborating with whoever they tell him too, no problem, he’s discussing ideal plans and co-ops and teams and how to best get it under control.

But he’s talking to them the way he talks when he’s offering aid to teams he’s not a part of.

Like the hero version of an acquaintance and no one can call him out on it because he’s doing good work. Work that’s on par with his work before this whole fiasco. He explicitly isn’t letting their personal issues affect his work.

He’s speaking but not talking

And Bruce remembers this… he’s probably the only one who does because last time he was the only one included. The last time Dick acted like this is when he first visited Jason and him after he had been fired.

Whenever Bruce was in the room and Dick was forced to speak with him, the conversation never strayed past business casual especially around Jason.

Batman and Nightwing got into screaming matches

Bruce and Dick were strangers

And now they’re back to this, 7 kids later, a million ends of the world stopped, they’ve bled together, cried together and clung to each other in pure relief after they managed to clutch victory.

And Nightwing was treating Batman Inc like a new team stepping onto the scene.

Once they’ve secured everything and managed to keep Bruce from self destructing and making it worse. Dick just leaves and tells oracle that he’ll send over his debrief in 3-5 business days and it was nice working with them.

And then he’s gone

No cave, no manor, no Alfred, no med-bay because Dick doesn’t stay places he’s not welcome.

And after they all talk about that and how weird it was and Bruce reveals Dick did this before when he was Nightwing after Bruce fired, where Dick Grayson didn’t know Bruce Wayne.

And one of the kids asks when he broke and stopped the act and Bruce just says ‘the day he found out Jason died’

And the Batkids kinda freak bc what do you mean?? What is he only going to come back when someone dies? Thats not? There has to be another way?? And Bruce is like yeah no idea sorry (bc he’s helpful like that)

So then Steph the next day resolves to go visit him, Tim isn’t the only professional stalker. And she finds Dick and Donna’s apartment and well it’s daylight and she’s in civvies she’s if she climbs in through the window she might get reported to the NYPD and she doesn’t wanna get arrested or shot to door it is!

And so she goes and knocks and Dick opens the door and just lights up

Something something this is such a nice surprise something something it’s so good to see you.

Dick had taught Donna how to make some of his mother recipes when they were kids. So now whenever they’re together for a long time they cook together.

So Dick who is usually living in a cluttered apartment with no clean dishes and an exclusively grab and go food is now trying to force feed her some of his cooking.

Because he picked up the habit again since he’s the better cook between him and Donna.

And it’s delicious and he wants to catch up and hear everything that’s going on in her life, is she working with new people, dating anyone? How is her relationship with her mother etc etc.

It’s a nice day and she stays late and never confronts him on anything until she sees how long ago the sun set and she needs to get moving.

He hands her paper with his number and makes her promise not to give it to the others or she will lose access to it, he offers to help her on a conditional basis as nightwing but only her, she can call him about the rest if it’s an end of the world or they’re near death and need immediate aid.

And that’s like the fic because the key to winning nightwings assistance is like breathing (optional) but if you’re Dicks family you have to care or else. He’ll love you and help you, when you need it but he won’t tie his life up with yours, he’ll spend his time with people who value his opinion and the person behind the mask.

Anyway cue all the Batkids trying to do what Steph did and fail because they’re neurotic shits who think bonding involves doing casework together or a steak out.

(The next person to crack it is Damian, completely unintentionally he has a fight with Bruce and can’t ask him how the fuck he’s supposed to solve this equation in the new stupid way they’re teaching him no he can’t use the old method they’re supposed to show their work so he pulls up to Dick and Donna’s in a ratty ass hoodie like plz wtf do you mean you work top down explain Grayson- and dicks like awww no problem kid)

[everpresence]

I was wrong.

over the last few weeks, i started heavily questioning my beliefs.

i noticed that some of my desires came in faster than other desires. some of them (as you may see in my recent posts) took years to reflect, but some of them got reflected so fast at the speed of light.

i’ve been told by various people that there’s usually a time delay for desires to materialize in the 3D, and for some reason, it resonated with me. that’s why i mention it in my answers because i was merely basing it off of my own experiences with the law.

but something clicked for me recently. i watched a video by missy renee, about why people haven’t seen their manifestations for years. i’m just going to put it out there that you don’t need to pay for coaching. there are a lot of manifesting coaches that don’t know what they’re talking about, and when you read source, it’s a lot more telling. missy renee is not one of those coaches. she has read source and has even applied those teachings into her life. if i have to recommend a coach for you to watch, though, it would be her.

anyways, there was a line that she said that i immediately wrote down because it caused so much confusion in me. basically, she said that the reason why we have yet to see things come to pass is because we are still identifying with our old beliefs — our old story — and due to this, we become double-minded. this double-mindedness is then perceived as the “time delay.”

in that moment, i slowly leaned back in my chair. it was an “a-ha” moment for me, but it was also a little harrowing.

how long have i held myself back from just accepting that i am the person that i wanted to be? how long have i been limiting myself, telling myself the old story over and over again like a broken record? more importantly, i’ve been telling other people that there is such thing as a “time delay” because i decided that i should experience the delay.

so when i wrote a list and just allowed my higher self to figure it out, some of them came in so fucking fast at the speed of light. it stunned me. that’s when i realized that i was holding a false belief.

i never thought that i’d be writing an apology post, but here i am. i’m holding myself accountable because i was the one that wrote that there is such thing as a “time delay,” but in reality, there isn’t. sure, you don’t have to be pitch perfect with your beliefs, but when this desire has no conflict with your beliefs — when you have no resistance, when you aren’t arguing with yourself about whether you have it or not — then there’s no delay.

i remember some people said that it should not take more than thirty days, and i used to think that it’s bullshit, but now i can clearly see that there is a reason why they believe this. it’s not even about the length of time, but about how frequent you return to the state. it’s all about you accepting that the person you want to be is who you are now.

besides that, i want this post to be a reminder that everyone’s beliefs are constantly changing. there is always going to be expansion, growth, an inevitable withering of the old beliefs and the blossoming of new beliefs the more we learn about how this all works. this is why i want people to go back to reading source, to not always take everyone’s posts as “truth” or “the gospel” because we are all still learning in the end. learning never ends.

edit: i don't mean to say all this for you to start focusing on the physical reality as your primary reality. i still wholeheartedly believe that this is merely a reflection of your beliefs, and ultimately, it is all about who you are choosing to be right now despite what it looks like.

[loveandleases]

Tormenting Chris and Jade submission for balance: I forgot to ask how they'd react to the poly route with Kara X Isaac. Chris's desire to love and support Kara in direct opposition to their desire to judge any dynamic with Isaac--

Love having some balance. (Called for a scenario so rest will be under the cut!)

Chris taps along their phone, their finger hovering just above the screen, caught between pressing and not pressing, between action and restraint. One name. One person their mind refuses to release. They can still see your face clearly; hear the way their name sounds when it leaves your lips. Their expression is taut, posture rigid as they scan the apartment around them—pristine, perfect, just like their life used to be. Until you came into it.

A scoff escapes their lips as they run a hand through their icy-blonde hair. How typical, they think, people stirring up trouble, thinking Chris cares what you do.... How did they even know? Is it in their face? In the way their thoughts creep in, reminding them of what was lost—or what, no, who, they tossed aside?

Jade’s voice rings in Chris’s ears, the memory of her words sharp and biting: “MC was always so hard to please, always unsatisfied despite everything our parents had given them. Since they couldn’t have you, they settled for Kara. Isaac was just the cherry on top—a person with a jaded past that they could take pity on. Along for the ride, because everyone knows the rumors about Isaac. Never staying with someone for too long unless they get bored.”

Their jaw tenses as their eyes linger on the photo laid out on the coffee table—your smile, a smile they hadn't seen in so long. You give it so freely, so easily. To Isaac and Kara of all people. One on either side of you, Kara’s lips close to your ear, whispering something while Isaac’s hand rests casually on your knee. Isaac was never good enough to be friends with Kara, not after everything Chris learned. They deserve to be with you even less. The number of times they’ve seen their hand roam on people’s bodies…they shouldn’t be touching you so freely. So openly. Where people can see, where Chris can see.

The photo cuts deeper than Chris anticipated, and before they can stop themselves, their fingers are already dialing Kara’s number. Their leg begins to shake with annoyance, the phone ringing louder than their pulse. Kara always picked up quickly—never more than three rings. So why isn’t she now? Was there always something there? Was there something going on behind the scenes?

Were the two of you… no, Kara wouldn’t do that to me. You wouldn’t do that to me.

Kara finally answers, her voice groggy with sleep. “Hello?”

Chris freezes. It’s four in the morning. They’d spent the whole night obsessing, thinking about the three of you—disgusting.

Chris opens their mouth to speak, but the sound of Isaac’s groan and your voice cuts through the silence. “Who is it?”

The question makes their blood run cold. You’re both there? Why are you with her?

“Chris?” Kara’s voice breaks through their thoughts, sharp and concerned.

“Tell me this is a joke.” Chris’ voice cracks, disbelief flooding their words. They force out a thin, bitter laugh. “This is a joke, isn’t it, Kara?”

“Chris, how di—”

“Let me talk to them.”

“Wh—who?”

“Let me talk to my fiancé.”

The line grows quiet, and Chris can’t help but imagine the look that passes over the three of you.

“Former fiancé,” Isaac adds, a cool edge to his voice, as Kara reluctantly hands you the phone.

“Why are you with them?” Chris’s voice is quieter now, rawer, the reality of it all begins to settle in.

“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

Another scoff. Chris’s anger surges, bubbling up and threatening to spill over. “Of course it’s my business. You’re my f—” They stop themselves, letting the word die on their tongue.

A heavy sigh escapes them as they lean back against the couch. “You’re my ex-fiancé. Do you realize how this looks? Fucking my little sister and her friend. After everything, this is how you repay me?”

“This has nothing to do with you. Who I’m with is none of your concern, Chris. Kara might be your sister, but you don’t own her, or me, for that matter.” Your words are sharp, almost like a smack to the face.

Chris’s fingers twitch, plucking at the photo until the three of you are separated—tearing you apart. “And Isaac, what? You just had to bring the trash with you, Kara? It’s not bad enough you’re sharing a bed with my ex, but now you’ve got your friend, too?” Isaac was never good enough to be friends with Kara. Especially once Chris had their background looked into. No, they don’t deserve Kara and they deserve you even less.

“Stop it, Chris.”

Despite the tightness in her chest, the guilt she carries, Kara can’t bring herself to yell. Not yet. “Don’t talk about them, about us, like you know what’s going on. You don’t know anything about it. We’re happy. I’m happy.” Her voice cracks, and for a moment Chris feels a feeling in their gut. One they’re afraid to give a name, because why should Chris Clarke feel guilty? “Isn’t that enough?”

It should be. Chris knows that deep down, under all the anger, the pain, and the jealousy, they should be happy for Kara. She found people who love her. But that gnawing feeling inside them won’t let go. The more they try to bury it, the more it consumes them. They can’t shake the feeling that you’re slipping further away—both of you.

For a long moment, they just sit there, lost in their thoughts. Kara hangs up the phone, but it doesn't stop the storm inside them from raging. Their words tumble out, raw and desperate. “You deserve better than that. Better than them. Aren’t I enough?” They know who the questions are for, and the thought alone sickens them.

[ylangelegy]

After MAMA awards I'M VERY PROUD OF MY BOYS and seeing Woozi crying, nooooo my mannnnn

So can I request Woozi or anyone after awards, all members celebrating with their partners hehe LOVE YOUUU!!!

PLEASE PLEASE 🛐🛐

🍑 i will really live the rest of my life repaying you.

you don't see seungcheol until the next day. such is the life of the general leader, it seems— the never-ending heralding, the non-stop worrying. he deals with his boys, first, then the fans, then the staff. but once that's all done, he's at your front door, collapsing into your arms before he's even past through the entryway. it doesn't matter how many awards its been. he is still overwhelmed by it every single time, and you are a soft place to land. he comes home to you and whispers the sweetest nothings in your hair. i'm so proud of them and they did so well and they're so happy. as he holds you tight— like you're the only thing keeping him upright— it's your turn to let him hear those words. i'm so proud of you. you did so well. you get to be happy, too.

the jeonghan on the other end of the video call has been quiet for the most part of the past half-hour. you'd be more worried if you hadn't already predicted where his solemness was coming from. "hannie? still with me?" you prompt gently, and he finally tears his gaze away from the ceiling to look back at you. "yeah. yeah, i'm with you," he answers. a beat. there are some things you no longer have to say out loud. how he wishes he was there. how he misses them and tries not to let it show. instead, you give him a reminder that's quiet and firm. "this is yours, too," you say. this award. this moment. these boys. all still his. there's a ghost of a smile on his face as he mumbles, "right. of course. how could i forget."

joshua likes keeping lists. a running one he has with you is that of gratitude, where the two of you try to end each day with acknowledgements of what you're grateful for. you're expecting a whole essay for him after tonight. he surprises you by keeping it short, sweet, and straight to the point. in no particular order, he types out into your shared note. music, the boys, you. hours later, he adds a footnote like it'd occurred to him as an afterthought: i'm always grateful for those three, but especially so today.

"look at them!" jun shrieks. his video call pixelates, either from spotty connection or his sudden burst of enthusiasm. you have half a mind to warn him that he may get a noise complaint again, but this time it'd be completely warranted. he's positively vibrating with excitement, his eyes glued to the livestream of his twelve brothers ascending the stage for their second award of the night. "look at them," he repeats, and this time his voice is more reverent than anything. you could comply, could do as he's asking, but your eyes are trained elsewhere. and look at you, too, you want to say. look at you and all that you've done to get this far.

even though it's been an exceptionally long day, soonyoung comes home brimming with adrenaline. he does dance routines in your living room. he jogs around your block until you beg him to just come back. he sings in the shower before collapsing onto the bed next to you, where he suddenly becomes boneless. the glow of pride stays even as the exhaustion hits. he pulls you against him and cuddles right into you. to soonyoung, this is as good as any trophy: the peace that comes with falling asleep next to you.

wonwoo has no destination in mind. he has a car with a full tank, and a playlist of all his favorite songs, and you in the passenger seat. that's more than enough. you pass through tunnels with warm lighting; expressways where he keeps the windows down so the wind will whip at your hair. occasionally, you'll stop to grab a snack or take a photo of something interesting on the side of the street. after hours of just going in circles, he'll ask, "should we keep driving?" even though he knows you'd never deny him this. this. his little celebration in the form of getting 'lost' with you.

nobody hears from jihoon for the next couple of days. the managers are worried, but the boys all just shake their heads and say that he's in good hands. which means: he's wherever you are. the two of you don't talk about his speech, about his public breakdown, because both things make him want to hide forever. instead— he sleeps in. he watches movies from months ago that he promised he'd get to. the two of you go on walks at night, and have breakfast at lunch time. the vicious cycle will soon have to begin again. jihoon knows that. but for a few, precious moments, his heart is not a heavy burden because it's safe and sound in your capable hands.

seokmin takes you on the textbook definition of your perfect date. a shopping spree? here's his black card. an amusement park? he'll rent out lotte world for the day, if he must. you're understandably baffled. he's the one who just won big, and yet you're the one being treated like royalty. try to resist and he'll only push back on you. seokmin already spoils you enough as is, but this is just a little more over-the-top than the day-to-day stuff. at the end of it all, his rationale is as sweet as it gets. "you keep me going," he tells you. "and so you deserve just as much credit as i do."

mingyu has always liked to celebrate with a meal. you'd expected his usual fare of some swanky restaurant or high-end café, but, this time, he asks for only free reign of your kitchen. he props his phone up against the salt shaker and pulls up a youtube video before flashing you his best 'just-trust-me' grin. your trust is not misplaced; the two of you do manage to bake the celebratory cake, though whether it's any good is an entirely different story. the end result doesn't matter as much as the process. mingyu is happiest about the flour marks on your cheeks, about the kisses he steals while you whisk eggs. it's not a birthday cake, but you light up a candle for him anyway. just for the hell of it. "make a wish," you tease. he's looking straight at you as he blows at the flame.

minghao asks for a beach day. the two of you set out for the nearest one. maybe the sand is a bit rocky; the shore, lacking in shells. he doesn't care. he only seeks out the sun beating on his back, the saltwater clinging to his skin, the first punch of air after emerging from the water. as the stolen weekend winds to a close, the two of you sit at the point where the water lap at your toes. neither of you have to speak. here, minghao lets the tide wash away the ache of homesickness. here, minghao redefines 'home' as a future with the boys of his youth, with the music that is as constant as the waves— and with you, of course.

the ferry ride to jeju is about four or so hours long, but seungkwan doesn't mind. there's just something so right about getting on the first vessel that will take him back where he has family waiting with a homecooked meal and a play-by-play of the award show. besides, the ferry means having four hours of uninterrupted leisure time with you. the pair of you literally have nowhere else to be except this boat and this point in time, which seungkwan is a little guilty to be so happy about. he's a glutton for your time and attention, and these ferry rides— these trips home— remind him just how much he likes taking the scenic route.

vernon treats it almost like it's just another day. almost. you're thrown off by his initial nonchalance, by the lack of utter fanfare in the way he asks you out to lunch and the two of you barely discuss the recent accolades. when you prompt him about it, you realize it's not because of arrogance or ignorance. "we're just doing what we always do," he says with an expression of mild confusion. winning?, you almost inquire half-jokingly, but that's only part of it. he elaborates, "we were just ourselves, y'know?"

when chan suggests a rage room, you're understandably confused. the wrath-based activity doesn't seem like the most optimal celebration, but you're not about to cramp his style. the two of you queue the angriest songs known to man before smashing some defunct appliances and throwing empty bottles against a wall. once your time is up, chan looks at you with that familiar spark of fire in his eyes. that dedication you fell in love with, that passion that has always burned bright. "again?" he asks, and you know it's not just the rage room that he's asking for.

[insanewaykathy]

The first point is that for Janeway the problem wasn't having sex with Chakotay, the problem was having feelings for him. She was afraid to be impartial, she was afraid of suffering if something happened to him… of course she would suffer anyway because she loved him as a friend, and romantically (no one can tell me otherwise), but let's be realistic, it's usually harder to make any decision about someone you're romantically involved with.

Regarding the "Janeway can't have sex with her first officer" view, that view is exclusively Kate's, and I don't blame her. Although I really wanted to see them meet at the end, as if after the Admiral came back to take them home, they could have some time inside the ship before actually returning and having a night of love… with sex, with affection, with complicity, with love… because that would reach all the women who have been through toxic relationships with the following message: "They were responsible officers, she would give her life for the crew, he would give his life for her… and they waited for each other because their love was greater than time, and they had sex because they love each other and sex is a good thing!" But instead, the fear was of passing the message to what they considered to be the target audience, that is, MEN from 20 to 40 years old… and what would these men understand? "Look, I knew that at some point she would have sex with him!" If you are a man and you are reading this, I will not apologize to you, stay, and I invite you to just read it without saying "not every man". The problem in the 90s was sexism, and making J/C happen was too much for men to accept. But today we have overcome that. We know that Voyager's largest audience is women. We know that a large part of Progidy's audience is J/Cers. And we know that the couple has matured enough to give us something bigger than subtle hints with double meanings. J/C is the healthiest couple I have ever met, and we need that.

And about Kate being beautiful, sexy and hot, she was! Jeri too, but Jeri was the standard blonde. And the problem that these men have of preferring to see Jeri on TV (the supermodel type with a perfect body) wearing tight clothes, honestly reminds me of bad lovers. Okay, you don't look for hot girls on TV if you already have one by your side 🤣 I'm not saying that someone can't prefer Jeri to Kate, there are tastes and tastes… but doing it just because she is blonder, thinner, taller and has more curves is deceiving yourself, because most real women are more like Kate than Jeri. They are both beautiful, talented and incredible women. But Jeri deserved to be desired and acclaimed for much more than just her physical beauty and standard.

Kate Mulgrew on the way Janeway looks at Seven of Nine: "And I mean, honestly, if you remember Janeway looking at her boots and traveling up the body, I remember that. . . . So to be honest with you, for the first season that I worked with her, I was just staring at her bosoms."

Here's the whole segment:

In the fifth season, an actress was brought onto Star Trek: Voyager by the name of Jeri Ryan, who played the character of Seven of Nine, and she was absolutely stunning.

And she represented sex. I mean, it was absolutely crystal clear. And I mean, honestly, if you remember Janeway looking at her boots and traveling up the body, I remember that.

Now, I was of two minds, 'cause there's nobody in the history of television series who doesn't want their series to be successful. So I understand the need for sex.

But I had hoped against hope that I could bring it in as Janeway without it. I didn't.

I mean, I went to them in the first season and said, "I'm not having sex. I'm not saying, 'Red alert: into my ready room, Chakotay, let's go, let's go, let's go.' I'm not doing that. I have a complement of 165, I've got to get them home, and what? The captain's shtupping again?" You know? And it makes no sense at all.

So Seven of Nine appears, and she's half-human, and she's half-Borg, and she's [makes noise while waving her hands in an hourglass figure]. Right? So to be honest with you, for the first season that I worked with her, I was just staring at her bosoms. Her remarkable figure.

And then I understood that they wanted it to be a mother-daughter thing, but my daughter doesn't look like that. My daughter looks like a beautiful human being. It was a thing of bringing the male demographic. And it was very successful. They certainly liked to watch Seven of Nine, and I don't blame them. Men like that, don't you? Don't you?

—ubookstore, "University Book Store Presents Kate Mulgrew," YouTube, May 31, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X2cverYupQ.

The question begins around 51:32.

[damn-stark]

Chapter 30 No woman no cry

Chapter 30 of Moonlight

A/N- Sweaty eyes that’s all it is :)

Warning- talks of pregnancy and labor, ANGST!!, swearing, violence, fire, blood, and DEATH. SPOILERS!! FOR FUTURE EVENTS OF HOTD, USING FIRE AND BLOOD, long chapter.

Pairing- Aemond Targaryen x Velaryon!fem-reader, Cregan Stark x Velaryon!fem-reader

Episode/Pages- 520-534

(If you want to be tagged let me know)

————

There exists a serene silence where only your soft breaths, and the sound of waves rolling over the sand fill whatever room you are in.

A much crueler chill seems to be your companion, but a light feathered touch of warmth does seem to exist dancing over your face and it makes you squint as your eyes flutter open.

Yet as gentle as that touch is on your face, when you open your eyes a stinging pain hits you as the sun burns your eyes before you give them relief as you shield them from the beaming sunlight.

“Cregan?” You call out softly and then groan as a sharp wave of pain hits your head and your chest, reminding you at that moment of the injuries you sustained and put you in a state of limbo, and now on this bed and in this…stone chamber?

Did they take the keep at Tumbleton? Is this where you are?

“Ser Cane?” You call out next since Cregan is probably attending to other matters.

However, your sworn protector doesn’t respond by walking in or speaking. There’s a continued silence where only the sound of distant waves lingers in your chambers. Which is why you sit up and only get welcomed with a pounding headache.

“Damn,” you hiss and lift your hand to hover your palm over where it hurts, feeling at that moment bandages wrapped around your head before you finally feel the bandages around your chest.

“Ser Cane?” You call out and glance at the end table to search for water, but alas there’s not even a candle. “Ser Cane?”

You drag yourself to the edge of the bed and notice your gown before you notice that someone took the time to clean all the blood off your hands.

It must’ve been Cregan. He must be so worried.

“Ser Cane?” You call out one more time and drop your hand on your belly which seems to be lower than usual, which means the twins should be coming soon.

“Add—” you cut yourself off as you remember that Addam won’t be able to respond to your calls anymore because he’s…dead…

You sigh and rub your eyes before you lift your head and avoid crying, but also finally come to recognize where you are. You try to deny it. You must be dreaming—You can’t be in your chambers at Dragonstone.

How could you be at them?

This must be a dream! You still must be in limbo, you can’t be here—unless your mother is here? How many days have passed since the second battle at Tumbleton?

Were you really unconscious for so long that you arrived at Dragonstone without knowing?

“Ser Cane?” You call out with panic and desperation replacing your patience and grogginess, and proceed to slip on some slippers before you push yourself off the bed and rush to the door.

Albeit when you try to open the door, you can’t, it seems to be locked.

“Ser Cane?” You call out. “Hello? Who is out there? Please open the door.”

You press your ear against the door and drift your eyes to the floor, catching shadows move, and hearing feet shuffle before you start to hear them recede.

“Hello?” You call out louder and with desperation rising. “Can you open the door and tell Cregan or The Queen to come? Please.”

You try to open the door, but again you’re met by the fact that it’s locked, so you have the urge to turn to the balcony to find a way out through there, but then the thought of why sets in.

Why should you find a way out? This is your home and your mother must be here. You don’t have to worry. You’ll be fine, the door is just locked for precaution. After all, your mother is being paranoid about not knowing who to trust, so the door is locked for your own safety.

“Okay,” you sigh and turn away with your hands clasped before you go to your wardrobe and change out of the gown, finding comfort in a purple and gold gown that has the skirts layers shaped like fins on a seahorse, and a golden corset decorated with beautiful designs made of sheets of gold.

It’s truly an impressive gown, and one you know Cregan will drool over, so you feel even more giddy wearing it—which reminds you of the wolf brooch Cregan gave you.

However, when you search for it you can’t find it amongst your things or on any surface. Maybe it fell off during battle or some moment thereafter?

You’ll have to ask, and if you did lose it then you’ll ask Cregan to give you a ring with the sigil on it, or a nice pendant. It’ll be easier to wear it then.

Nonetheless, you sit on the edge of the bed and look out of the window to bask in the sun's warmth, finding comfort in the sound of waves.

Besides, all the bad that’s happened as of late, you still find comfort in the sound of the sea, and it brings you joy to know you’re close. Being in those Wetlands for as long as you were was starting to make you feel as gloomy as a rainy day.

If only it was summer, you would be out lying on the sand or in the water. Alas, it’s winter and the water would surely make you freeze to death.

Shame.

Nevertheless, while you���re soaking in the sunbeams, keys finally jingle outside of your door before you hear the lock click and a knock proceed to a rap on your door.

“Come in,” you greet the visitor and stand from the bed to walk toward the door.

However, as the door opens and you get close, you come to an immediate stop when your eyes fall on a man you thought was long gone—Lord Larys Strong.

“Wh-“ you gasp and step back as you quickly scan the room in search of your sword. When you don’t find it you take a step back and tilt your head down to glower at him.

“Princess,” Lord Larys greets and bows his head, making your pinched eyebrows twitch as they crease deeper in your silence.

“I am so very glad you have awoken and seem to take well to your current injuries. The servants weren’t sure if you would wake.”

Servants?

“Where’s my mother?” You deadpan and start to also think about your dragon and whether she brought you here out of instinct, or they found you—Then again Cregan was so close when you last saw him on that battlefield, how did you end up here?

“Oh,” Lord Larys mouths before he gently shakes his head. “I am not sure. I heard she escaped Kings Landing after a riot. What a shame, she lost the most special gem just as she had it in her possession.”

If he doesn’t know then—

No, it can’t be!

“Where’s my dragon? How did you find me?”

Is Cregan here?

“Your dragon,” Larys says and glances outside and watches a bird fly past the balcony window. “She dropped you off in the sand. One of the guards saw you and went to your rescue. They tried to capture your dragon, but she eluded capture and flew back where she had come from.”

You blink with surprise yet find yourself letting out a relieved sigh because she’s not in the clutches of the enemy.

“Dragons truly are marvelous beasts,” he rambles and meets your gaze. “She must have thought you would be safe here, but, alas,” he sighs and flashes you a smirk. A smirk! Out of all things he smirks at you because he knows you don’t have the upper hand now.

What a little cunt.

“…it was too late when she tried to take you back,” he whispers before he digs in his pocket and pulls something out—“His Grace is ready for his audience with you,” he reveals what you had been trying to deny. Aegon is here. Aegon is still alive. He didn’t die in some ditch like you had hoped. The little bastard is still alive! And your mother…she must not know or else she would have not left Kings Landing. Damn it! Damn it!

“You had this with you when we found you,” Larys says and opens his hand to show you the wolf brooch Cregan had given you.

“I thought you would want it back.”

You continue to pierce your glare into him for a moment longer before you look at the brooch and slowly walk toward him to snatch it from his grasp.

“Are you ready?” He makes sure to ask, making you scoff.

“Do I even have an option?” You quip and he doesn’t answer you, instead, he turns and leads the way out. With no other choice you drag your feet after him and follow him all the way to the main hall where whether you like it or not, your breath catches when you see Aegon.

He sits at the other end of the hall on a wooden chair with wheels, a blanket over his legs, and a dull yet narrowed look that does reflect a glimmer when he sees you walk past the doors and stop just under the beam of sun that shines in the hall.

“You stand in the presence of King Aegon of House Targaryen, the Second of His Name, Rightful King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men. And Rightful Protector of the Seven Kingdoms.” A guard announces loudly near your ear, making your glower even more fierce.

“You’ve awoken!” Aegon interjects loudly so his voice travels down the hall. “I’m glad.”

You draw out a deep breath and continue to trudge forward, but never with your head down. You keep your head high and your nose pointed to the air. When you get close that’s all you do, get close, you never close the gap to the point you can hear each other's whispers. You stay under the sunbeam that reflects through the windows on the high ceilings and scowl.

“You,” you mutter and look at him up and down (which doesn’t take long as he’s seated on that wooden chair), and notice that he seems to sport more burn scars than before, and his legs that he keeps under a blanket are bent in a pretty uncomfortable manner. “…look more awful than before,” you say bluntly and catch his lips twitching to a frown.

However, a sinister look then makes his dull eyes glimmer.

“I recently got into a dragon battle with your cousin…Rhaena—no,” he chuckles and his malice then shows on his lips that slowly curl to a smirk as he sees your eyes lose the sun’s twinkling glow as your head slowly falls with your demeanor. “Baela,” he huffs. “Her dragon is dead and she is in a dungeon knowing what it feels like to burn.”

You blink repeatedly in disbelief and feel your breath catch as your heart skips a beat in your worry. Only making Aegon that more cocky.

“And you,” you mutter and slowly drag your eyes up with a fire slowly burning within them. “Did you burn again? It looks like it. You look even more horrifying to look at. At least Baela will have a menacing charm to her, but you,” you click your tongue and force a snicker before you suck in your cheeks to gather a ball of spit and hurl it at his feet.

Aegon’s eyes quickly fall on your ball of spit and his lips curl while his nose scrunches in disgust as well as frustration.

A guard standing nearby lunges forward and from the corner of your eyes you see him lift his hand in reaction to your “disrespect”.

Albeit Aegon then lifts his hand to motion the guard to stop, and he immediately does so before he can swing his hand over your face.

“As traitorous and disrespectful as she may be, she is still your Princess, and carrying my brother's children,” Aegon says and catches you by surprise, but still not enough to warrant a thanks or any kind of reaction.

“What do you want, Aegon?” You press impatiently.

Said man scoffs as he looks away from the guard and then sighs deeply before he gives you a response. “I wanted to see you and make sure you were okay. It seems you sustained quite a few concerning injuries, so I was just making sure you were okay.”

You huff and he slowly lolls his head to the side.

“I also do have a proposal,” he adds and piques your interest. “After the twins are born you are of no use to me, so I will kill you alongside your mother and your brother, and keep my brother's children so my mother can raise them, and Aerion can be my heir. But you,” he pauses and clicks his tongue to mock you.

“However, you may keep your life if and only if you marry me,” he throws out a rather daring offer. One that shouldn’t have surprised you as much as it did, but it did because it’s quite ballsy.

“You will be Queen, and we will show the realm that we are a united front. There will be peace—or so Larys says,” he mutters and glances at the man before looking back at you with a mischievous look in his eyes.

“No,” you deadpan before you flash him a mischievous smirk. “I am betrothed to Lord Cregan Stark,” you announce, making Lord Larys shift where he stands, and causing Aegon to lose that stupid mischievous look and instead make his face harden.

“Very well,” he grumbles and sits up straight. “So you chose death. I did not want to marry you anyway.”

“Your Grace,” Lord Larys interjects. “With the Princess betrothed to Lord Stark it will not be wise killing her, nor marrying her now. Whichever choice you go with would lead Lord Stark and his army to retaliate and possibly add more fuel to a war you want to end.”

Your smirk deepens as your invincibility is now revealed, leaving him with you as a hostage, but still unable to kill you or touch you in any way.

“So I hold you, hostage, have him bend the knee, swear his loyalty, and give his army to me,” Aegon is quick to come up with an alternative you had already started to think about before he could even form the first thought. “Thank you. You have now turned your mother's greatest ally against her.”

You don’t falter or show weakness because you know Cregan. He won’t fall under pressure, he will keep fighting because no matter what, you will be protected because of him.

Aegon doesn’t realize all of that, but he sees your smirk and his face only twists with more frustration.

“Take her and bring her back when her mother arrives to shore. She can watch her die instead.”

This time your face falls. He hits you right in your weak spot and he knows it because he counters the fear that paints your face with cockiness that he displays on his face the moment you’re walked out of the room as if showing you he had the last laugh.

——

*SOMETIME LATER*

How? How?

Without Astraea how can you leave this damned place to save your mother?

There’s no candle lit to burn the door down. There’s not even a fire in your fireplace and that’s probably due to the fact that Aegon doesn’t want you to use fire against him. And without any weapons how can you get out?

You pace in your chambers watching the moon rise and slowly spin around the earth as time passes bit by bit without any kind of nudge on what to do.

Escaping out the window is impossible, there's nothing to grab onto and it’s too high off the ground to jump…

Then again even if you find a way out how do you find her? You know she’s heading to Dragonstone, but from which way?

Then again why should that truly matter in the grand scheme of things? You need to save her one way or another and you’ll scour the earth to find her to keep her away from here. Even if it means…having to give your own life.

Yet what do you do?

You let out a frustrated breath and throw yourself on your bed, feeling at that moment the twins starting to move inside you.

“Yes I should sleep, but I need to…” you trail off and sit up whilst you press your hand on your belly. “Thank you,” you whisper down toward your belly before you run over to grab your goblet of water, and return to the side of the bed to spill the water on the ground. After that, you hide the goblet under the bed and sit back down to press your hands on your legs, and lean down to start crying out in pain.

“Help…” you feign pain to grab the attention of the guards outside. “I need help!” You yell out and moan as if you were in labor. “Please!” You bellow and let out another sharp cry.

When you go quiet for a second you strain your ear and hear the guards shuffling behind your door, so you yell again. “Please! I need help!”

The lock clicks before the door flies open and two guards rush in with panicked wide-eyed looks on their faces.

“Princess?” They call out cautiously as if you were something they were frightened of.

“The twins,” you say between pants as you clutch onto your belly. “I think they’re coming,” you lie and glance up, catching them looking at each other helplessly, which only excites you more.

“Get the maester or anyone who can help me!” You sneer before you cry out again to stress them out further.

“Okay—okay,” one guard breathes out as if he’s the one going to give birth. “We’ll be right back!”

Your eyes widen out of panic and before they can leave you throw your head up and blurt. “Can one of you stay? I don’t want to be alone.”

You bat your eyelashes and take quick and heavy breaths to feign being in distress and get them to pity you, because if they both leave then they’ll lock the door again, and you can’t let them bring the help you say you need or else you won’t be able to get out. Thus you feign innocence.

And luckily they believe you. One guard stays while the other one leaves, but you don’t stop pretending. You keep letting out fake sounds of pain to let the guard that left your chambers put some good distance between here and there, whilst also mentally laughing at the guard who stayed as he seems extremely uncomfortable by staying with you while you’re “in labor”.

“Could,” you pause and pant. “Could you please bring me some water?”

The guard avoids eye contact and nods stiffly before he turns and starts to walk away toward your pitcher of water. And it’s when he’s giving you his back that you swipe one of your shoes with a pointed heel off the ground, and push yourself to your feet without any struggle whatsoever.

You then stretch your neck from side to side after having it hanging for so long before you proceed to quietly stalk after him with an almost predatory glare burning through the back of his neck, and a wicked smirk curling on your lip. And luckily the guard is so caught up in his own discomfort and disgust that he keeps his attention locked on the pitcher across the room—he doesn’t even notice that you stopped complaining.

He doesn’t hear you walking toward him, nor does he feel any kind of burning on the back of his neck. He keeps his back facing you so when you finally catch up to him you raise the heel in your hand and swing down hard to dig the tip of the heel in his neck.

The man tries to yell out, but with the heel impaled on the side of his neck, all he does is gurgle and slowly turn around to face you.

“<Idiot.>” You remark in Valyrian before you mock his choking noises and snicker before you take his sword and give him the mercy of death by impaling his throat.

When he hits the ground you take your shoe out of his neck and then walk back to the side of the bed to grab the other shoe and quickly slide them on before you walk to the door.

Once you see that the ghost is clear you turn down the opposite hall the other guard took and instead try to escape through the side of the castle that leads to the hills that sit beside your home.

You don’t try to be too fast so as to be careful and stay discreet, but you also try not to be too slow and risk getting caught by someone. This was once your home, this castle was run by your mother, and the servants and guards were all loyal to your mother and your family, but since Aegon is here and spreading fear you don’t know if they can be trusted, so you stay in the shadows while also listening out for any potential danger.

You’re so focused on not being caught in fact that when you hear the echoes of the heels of someone’s shoes hitting the ground you fail to locate exactly where it’s coming from. You just quickly try to slip around a corner to hide, but that’s when you bump into a servant.

“Princess,” the servant woman gasps at the same time you let out a startled breath of air. She then looks down at your bloody hands for a second before bouncing her gaze to the bloody sword in your hand, and then lastly to your face, catching your surprise slowly starting to slip away and be replaced by something cold and threatening.

“You—”

“Not that way,” the servant cuts you off just as you were going to threaten her so you didn’t have to kill her. “Follow me you can take the servant corridors,” she reveals and then snatches your hand from your side to pull you with her down the corridor.

“You will take the stairs all the way down until you reach the caves. After that follow the lights all the way out to the loading docks. You will find a small ship there. You use it and leave.” She presses as she digs her fingers on the back of your hand.

“Okay, okay,” you say breathlessly as you follow her at her pace to not slip from her grasp and fall behind. “But…why risk your life? Aegon will have you killed when he finds out you helped me.”

The servant woman peers back and with a twinkle in her eyes, she shakes her head. “I would die for my Queen. I serve only her. Therefore I serve you.”

You blink repeatedly in disbelief and when you see that she’s not being deceitful you offer her a small but proud smile. “Thank you then,” you offer and wish you could do more but that’s all you can give her. Your gratitude. “My friend.”

The lady offers you a small nod before she looks ahead and quickens her pace to drag you with her down corridor after corridor until you reach a secret door that she opens for you.

“Through there, my Princess,” the servant lets you know as she points to the corridor that leads to a spiral staircase. “That will take you down.”

You glance at your escape and then look back at her with a worried look peeking through. “Okay,” you breathe out. “Thank you once again and be safe,” you offer her one more time whilst she hands you a torch from the wall.

“I would do it again,” she says softly, making your breath hitch and a soft smile flash on your lips that you offer her before you turn around swiftly and walk in the passageway.

Once the servant closes the door behind you, you then turn to look down and try to locate your exit, but as you look down the long spiral staircase you gulp as all you see is a dark abyss that only grows deeper the longer you stare at it.

“Okay,” you say as you draw out a deep breath. “Here we go.”

You glance back at the door one more time and draw in another deep breath. This time though you gain confidence and a drive that makes your heart skip a beat. All because of the servant woman who risked her life to give you a chance to escape.

There was no question or bargaining. She risked her life for you, and you won’t waste it. You will reach that boat and find your mother to prevent her from reaching Dragonstone to save her and the rest of your family that she’s clinging onto.

You won’t fail her. Not today.

Thus with those thoughts running through your head, a spike of energy travels through your blood and hits your heart, making it jolt before it starts to race as you grow eager and determined beyond measure.

Now you know you shouldn’t go past any pace beyond a walk down the wooden staircase, but you don’t care. You could break through a wooden step, skip one in particular, or almost trip and you wouldn't care. All that occupies your mind is saving your mother, so you run and run as fast as you can down the stairs.

It’s true you run out of breath fast, so you’re heaving and panting before you can even get halfway, but you don’t care. You keep pressing as all you see is her. Her eyes. Her soft golden-silver hair. Her pain, grief, and tears. Her joy and her smile. And every single memory you have stored inside your head.

You see her. The one you cherish above all else, even life itself, and all you can do is run.

When you reach the cave, there’s no light; not even on the walls. There’s darkness and the sound of rain—which by the way, when did it start raining? Has it been raining all night? You’ve been so caught up in your thoughts that you didn’t notice.

Regardless, you hear the sound of the rain as it falls outside and brings darkness, but not discouragement because with your torch you can make out the path that leads outside and that’s enough to know that you’re closer to your destination now. You won’t reach the end until you reach your mother, but you’re close and that thought makes you take a deep breath and start moving your legs again.

At the very first second, you don’t start off fast. You take some time to pick up speed considering what’s weighing you down and the exhaustion that brings you, but you push through it. Even if the flames on the torch die out you keep going. Even if your lungs hurt. Even if your legs and every muscle in your body scream to stop, you continue pushing forward. You speed walk before you jog, and jog before you run and run and run down that cave until the weight of heavy rain falls over you and a dim natural light bombards your eyes.

“Okay, okay,” you say between pants and squint your eyes to strain your vision so you can look through the cover of night and the shadows that the rain clouds bring.

At first, as you panic through your exhaustion, you can’t make out any boat. It terrifies you because that would bring a setback, but alas, you see the boat the servant told you about and you don’t linger back any longer. You quickly make your way to the boat and carefully climb onboard.

The waves are calmer thanks to the rain, but that does mean you have to fucking row the boat to move. And you’re already under so much strain! But you…push through and manage to get away from the dock and direct yourself to the mainland.

You can figure out where to go from there. As for now maybe you can catch your breath…

Breathe…as you row.

Breathe.

Breathe.

You close your eyes and relax your body.

Breathe.

Alas, when you’ve put some distance between you and the dock, you come across the harbor just below the Dragonmont and notice a strange Braavosi ship called the “Violande”.

Is it Aegon’s ship, you wonder at first before it hits you that it's your mother's ship when you see a Queensguard disembarking the ship—That’s where your mother came on.

That’s her!

“No, no,” you whisper and hastily stand at your feet.

If you row to the harbor you’ll take forever to get there. Without the help of the wind, you have no support.

You have to swim. No thought about it!

With that, in the front of your mind, you drop the sword on the boat and then dive into the cold water, and gasp loudly when you resurface like a bobbing apple as the cold water feels like falling in cold and wet piles of snow.

The cold embrace makes you want to find a way back on the boat, but you have to swim and keep pushing forward.

So you do. With that same adrenaline picking up in your veins you push forward. You don’t think about the possibility of your mother already reaching the gates. You can’t or else you’ll panic and be discouraged, so once again you think about reaching her, and that’s like a triple shot of adrenaline that helps you swim as fast as your body can muster.

Once you finally get out of the cold icy water you draw in a deep shaky breath and feel the bitterness nip at your skin, threatening to drive you someplace warm, but you turn toward Dragonstone, the place you had managed to escape, and run.

The breeze that runs past you drives some water drops off your body, but then sheets of rain just pile on, making you feel like you’re getting slapped in the face again and again. And it hurts. It hurts so much, and the clothes on your back are so heavy now that it makes everything worse. You even start to cry, but you keep running.

You keep pressing forward. For your mother! For your brother, Aegon! For your son, Aerion! And everyone you lost so your mother could win this war! You run and run!

Until finally like a glorious light you see her in between the group she came with and the large host that greeted her. A host loyal to Aegon…

“Mother!” You bellow through the rain, making the party stop in their tracks, and making the woman you called out to turn and find your eyes.

Even though it’s pouring and that obscures your vision you find each other, and you reflect the panic on your face before you yell again. “Mother! Flee!”

You don’t stop there, you can’t. Words are not enough, so you start running again. You break through barriers of space to reach her and try to get her out of there. You’re so close. With every step you take on that wet ground, you get closer to her, whilst she steps away from her spot and starts to part the crowd as she attempts to meet up with you halfway out of concern.

Alas before you can reach her, before you get close to getting her out, a body slams into you, and arms hurl around you to bring you to a sudden stop.

As you look over you notice that it was one of the many guards that were probably sent to welcome your mother.

The man is a traitor and loyal to Aegon, but you don’t need to share that with your mother because the moment you were caught and your eyes fell on the guard, chaos was unleashed.

Some men from the host that were meant to greet your mother, turn around and swing their swords at the Queensguard.

You don’t watch the battle though, you know that three Queensguards cannot compete against a host of forty men strong; no matter how skilled they are. That’s why you slap your hand on the man who has you captive and dig your nails into his face to drag them down, causing him to yelp out and let go of you to hold his face and stumble away.

“Mother!” You call out and move your legs toward her with one goal in mind; getting her away.

Luckily she sees that goal clearly painted in your eyes because she shares that same dire goal, so she yells out your name and while her men are fighting and falling, she motions her handmaidens and Vanessa to follow her to try and reach you. After all, Ser Jason is with her. He could help her strike down anyone trying to stop her. He could be the very person who could help you escape Dragonstone and live another day.

However, while your mother and you are focused on reaching one another, you fail to see his conflict brewing within him.

It’s true there should be no doubt running in his mind. Ser Cane Clegane would have not thought twice about trying to help the Queen, your son, Aegon, and you escape. He would given his life for you, but no matter how hard Ser Jason is trying to be that way. No matter how hard he’s tried to change his cowardly ways; seeing two men take out two Queensguard, and seeing the only Queensgaurd knight left kill two men before dying suit gives Ser Jason no motive.

The Bastard Knight sees that there’s no possible way to find an escape. He sees men coming after him too after having killed the Queensguard, and he can’t be everything his father was. He was not even half the man Prince Daemon Targaryen was, so Ser Jason raises his sword and steps forward to get in between you and your mother, leading you to believe that he is finally stepping up to aid in your escape. Yet The Bastard Knight then turns on his heels and points the sword to your belly, causing you to come to a skidding stop, and forcing your mother to stop out of fear he’d hurt you and her unborn grandchildren.

“What?” You ask breathlessly as you’re hit with disbelief and look at him with your lips parted, and your eyes slowly widening in shock and filling to the brim with tears of betrayal.

“Take another step and I will impale her,” Ser Jason threatens as he averts your gaze and looks over at your mother slowly contorting her face to show her anger and nothing else.

“Traitorous cunt,” she sneers and glares at him with a pointed glare whilst the host of guards start to surround you, closing the last gap to escape and returning you to Aegon’s grasp once again.

“Mother,” you call out in a broken voice, and immediately gain her attention and look that breaks away from her anger to display a softness—“Forgive me. I—”

Before you can finish, men grab your mother's arms and forcefully turn her away, forcing your next words to go unspoken and unheard.

“Walk, Your Grace,” the men spat at her mockingly.

“You picked the right choice, son,” Ser Alfred Broome praises Ser Jason. “Nevertheless, you understand why we have to take your sword? Just for now of course.”

Ser Jason glances at you with a hint of panic in his eyes, but you refuse to look at him anymore. You rip your eyes away and instead let your eyes fall on your greatest friend and handmaiden, Vanessa.

She also finds you amid the chaos and pushes your son, Aerion, in the air so you can see him and see that he’s bigger, but okay and unaware of what’s transcending—perhaps that’s the best gift an infant has, being able to be unaware of the chaos that brings adults and older children so much painful distress.

When he’s older and you ask him what he remembers he will most likely say nothing. He probably won’t remember his father or how much he loved him, he’ll only know him by the words that come out of your mouth, and that’s all. He probably won’t remember a thing of his life past a certain age and you’re thankful for that. Can you say the same for your brother Aegon?

It’s hard to say. He’s young but is he old enough to cling onto some of the worst memories of his life?

It’s hard to tell. If he lives, only time will tell.

Until then what other option do you have now but to let yourself be dragged back to the castle and past the rotting bodies of Maester Gerardys, and Ser Robert Quince hanging from the battlements of the gatehouse?

Seeing their dead bodies only worked to clarify that this was not some nightmare your mother could wake from. This is real, she got betrayed at her own ancestral home and now you, her son Aegon, her grandchild Aerion, and her are getting dragged toward the castle by traitors all loyal to none other than the slippery cockroach that is her half-brother Aegon. There’s no doubt about it because all the family that was against her is already dead except for him.

And that assumption only gets proven true when you reach the castle ward and come face to face with Aegon on a balcony unable to stand up or move. He’s bound to the same wooden chair as before and he carries the same dull look in his eyes that do welcome a sinister gleam once he sets his eyes on none other than his greatest foe and eldest sister, your mother, Rhaenyra, for the first time in a long time.

“Sister,” Aegon calls coldly, but with a hint of cockiness as he now has all the control and all the power over her that he didn’t have before.

Nevertheless, when your mother looks away from Sunfyre lying on the ground of the courtyard, she never shows defeat. She raises her head and points her nose in the air just like you tend to do before responding coldly and spitefully.

“Dear Brother, I had hoped that you were dead.”

Aegon scoffs. “After you,” he says with a twitch on the corner of his lips. “You are the elder.”

Your mother huffs, feigning some humor before she rebuttals. “I am pleased to know that you remember that.”

Aegon answers with silence and then turns his attention to you and his eyes glimmer, but not with a hint of malice, but smugness. “Back again? Here I thought you were smart. That’s all people say,” he mutters and rolls his eyes. “What an incredible hero The Blood Dragon is.” He scoffs. “If they could see their Blood Dragon now.”

He shoots you a smirk and you just raise your chin and glance over at his dragon Sunfyre to note that he is not even half the dragon he used to be. He now sports new raw scars that accompany the old ones, and one of his wings sticks out at a weird angle. He only has his beauty intact, but what is that worth?

Nothing, you know that and Aegon knows that too, so you look at his dragon with a teasing smirk and then look back at Aegon so he knows that you think less of him and his broken dragon.

And when he sees your reaction his smirk falls, letting your mother slip in to interject loudly and with a ferocity that cannot be diminished. “It would seem we are your prisoners…but do not think that you will hold us long. My leal lords will find us.”

“If they search the seven hells, mayhaps,” Aegon mutters before he drags his eyes away and offers a small nod that sends men after you to keep you where you are, but makes men pull your mother, her handmaidens, and your brother to the side, while Vanessa and Aerion are dragged toward him.

“Aegon,” you now call with a shift in your tone. Rather than trying to sound unaffected, you sound desperate. “Aegon, please,” you beg even though you know his plans for your children.

“Shut up,” he throws out. “You know what will happen to him. He’s now my heir so I will keep him by my side until I return to King’s Landing, while you…” he trails off and leans forward in his seat as best as his broken body can let him.

“I thought about it,” he continues and slowly drifts his eyes to your mother. “I do not care that you are betrothed to Cregan Stark. How will he know that you did not die due to your wounds from battle, hm?”

You blink in disbelief while a horrified breath escapes you. All while your mother's face loses all its color. The defiance she proudly held falls without a fight, and she shows an agonizing fear only a mother about to lose their child knows.

“Ser Alfred,” Aegon calls out, and the man that was called stomps toward you, causing the man holding you in place to force you to your knees.

“Move boy,” Ser Alfred tells Ser Jason, but you don’t see his hesitation as he starts to realize what’s about to happen because you realize the cold truth; you’re about to die, and you don’t want to die. Not like this, not yet. You want to meet your twins, you want to raise your children. You want to live…

You don’t want to die…

“Mama,” your voice quivers as you call out to her helplessly.

And even though she was hurt and angry that you had left her again to chase after Aemond, that grudge is long forgotten. It was long forgotten the moment she saw you try and come to her rescue like a warrior only heard about in stories of past heroes. Besides, how can she be angry while you look at her like a helpless little girl searching for her mother's consolation and help?

“Aegon,” she cries out desperately before Ser Alfred can get his sword out of his sheath, and tries to press forward, but she’s yanked back by the guards. “Please…please, don’t hurt her. Please,” she begs on behalf of not just her child, but her firstborn. The child she let sleep on her bed even against the wetnurses and handmaidens’ wishes because you were such a sick child, and the only way Rhaenyra could sleep at night was to have you next to her to hear you breathe and help the moment you needed it.

“She’s my daughter. My only daughter,” she tries to argue in her defense while also trying to touch any inkling of his heart. “She’s my firstborn, she’s mine,” her voice cracks as what’s left of her withered heart aches for you, for the life of the only companion she had while her father was getting sick, Laenor was mourning his lost love, and Alicent relentlessly bullied her and alienated her in her own home.

“Please,” Rhaenyra begs with tears slipping past her eyes. “Let her go. Let her live, and if you do, we will leave. I swear. We will run and never come back. We won’t raise any swords against you and we will never turn Astraea on you. You will rule for the rest of your life without any resistance from me. Just please let my girl live, please,” she cries for the only daughter she ever had. Her pride and joy, and the child that turned her into a mother only a year after her wedding to Laenor.

She begs with all her heart. She begs desperately and like never before because she needs you to live.

“Ser Alfred,” Aegon presses as he holds his sister's pleading gaze, causing her to snap her eyes to you whilst you start to weep, but also keep your head held high.

“<I love you,>,” you tell her in Valyrian and offer her a wobbly smile that makes her cry out.

“Aegon!”

The sword that was getting brought to your throat stops, but you still wait for the sharp blade.

Alas, it doesn’t come, so you look over at Aegon and he has his hand in the air to motion Ser Alfred to stop and let the guards let you go and fall on your hands.

Ser Jason immediately comes to your aide, but you refuse his help by pushing him away.

“Take her,” Aegon orders, and once again the guards grab your arms to pull you to your feet and drag you to where your mother is.

“Mother,” you whisper out weakly and she examines you but only for a brief moment because guards then drag her away.

“Mother!” You call out as if that would stop them.

“I just wanted to see the great Rhaenyra look defeated first,” Aegon muses. “You will die now because there's no way I would let you go. Do you think I believe you and your promises? No. Fuck that,” he spats. “We can’t both live, sister. It has to be you.”

Your tears dry from your eyes as they almost bulge out with your utter disbelief.

“No,” you whisper a broken whisper and watch in horror as they drag your mother toward the broken Sunfyre. The dragon you had only moments ago looked down upon.

“No,” you whisper again and examine the scene, realizing that Aegon is going to use Sunfyre to kill your mother. Not a sword, a dragon. Fire you can save her from…

Thus with a spike of adrenaline, you yank yourself away from the clutches of the guards holding you captive and run with the purpose of saving your mother. The one you cherish the most. The only reminder you have left of your old life, your brothers, your father, and everything good; all the light in this world, all the warmth, and all the love and mercy.

“Mother!” You call for attention so she knows you’re coming to her rescue and throw your hand out even though there’s still some distance between her and you.

Nevertheless, reaching her and saving her could only be left as a beautiful dream because before you can reach her and as you reach the middle of that courtyard, Ser Jason tackles you to stop you, letting the guards catch up and pull you from his grasp to forcefully shove you to ground so you wouldn’t try to run again and make them look bad in front of the King.

In doing so though they slam your belly and hit your head on the ground—Not hard, but they did hit the spot where that arrow scraped you, so the wound opens and warm blood begins to ooze out.

“Let me go!” You bellow without caring about the fact that you were just hurt. “LET ME GO!” You growl and squirm. “Aegon! Mother! Mother!”

Said woman is left there before the broken dragon, and Aegon utters the word. “Dracarys.”

You squirm harder, but the guards keep you pressed against the ground.

“NO! PLEASE! MAMA!” You cry out desperately and sharply, feeling tears run down your face as they leave your eyes. “AEGON!”

Albeit even if Sunfyre gets closer to your mother, he doesn’t seem to find interest in burning her to eat her. He sniffs her but doesn’t open his jaws, giving you a false sense of hope.

But you should have known better because as you held your breath and thought your mother would be spared because of the dragon's defiance, Ser Alfred stomps to your mother and nicks her breast with the tip of his sword.

This time Sunfyre begins to sniff your mother as his eyes go dark, making you realize what’s going to happen.

“AEGON PLEASE!” You plead with all your will and all your strength for some sliver of hope that you could gain his mercy. “Please don’t do this! Please!” You cry and beg at the same time as you thrash around like helpless prey caught under a trap. “Please!” You bellow out your plea for the first person you ever loved. For the person keeping your hope and will alive.

“The time for pleading is over,” Aegon mutters and then continues to repeat the same command. “Dracarys.”

This time Sunfyre starts to open his mouth as he builds up fire in the back of his mouth.

“Mother! Mama!”

Said woman turns her head and looks you in the eyes with tears welled in her eyes and a small smile only meant for you and you alone. “<I love you,>” she redirects those last words you had given her when you thought you would die.

“Mama!” You mewl out and throw your head back to try and hit the guard pinning you down. “Please!”

Alas, Sunfyre spits out a ball of fire as your mother points her head to the sky and shrieks one last curse before she’s bathed in fire, and then torn apart by Sunfyre’s jaw, robbing her of her life in an instant, and leaving you stunned on the ground in your numbing disbelief that leaves you speechless and robbed of breath.

Your brother Aegon begins to cry, but he sounds so distant that it almost sounds like some illusion coming from your mind.

The flames still dancing on the ground slowly lose their bright color way before it completely dies out, and the coldness nipping at your skin is forgotten; not because the first sunbeams of the new day break out of the horizon and reflect through the window behind you, embracing your back with its gentle touch and almost making it look like a glorious crown around your head. No, it wasn’t that. It isn't even the warm trickles of blood that leak from your head wound and roll down your cheek, no. The coldness didn’t hurt because you were numb to it.

As your eyes stay on the blood that spills from your mother's corpse you are numb. As you watch Sunfyre open his jaw to go for another bite you are numb, but you don’t stay paralyzed, you finally snap from your stupor.

“LEAVE HER ALONE!” You bellow and push yourself off the ground, slipping from the guard's gentle grasp to try and run over and pull your mother's corpse from Sunfyre’s jaw, but Ser Jason sees clearly that there’s nothing of your mother left to save. All you’ll do is piss Sunfyre off by interrupting his breakfast, so he captures your arm and yanks you back against him.

“Stop, stop,” he whispers sharply. “She’s gone. She’s gone.”

Even though a part of you knew what he was telling you, another part of you throws your hand out to try and push him off you whilst you thrash your body in an attempt to slip away, but his grip is harsh and he manages to keep you against him.

“Mama! Mama!” You cry out as if her burnt corpse getting torn apart could hear you. “Please! Someone help her! Mama!”

Sunfyre takes his third bite, and then forth, and with each bite that part of you that was in denial starts to accept the truth, making you slowly lose the last fragment of who you were and the person you became to a fire burning inside. All while your heart; that withered thing Cregan had brought back to life loses its rhythm as you lose yourself.

“Cregan,” you mutter helplessly. “Someone get me, Cregan!”

Sunfyre takes his fifth bite and your legs start to shake as your weight starts to become too much for them to hold.

“STOP IT! PLEASE!” You cry out and slowly start falling to your knees. Ser Jason can’t hold you up as you continue to squirm so he falls to the ground with you.

“Mama…” you trail off as you lose your breath the moment Sunfyre takes his sixth and last bite before leaving just her leg and nothing else.

There’s nothing left of her but that single piece of limb. She’s gone…every fragment of your old life is gone with her. Your happiness, your heart, and who you were and who you grew to be dies out with her, leaving nothing but a frail soul that finally found her breath, but only to wail out all the agony and grief that slams into you like waves angered by a terrible storm.

You hadn’t cried when Addam died, and when Aemond died you wept, but right now you scream as you know the one you loved the most is gone forever. Along with everyone else you loved.

There’s nothing left…

Even your voice is lost due to the strain not so much later, leaving you weeping silently on the ground. Ser Jason tries to console you, but you shove him away and stay put without even trying to fight back.

You stay there with your body bent over and your head hanging even if your body is still pampered with rain and ocean water, and you’re shivering.

That is until a sharp pain shoots through your lower body and you can’t help but grunt out and shoot straight up to cry out to the sky.

“Princess?” Vanessa whispers out as she notices your hand fly to your belly before you cry out again.

“Princess!” Vanessa yells out and turns to try and run to you, but the guards keeping her in place stop her—“She’s going into labor!” Vanessa says as she recognizes the signs without having to wait for more signs to show.

“She needs help!” She throws out and snaps her head to Aegon. “She can’t do it on her own. Not in the state she’s in.”

“Princess, you’re going to labor, try and keep calm,” one of your mother's handmaidens offers her help behind her captors keeping them from reaching you.

“No, no,” you mutter as you shake your head. “Not now. Not now!” You bellow before you let out another strained cry.

“Your Grace!” Vanessa yells out as she looks at you.

“Very well,” Aegon waves her off. “Let those women help the princess deliver my brother's twins,” he says and looks over his shoulder to let the guards know he’s had enough of being on that balcony.

After that the guards holding Vanessa and the other handmaidens' back, let them go, and they all scurry to you, forcing Ser Jason to carry Aerion and your brother Aegon.

“Get them out!” You shriek as another wave of pain hits you and lasts longer than the others.

Then again as paralyzing and agonizing as the pain of labor is, none of it truly compares to the pain of grief that riddles you.

Your mother's death plays over and over again as if someone was trying to torture you. It heightens the intensity of your distress, while also making the entire process of labor a blur.

One moment you’re in that courtyard, the next you’re in your quarters again, pushing and crying while also trying to fight against giving birth—not like it stops the twins from coming. The pain only worsens and your distress keeps growing until…it’s all gone the moment your twins, Daenys and Daenerys, come out crying and kicking into their new world.

Albeit you couldn’t find joy in your newborns. When you look at them it's with a distant look and no exhausted smile.

Your lips didn’t even twitch. Your eyes are cold, but in your icy demeanor, deep inside, a fire burns and turns your sadness to ash, letting a fierce rage rise from its remains.

.

.

.

.

.

A/N- FINALLY NOT PREGNANT!!!

Tagged- @namelesslosers @stargaryenx @chainsawsangel @lauftivy @winxschester @cloudroomblog @llarue @padsdarlg @sofietargaryen @gracielikegrapes @dreaming-of-the-reality @itzelpeyton @patdsinner33 @mrsdominickstark @elaena-aerrin @todoroki-slut @snh96 @urmomsgirlfriend1 @nifujiswhore @sweethoneyblossom1 @kaetastic @lightdragonrayne @squidscottjeans @oh-you-mean-me @wallacewillow0773638 @icefrye19 @thescottpack @fiction-fanfic-reader @crazymusicgirl104 @r-3dlips @strangersunghoon @just-pure-trash @ethereal-athalia @missyviolet123 @callsignwidow @xunquish-blog @tabathastan @weepingfashionwritingplaid @answer-the-sirens @silverlightsaber @rosey1981 @amortentiaaaa

[seoulmatez]

— 𝒾𝒸𝑒 𝒸𝑜𝓁𝒹 ౨ৎ

itoshi rin x reader. 2k wc. ﾉ fluff ﾉ college au ﾉ reader wears a skirt ﾉ mentions of an injury + a little blood

you aren’t one to believe in silly superlatives, but the last few months have helped you understand why itoshi rin is regarded as the most unapproachable student on campus.

he works alone and during the moments when he’s required to collaborate, the man is incredibly blunt. outside of class, you rarely see him accompanied by anyone other than his team and even then he never seems thrilled to be around them. the aloof expression he constantly wears only solidifies everyone’s perception of him—everyone’s but yours.

you’re a firm believer that people are more than they let on and rin is no different. beneath his frigid exterior, there’s something more. at least, that’s what you’ve been telling yourself for the last several weeks. if you weren’t convinced, how else would you explain your efforts of getting close to him?

you’re on a mission, one to see if you can chip away, thaw, the icy exterior that encases itoshi rin.

“rin!” you shout, but your call doesn’t elicit any sort of response—he doesn’t pause, doesn’t turn his head, just keeps walking as though your voice is nothing more than a gust of wind. his disregard fails to deter you as you pick up your pace to catch up with rin’s long strides. it takes a bit but when you finally do, you smile and link your arm with his. you look up at him before asking, “hey, didn’t you hear me calling your name?”

“i did. i was just ignoring you.” his teal eyes finally spare you a short glance before he’s shaking you off, pulling his arm out of your hold and stuffing his hand in the pocket of his long, beige coat. it’s you again, he thinks.

you remind him of something—a gnat, that’s it. small and bothersome but easy to swat away. though, just like them, you always seem to make your way back. he’s grown used to your repeated appearances, even if he finds them slightly inconvenient.

“this is why you don’t have any friends, you know.” you sigh, the stream of air that leaves your mouth visible as a foggy cloud in front of you. you peer up at him through your eyelashes. “you’re so cold.”

he’s silent in response to your statement and you expected as much. still, you send him a smile and continue talking. “i’m willing to look past that, though. what are you doing now?”

“going home.” rin hopes his answer is enough to dispel whatever thought is brewing in your head.

“perfect! so you’re free.” he turns to you with a frown. what part of “going home” gave you the impression that he had nothing else to do? “wanna go get sushi? it’s on campus so we wouldn’t have to go far.”

“no thanks.” he looks away to finalize his answer.

“aw, come on, rin.” if you’re going to get anywhere, you can’t keep letting him brush you off. “it doesn’t have to be sushi,” you try to bargain, but he doesn’t budge, only continues toward his destination.

maybe you should just drop it, try again another time, but your body has other ideas. you take a few quick steps forward so you’re standing in front of rin. you’re walking partially backward as your next words come out. “we can get whatever you w-”

the ground beneath your feet doesn’t feel as stable as it did a moment ago, it’s slippery now, enough to make you lose your balance. you slide forward on a patch of ice before the concrete is back under you. the bottoms of your shoes catch on the roughness of the ground, launching your forward. your knees and the heels of your palms skim the sidewalk, drawing a pained gasp from your lungs.

“shit, are you okay?” rin’s voice cuts through the air, and it’s closer than it was when you were upright. you turn your head to find his face right beside yours. his eyes are zoned in on your hands and you swear you can see a glint of concern pass over them.

“i’m fine,” you tell him, sitting back on your knees and painting on a smile to cover up the pain. you shake your hands at the wrist but the cool air only bites at your open wounds. “it just stings a little.”

you’re a lousy liar, rin thinks. did you think he wouldn’t notice the breath of air you sucked in just now? blue-green irises scan over your hands and knees. the fall was enough to tear your tights and break the skin. there’s blood slowly pooling from the surface of each scratch.

“come on,” rin sighs, straightening up and shrugging his coat off his shoulders. you stare up at him with lips parted in confusion. he jerks his head in a silent gesture for you to stand up.

“where are we going?” you ask, carefully boosting yourself up from off the ground.

“to my apartment.” he glances at your outfit before holding out his coat to you. “put this on.”

you want to ask him why but you figure your constant questioning will put him off. you keep your lips sealed as you accept his coat, slinging it over your much thinner zip-up. your eyes dart back to where he’s standing—or where he was standing. he’s not there anymore but it only takes a tilt of your head to find him. he’s bent at the knee in front of you and his arm reaches over his shoulder to pat his back. “get on.”

your eyes widen in a mixture of surprise and triumph. the gesture itself catches you off guard—before now, it was hard to ever picture rin being so… helpful, chivalrous. on the other hand, this is the first of what you hope becomes many wins in your pursuit of melting away what you think is his frosty façade.

a quiet laugh pushes past your lips as you bend down to wrap your arms around rin’s neck. he hooks his hands under your knees, a low grunt rumbling in his chest as he rises up from his position.

you can’t help but think it would be a lot colder if you weren’t wearing rin’s coat. maybe you should have taken a look at the weather before you decided to put a skirt on this morning. it’s only then that it strikes you—he didn’t give you the jacket to keep you warm, he gave it to you to keep you covered. if the length of the outerwear wasn’t draped over your legs, this piggyback ride would be a lot more compromising.

your cheeks and the tips of your ears are flaming hot compared to the nip of the cold air. you aren’t sure if you’re flustered because of the close call or the fact that rin was attentive and considerate enough to protect your decency. he’s a lot more thoughtful than he puts on.

despite your fall being entirely unintentional, you have to say, the timing couldn’t have been better. the walk to rin’s apartment isn’t far at all and if you hadn’t found a way to stop him, you wouldn’t have gotten through to him today.

with you still on his back, rin fishes out his keys from his pocket, sticking one into the keyhole and twisting until a click signals that the front door is unlocked. you can’t see far into the apartment over his shoulder, but the kitchen and the little glimpse of the living room are exactly what you expected—neat. there are no dirty dishes littered about the counters and the blanket hanging over the back of the couch is tidily folded.

the bathroom is directly to the right of the entrance and rin nudges the door open with his foot to allow the both of you in. he kneels in front of the toilet, setting you down on the closed lid. you survey the scratches on your palms as rin washes his hands and grabs the first-aid kit he keeps under the sink. he kneels down in front of you to start treating the scrapes on your knees.

the process is a silent one, rin’s focus solely on cleaning your wounds. the silence makes you want to squirm but the thought of being reprimanded by rin keeps you glued to your spot. his presence is always overwhelming but much less so when it’s accompanied by conversation. so, you speak, “this is your fault, you know.”

he stills for a split second before continuing, but you don’t miss the way his eyebrows knit together. “how is you slipping my fault?”

you bite your lip to hold back a laugh. the empty statement was merely a poor attempt at filling the silence, but you’re beginning to think that you can use this to your advantage. “i was just trying to be nice and invite you out. if you agreed to lunch with me, this all would have been avoidable.”

rin clicks his tongue. he knows what you’re doing; you’re trying to guilt trip him, make him feel bad. and he does, he recognizes—but not for the reasons you think. he’s never been particularly benevolent but something drove him to act today, something he can’t quite put his finger on. all he can say for sure is that he wouldn’t be doing this for just anyone.

“don’t worry, though.” your voice brings rin back to reality from his thoughts. his teal gaze lands on your face and you smile. it’s pretty, the thinks, but there’s a gleam in your eyes that isn’t as sweet. “i know how you can make it up to me.”

“am i not doing that now?” he asks as he finishes bandaging your second knee.

you ignore his question, holding your palms up at rin’s nod toward them. “i’ll forgive you if you take me up on my offer. going out for lunch, i mean.”

a gnat. persistent and pesky.

“what makes you think i want your forgiveness?” his words, the bluntness of them, starkly contrasts his touch. the lithe finger applying antibiotic ointment to your torn skin is gentle, tender even.

“maybe you don’t,” you hum curiously. you were sure he would have given in by now but his resolve was starting to seem unbreakable. there’s one strategy you have left, one you were hoping you wouldn’t have to turn to. although, you suppose you could always go back on your word. and rin didn’t have to know that.

you clear your throat resolutely in hopes that your next statement comes out smoothly. “i’ll leave you alone if you humor me this once.”

rin almost snorts. he highly doubts that will be the case with your track record and all. despite his skepticism, he doesn’t immediately jump to rejecting you and the lack of a prompt “no” surprises you both.

rin sticks the last square band-aid to your hand while he contemplates your proposal. something about this unplanned interaction has surfaced unfamiliar feelings from the depths of his heart. he still doesn’t understand why he decided to lend you a helping hand, but he figures there must have been a reason—one that he’ll come closer to finding out if he swallows his pride and agrees to your outing.

“fine.” he sits back on his heels, letting his hands rest on his thighs.

you blink at the one-word answer. “fine?”

“that’s what i said.” rin stands up from his place on the floor and starts toward the door. he looks over his shoulder to see you still seated. “come on before i change my mind.”

it would be dumb of you to miss this opportunity—the one that you had sacrificed your physical well-being and a pair of cute tights for—all because you’re awestruck. so you quickly stand and scurry over to rin with a satisfied grin.

you can feel him tense beside you when you loop your arm through his once more. “i knew you’d warm up to me.”

thanks for reading! if u enjoyed, please consider reblogging or commenting ❤︎

[requiemforthepoets]

this time, i’ll love you much better

PAIRING: fernando alonso x ex-wife!reader

SUMMARY: after twelve long years, sofia finally got the chance to meet you, and experienced what it was like to feel the love of a mother.

REMINDERS: this is purely fiction, the way how the character is portrayed in my story does not reflect to the person that is portraying my character in real life. always separate fiction from reality, and do not repost or copy my work in any way.

WARNINGS: talk of divorce, typographical errors, not proofread, and twin switching

WORD COUNT: 9.2k

AUTHOR’S NOTE: part 2! this whole chapter focuses on you and sofia’s bonding or sofia getting to know you more. tag list is open for this series, just leave a comment or you can message me directly. your reblogs and comments are highly appreciated. hope you’ll enjoy this second part of the series!

TWO - SINGAPORE

𖤓 𝒔𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔 𝒎𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕 | 𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒚𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕 | 𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒓𝒆𝒆 ☽

The car smoothly glided down the driveway, passing rows of stately mansions in Nassim Road, each grander than the last. Sofia leaned her head against the window, her heart pounding as the cityscape of Singapore blurred by, until the sleek black car came to a halt in front of a mansion that seemed to belong more to a dream than reality. The house stood tall, regal, with sprawling gardens that framed the entrance like something straight out of a fairytale. Tall columns stretched up toward the sky, and the front door gleamed in the afternoon light, welcoming her, or rather, welcoming Jullianna, home.

Sofia blinked, taking it all in. She could not help but marvel in awe at the elegance of the estate, the manicured lawns, and the sense of quiet luxury that surrounded it. It was overwhelming in the best way, yet also strangely so foreign. This was your world, and it felt like she was about to step into an unfamiliar territory, something foreign that did not quite belong to her, yet it was.

The driver opened the door, and Sofia slid out, her fingers brushing the sleek fabric of her outfit as she caught sight of Martin, the major-domo that she instantly recognized in Jullianna’s chart, was already making his way to the trunk. He was swift and efficient, unloading her luggage with precision. As he lifted her suitcase, Sofia noticed the faint look of recognition on his face, though it was quickly masked with a polite smile as he greeted her.

“Welcome home, Miss Jullianna.” Martin said, tone respectful but warm.

“Thank you.” Sofia replied, trying her best to keep her voice steady, mimicking Jullianna’s mannerisms as best as she could.

The name Jullianna sounded so foreign in her mouth, but it was becoming natural as she slipped further into the role. Her heart pounded in her chest as she followed Martin up the entrance, Sofia’s gaze lingering on the ornate details of the house. The front steps were wide, leading up to an intricately carved door, and as Sofia entered, she could almost feel the weight of all the eyes that must have admired this mansion in the past. With each step she felt like it carried her close to something significant—closer to you.

Martin opened the door smoothly, and Sofia stepped inside. The foyer before her was vast and sun-filled, with high ceilings that seemed to stretch endlessly. Marble floors gleamed beneath her feet, their polished surface reflecting the soft light that poured in through large windows. Sofia paused for a moment to take in the grandeur of it all, the house felt immense, each corner more beautiful than the last. There were towering columns lining the space, delicate chandeliers hanging overhead, their crystal pendants glinting as they caught the sunlight.

Sofia’s eyes were drawn to the walls, which were adorned with expertly framed photographs, each one carefully placed to tell a story of the family within. Her breath caught as she saw the portraits of Jullianna, some with her as a little girl, others of her dressed in elegant gowns at galas, always smiling, and always poised. Then there were the more professional shots—covers of Tatler Asia, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vogue, with you gracing the glossy pages, each picture exuding an effortless grace.

But the one that caught her attention the most was the grand portrait in the center of the room. It was you and Jullianna, a moment frozen in time, with the both of you dressed in high-end fashion, your faces glowing with affection. Sofia couldn’t help but stare at it, her eyes tracing the lines of your face, and with how you held Jullianna close, the bond between you was very evident, and it made her chest tighten.

Sofia was so lost in thought, absorbing these fragments of life she had never lived, that she didn’t hear the sound of footsteps descending the grand staircase behind her.

“Jullianna!” Your voice called out, warm and delighted.

Sofia froze for a moment, the sound of her name—Jullianna’s name, breaking through her thoughts. She turned around, and there you were, walking down the marble staircase with a radiant smile on your face.

The sight of you stunned Sofia. You were more beautiful than any photograph could have captured. Graceful and poised, yet full of life, you seemed almost ethereal as the sunlight streaming through the windows cast a soft glow around you. Sofia’s breath caught in her throat as tears immediately pricked her eyes. She could not believe it, she was finally seeing you—not just in the photos, or stories that Jullianna had shared, but in real life. In the flesh.

“Oh, my darling girl!” You said, brimming with emotions, with outstretched arms as you hurried towards her.

Sofia moved toward you instinctively, meeting you halfway as you enveloped her in a warm hug. The moment your arms wrapped around her, she felt her resolve begin to crumble. She blinked rapidly, but it was no use. The tears were already spilling down her cheeks.

“I missed you so much.” Sofia whispered, her voice trembling as she buried her face in your shoulder.

You pulled back slightly, just enough to get a good look at her, and your expression shifted from happiness to surprise as you took in her brand new appearance. Your hands rested gently on her shoulders as you studied her closely.

“Your hair,” you said, eyes wide with astonishment. “It’s short! It looks so good on you!”

“I met someone at camp who cuts hair,” she said, managing a watery smile, her hand brushing self-consciously over the ends of her freshly cropped hair. “Do you hate it?”

“Hate it?” You repeated, shaking your head with a laugh. “Darling, it suits you beautifully. I think it makes you look so grown-up.”

“Wait a second,” you leaned in closer, inspecting her ears. “Are those piercings I see? Since when?”

Sofia’s fingers instinctively flew to her earlobes, which were now adorned with delicate studs. “Um, it was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing at camp. Do you hate those?”

You laughed softly, shaking your head again. “No, no. It’s just my Jullianna, afraid of needles? I can’t believe you went through with it.”

“No more surprises, I promise.” She chuckled nervously, feeling the weight of your gaze as you took her in, still marveling at the changes.

But your expression softened as you noticed the tears still glistening in her eyes. You knelt down to her level, cupping Sofia’s face gently in your hands.

“What’s wrong, my love?” You asked, your voice low and soothing. With your thumbs, you wiped away a stray tear that had slipped down her cheek. “Why are you crying?”

Sofia’s bottom lip trembled slightly, and for a moment, she hesitated, really unsure how to explain the emotions surging within her.

“It’s just…happy tears,” she finally said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I missed you so much. It feels like it’s been forever.”

“Oh, my sweet girl.” You murmured, pulling her close again, and pressing a tender kiss to her temple. “I missed you too. But you’re home now, and that’s all that matters.”

Sofia clung to you tightly, her eyes closed as she tried to commit the moment to memory. For so long, she had dreamed about this, what it would be like to meet you, to feel your embrace. Now that it was finally happening, it felt both overwhelming and comforting all at once. You stood up and took her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.

“Come, let’s sit and catch up. I want to hear all about camp.” You said, tone full of curiosity and warmth.

You and Sofia sat together in the sun-dappled room, it is the room where you always retreat to whenever you need time to breathe when things tend to get overwhelming. The warm light was spilling through the large bay windows and casting a soft glow over the space. Sofia, seated on the plush velvet armchair across from you, couldn’t help but marvel at how effortlessly elegant everything was, from the carefully arranged floral centerpieces to the soft ticking of the antique clock on the mantel. This was the kind of life she had only seen in movies, and now, she was here, living it, even if just for a little while.

You poured tea into a delicate porcelain cup, the soft clinking of the silver spoon against the cup filling the air as you stirred in a bit of honey.

“So, tell me, darling,” you began, voice soft yet curious. “How was summer camp, did you enjoy it as much as you hoped you would?”

“I loved it,” Sofia said with a radiant smile that mirrored Jullianna’s perfectly. “It was so much fun. I didn’t think I’d like it this much, but it was even better that I expected.”

You leaned forward slightly, your eyes lighting up with relief and excitement. “Oh, I’m so glad to hear that! I was a little worried, you know. It was your first time going away for so long, and I wasn’t sure how you would manage being away from home.”

Sofia nodded, playing along so effortlessly. “Well, it was definitely a bit scary at first, but everyone was so welcoming. I made a lot of friends.”

“Did you like everyone there?” You asked, your tone gently probing.

“Yes, everyone was really really nice,” she said, voice laced with enthusiasm. “I even met a girl, she’s from Spain.”

You raised an eyebrow, tilting your head slightly. “Spain? My goodness, that’s quite far. I hope her parents didn’t mind sending her all the way there for camp.”

“Oh, they didn’t mind,” she assured you quickly. “She’s been going to Camp Walden since she was ten, so it’s kind of like a tradition for her.”

Your eyes widened slightly in surprise. “Since she was ten? That’s incredible! She must really love it there.”

“She does,” Sofia replied, nodding earnestly. “She told me all about how much she looks forward to it every year. She even showed me some pictures from past summers, she’s made so many memories there.”

You smiled, clearly touched by the story. “That’s wonderful, Lia. You know, I’m so happy you made such a lovely friend. It sounds like camp was a great experience for you.”

Sofia felt a pang of guilt in her chest but quickly pushed it aside. She could feel your pride in her, or rather, in Jullianna—and she did not want to ruin this moment.

“It really was,” she said softly, looking down at her hands. “Thank you for letting me go. I know you were hesitant in sending me to summer camp, but it was one of the best memories that I’ve made.”

“I’m really proud of you, darling,” you said, voice warm and full of affection, and reaching out, placing a gentle hand over hers. “It’s not always easy to try something new, especially something that takes you out of your comfort zone. But look at you! You’ve come back with wonderful stories and new friends. I’m so glad I agreed on Camp Walden, it sounds like it was just what you needed.”

Her heart swelled at your words. It was strange, hearing you call her darling, feeling the warmth of your hand over hers. Sofia had never experienced this before, this maternal tenderness, yeah sure, she always had a nanny growing up, but this one was different, and it made her feel a little sad. She wanted to soak in every moment, to etch every word and gesture into her memory.

“Thanks, Mama,” she said quietly, the word feeling foreign yet oddly right on her tongue. She looked up at you, he eyes glistening with emotion. “That really means a lot.”

You tilted your head, studying her for a moment, and asked her gently. “Are you alright, sweetheart? You seem…a little emotional.”

“I’m just…happy,” she admitted, swallowing hard, willing herself not to cry. “It’s been a while since I felt this happy.”

“Oh, my love,” you murmured as you squeezed her hand reassuringly. “That’s all I ever want for you, to be happy, and if camp helped you find a little more of that, then I couldn’t be more thrilled.”

Sofia smiled through the tears that threatened to spill over. For the first time in her life, she felt what it was like to truly have a mother, and she wanted to hold on to this feeling forever.

“I don’t want this to end.” she whispered to herself, the words echoing in her mind like a quiet prayer.

“Are you sure you’re really okay, darling?” You asked again, tone laced with concern.

“I’m okay,” Sofia said, her voice steady this time. “Really. I just missed you so much.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” you said softly, pulling her into a warm embrace. The simplicity of her words caught you off guard. “I missed you too. More than you can imagine.”

As Sofia rested her head against your shoulder, she closed her eyes, wishing this moment could stretch on forever. For the first time, she felt like she truly belonged.

The quiet rhythm of the room settled over you, you both sat in the living room, the warm silence punctuated by the occasional rustle of the breeze brushing against the windows. For you, these silences were familiar. Jullianna—your Jullianna, often fell into these comfortable quiet moments, lost in thought or simply content to sit beside you.

But this silence was different for Sofia. She found herself reveling in it, soaking up the warmth of a moment she had longed for her entire life. She shifted slightly in her seat, glancing toward you.

“Have you ever been to Spain, Mama?” She asked suddenly, he voice soft but curious.

“Spain?” You repeated, the word rolling off your tongue with an air of nostalgia you did not intend to show.

A rush of memories, long buried, flooded back without any warning—memories of warm Spanish evenings, laughter mingled with the crash of waves, and Fernando’s voice, full of excitement as he guided you through his homeland. You pushed the thoughts away as quickly as they came, sitting a little straighter in your seat.

“Yes. A long time ago, before you were born.” You said quickly, tone even, and offering a small smile. “Why do you ask?”

She hesitated for a moment, studying your face. Sofia could see the flicker of something, something wistful, maybe even a little painful, but she decided not to push.

“I was just curious.” She said simply, giving a small shrug.

“Well,” you said, your tone lightened as you leaned forward slightly. “Speaking of things from the past, there’s something we need to talk about that’s coming up very soon—your birthday!”

“My birthday?” She echoed, tilting her head. She was caught off guard by the sudden shift in the conversation. “But it’s still a month away.”

“Exactly!” You replied with a soft laugh, your eyes sparkling with excitement. “It’s still a month away, which means we need to start planning now. You know how quickly the days go by, and I want it to be perfect for you. Whatever you want to do, it’s your day, and we’ll make it happen.”

Sofia blinked again, her heart suddenly heavy with an unfamiliar ache. The way you spoke, with such earnestness and love, caught her off guard. She was not used to this—this kind of anticipation, this kind of care. She glanced down at her hands, fiddling nervously with the hem of her clothes.

“I…I don’t know yet,” she admitted quietly. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

“That’s okay, sweetheart,” you said softly. “You don’t have to decide right now. But I want you to know that whatever you want, we’ll make it happen. A party, a quiet day just for the two of us, a trip, just whatever your heart desires. It’s your special day, and I want you to enjoy it.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly, her voice barely above a whisper. “That means a lot.”

You squeezed her hand gently, your thumb brushing over her knuckles. “Of course, darling. You’re my world, and I want to celebrate every moment we have together. Just let me know when you’ve decided, okay?”

“I will, Mama.” Sofia whispered.

True to your word, you had cleared your schedule for the day to make time for Sofia, but you could not cancel this one commitment. As you gathered your things by the foyer, you turned to Sofia with a smile.

“I really tried to cancel this too, but it’s for Tatler Asia, and they were so insistent. I hope you don’t mind tagging along.” You said warmly.

Sofia shook her hear quickly, her face lighting up. “Are you kidding? Of course I’d love to come, Mama.”

You raised an eyebrow, laughing softly. “Well, I’m glad you’re excited. Let’s make it a fun day, then. Just us girls.”

The family driver pulled up to the front, and soon the two of you were on your way to the photoshoot venue. The drive to the venue was quiet but comfortable, with the air filled with the unspoken warmth of having reconnected. Sofia gazed out of the window, watching the city buzz with life, but her thoughts were elsewhere. She still could not believe she was here, sitting beside you, going with you to a real photoshoot.

This was a world she had never seen before, and the excitement bubbled inside her like a secret she could not contain. As the car pulled up to the venue, Sofia’s eye widened at the sight of the gran building in front of her. The polished exterior gleamed in the afternoon sun, and the large glass doors reflected the bustling activity inside. Everything felt so glamorous, so different from her life in Spain. She glanced over at you as you instructed the family driver.

“Thank you, James,” you said with a polite smile. “You can head home now. We’ll be walking around the city right after and taking the taxi home later.”

James nodded and gave you a small bow before driving off. Sofia looked at you with a mix of Surprise and curiosity.

“We’re walking?” She asked, voice tinged with amusement.

“Sometimes, it’s nice to just walk. No schedules, no rush, just taking in the beauty the city has to offer.” You smiled warmly at her. Sofia nodded, her heart swelling at how grounded and graceful you were despite your glamorous life.

Inside, the studio was a hive of activity. The smell of hairspray and perfume hung in the air, blending with the faint hum of conversation and occasional clutter of equipment. Staff members hurried past, some carrying garment bags, others adjusting camera gears. The energy was infectious, and Sofia found herself wide-eyed, taking in every detail. When you stepped inside, a stylist approached you, clipboard in hand.

“You’re just in time,” she said, ushering you towards the back. “We’re ready for you in hair and makeup.”

You glanced at Sofia, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder, leading her through the bustling crowd. “Come with me.”

In the makeup area, you settled into a high-backed chair as a team of stylists swarmed around you, discussing everything from your hair to the gown that you would be wearing for the photoshoot. Your assistant, a petite woman in her late 20s, with a sharp bob and an even sharper memory, appeared at your side, iPad in hand.

“Good day,” she greeted with a bright smile. “You look stunning already, as always.”

“Good day, Camille,” you replied, returning her smile. “Let’s hear it, what does the rest of my week look like?”

Camille began rattling off your schedule, her tone brisk yet pleasant. “After today’s shoot, you’re free for the rest of the day. But tomorrow, you have fittings for the New York Fashion Week—Versace and Valentino. Thursday is the campaign shoot for Dior, followed by a meeting with YSL, and lastly, Saturday is the charity luncheon at the Ritz.”

As she spoke, Sofia listened intently, trying to absorb every little detail. Camille suddenly turned to her, her face lighting up at the sight of Sofia.

“And Jullianna! It’s so good to see you again,” Camille said warmly. “It’s been a while since you came along to one of these, I’ve missed having you around.”

Sofia blinked, like a deer caught in the headlights, but managed to recover quickly. She returned the smile, her mind racing.

So, Jullianna usually comes to these things?

“It’s good to see you too, Camille,” Sofia said, her voice steady. “I’ve missed coming with Mama. It’s been a very busy summer for me. You know, summer camp and all.”

Camille nodded, clearly pleased. “I’ve been told. Well, you’re always such a delight to have around. Your mom lights up even more when you’re here.”

Sofia nodded, unsure of how to respond but touched by the sentiment. “I’m happy to be back, honestly, and it wasn’t a lie.”

You glanced at Sofia through the mirror, noticing how she was quietly observing everything. “She was very excited to come with me today, I’m glad she’s back again.”

Camille smiled. “You two are always such a team.”

Sofia felt a pang in her chest at those words. She glanced down, her fingers brushing over the hem of her skirt as she tried to process the unexpected emotions rising within her.

You reached out and gently touched her arm. “Are you alright, darling?”

She looked up and nodded quickly, giving you a small smile. “I’m fine. Everything just feels so exciting.”

“I’m glad you’re here with me. It’s a little chaotic, but it’s also wonderful, isn’t it?” You smiled at her, eyes softening.

Sofia nodded again, her smiling growing. “It really is.”

The stylists gave your hair one last spritz of hairspray and made minor adjustments to the hem of your gown before stepping back. Your final look was stunning, and you took a moment to admire yourself in front of the floor length mirror, running your hands gently down the shimmering fabric. Turning towards Sofia, you gave her a playful smile.

“So,” you said, spinning in place. “What do you think? Is it too much? Too over the top?”

“No way!” She exclaimed, her voice full of awe. “You look amazing, Mama! Really, really beautiful.”

You chuckled at her enthusiasm, stopping mid-spin to face her. “You sure? I don’t want to look like I’m trying too hard.”

“Are you kidding? You look perfect!” Sofia said with conviction, her admiration shining through every word. She leaned forward in her seat, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. “Seriously, you’re like…a queen of something.”

The photographer called out, signaling that the photoshoot was about to begin. You blew a quick kiss to Sofia before stepping into position. The backdrop was a blend of muted grays and soft metallics, designed to compliment your gown. As the lights were adjusted and the photographer gave instructions, Sofia watched you in complete fascination. Every pose you struck, every subtle shift in expression, left her star struck.

“She’s so so cool. I can't believe she’s my Mama.” She whispered to herself and smiled as she leaned back on her chair.

Halfway through the shoot, the photographer suggested a more candid, relaxed pose. You turned to Sofia, an idea sparking in your mind,

“Come here, sweetheart.” You said as you extended your hand to her.

Sofia blinked, pointing at herself. “Me? Now?”

“Yes, you!” You said with a laugh. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”

Hesitant but intrigued, Sofia stood up and approached you. She looked out of place in her casual outfit compared to your glamorous attire, but the contrast made the moment all the more genuine.

You placed a hand on her shoulder and pulled her close, whispering softly. “Just be yourself, okay?”

The photographer, already adjusting his camera, grinned. “This is perfect! Just keep talking to each other, forget that the camera is even here.”

You started joking with Sofia, recounting a funny memory from one of your past photoshoots. Sofia couldn’t help but laugh, her nerves easing as she leaned into you. Before long, the two of you were caught up in an impromptu moment—laughing, smiling, and even pulling silly faces. At one point, you pretended to teach her how to pose, guiding her arm into an exaggerated fashion stance that made the both of you burst into laughter. The photographer snapped away, capturing every genuine smile.

“Beautiful!” He said, nodding approvingly. “Absolutely beautiful.”

When the session wrapped, you turned to the photographer, still holding Sofia close. “Can I request something? Could you email me all of these candid shots? I want them framed, every single one.”

“Of course,” the photographer replied, clearly charmed by the two of you. “I’ll make sure you get them by the end of the day.”

Sofia looked up at you, her face glowing. “You’re really going to frame them?”

“Absolutely,” you said without hesitation. “They’re perfect. I’ll put them right in the hallway with the rest of our photos. What do you think?”

She nodded eagerly, a rare lump forming in her throat. “I think that’s…really nice.”

You then changed back into your everyday clothes, a chic yet understated outfit that looked impossibly elegant. Before leaving, you took a moment to thank every member of the crew.

“Wonderful job, as always,” you said warmly. “I really appreciate all your hard work.”

“I’ll email you the final documents for the new endorsements this evening,” Camille said efficiently as she caught up with you. “And I’ll also send over your finalized schedule for the New York Fashion Week.”

“Thank you, Camille,” you replied and grabbed your things. “Let me know if something else comes up.”

The sun was warm but not overwhelming as you and Sofia strolled through the bustling streets in the afternoon towards Paragon. The city was alive with energy, cars humming, scent of fresh coffee wafting from nearby cafés, and the occasional breeze rustling through the trees that lined the sidewalks. You slipped your arms around Sofia’s shoulder, drawing her close as the two of you walked side by side.

“Mama,” she began hesitantly, “have you ever thought about getting married again?”

The question had caught you off guard, and you stopped mid-step, turning to face her with an incredulous expression.

“Now where did that come from?” You asked. Laughing lightly, though there was a hint of nervousness in your tone.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “You looked so beautiful in that gown during the photoshoot, it just made me wonder. I mean, you’d look amazing as a bride. Like, really really amazing.”

“Are you imagining me walking down the aisle again?” You teased, a playful smile tugging at your lips.

Sofia hesitated, then ventured further. “Not exactly, but it also made me wonder what kind of gown you wore. You know, the first time.”

“Oh?” You said, raising a brow. “Why the curiosity about your father?”

“Because you’ve never really talked about him,” she said softly as she looked up at you. “Not once, and well, I guess I can’t help but wonder.”

You sighed, the weight of her question settling over you like a delicate cloud. Before you could answer, your eyes caught sight of a stunning dress displayed in a boutique window up ahead, its elegant silhouette shimmering under the soft glow of the lights. You instinctively reached out to tug Sofia’s arm, pointing towards the window.

“Oh, look at that dress,” you said, voice lighter as you momentarily shifted focus. “Isn’t it stunning?”

Sofia blinked at you, her question hanging in the air as you walked closer to the boutique window. She gave a small, exasperated sigh, realizing what you were doing.

“Mama,” she said firmly but respectfully, stopping you in your tracks. When you turned to face her, her expression was a mix of determination and understanding. “You can’t avoid the topic forever.”

You opened your mouth to protest, but the look in her eyes stopped you. It was not confrontational or accusing, it was patient and curious. Sighing again, this time deeper, you nodded.

“Alright,” you relented, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. “What do you want to know?”

“What was he like?” Sofia asked immediately, tone soft but eager. She already knew what Fernando is like, but she wanted to hear it coming from you.

“Well, he was a lovely man. Very lovely,” you said, lips curled into a small smile, nostalgic smile as you thought about him. “Charming in his own way. He had this…presence about him that could light up a room.”

“Did you meet him here? In Singapore?” Sofia pressed.

“No,” you said as you shook your head. “I met him in London, during the British Grand Prix in Silverstone.”

Sofia’s brows furrowed slightly in surprise. Grand Prix was basically her whole life. “The Grand Prix? What were you doing there?”

“Because of your grandpa,” you explained, “your grandpapa was one of the major sponsors of the race that year. He insisted I accompany him to the event, it wasn’t really my scene back then, but he had his reasons for wanting me there.”

Just then, you reached the doors of a quaint little café tucked away from the main bustle of Paragon. Its inviting atmosphere beckoned, and you instinctively led Sofia inside. The two of you found a cozy corner table near a window, the gentle hum of conversation and the soft clinking of cups creating a warm background noise.

Once seated, you ordered drinks, an iced latte for yourself and a hot chocolate for Sofia, a few pastries as well. The server left with a polite nod, and Sofia turned her full attention back to you, her curiosity far from satisfied.

“So,” she said, leaning her elbows on the table, her chin resting on her hands. “What happened next?”

You raised a brow at her, a small smile playing on your lips. “You’re really not going to let this go, are you?”

She grinned cheekily, shaking her head. “Not a chance.”

“Alright, alright,” you said, chuckling and shaking your head at her persistence. “It’s quite a story.”

Sofia leaned forward slightly, her excitement evident. “Take your time, Mama. I want to hear everything.”

Your drinks had already been served at your table, and the hum of the café enveloped you and Sofia as you settled comfortably into your chairs, the delicate aroma of the fresh pastries mingling with the scent of coffee. Your iced latte and her steaming hot chocolate sat untouched between you, but neither of you seemed to notice. The weight of your ongoing conversation carried a different kind of warmth, one that softened the atmosphere between you.

“It’s funny,” you began, the corners of your lips curling into a small smile, “I wasn’t even supposed to leave your grandpapa’s side. He made it very clear that day I was to stay in the paddock with him, but I got bored and decided to wander around, and somehow, I got lost.” You chuckled softly at the memory.

“You? Lost?” She asked, her eyes wide with amusement, and tone teasing but affectionate. “I thought you were always composed and knew your way around everywhere.”

“Oh, how I wish,” you replied with a laugh. “Silverstone is a maze, especially when it’s packed, and I didn’t know a single soul. I was looking around, trying to figure out where I was supposed to go, and then I bumped right into him.”

“Papa?” She asked, voice tinged with excitement.

You nodded. “Yes. I nearly knocked the drink he was holding out of his hand. I was so flustered, apologizing left and right, and he just stood there, smiling at me.”

“Smiling, huh.” She smiled, trying to picture the moment.

“Yes,” you said, your gaze softening. “That smile of his, it was so warm and easy going. He looked at me like we had known each other forever, and then he introduced himself, as if I didn’t already know who he was from the posters around the paddock.”

Sofia giggled, clearly amused. “What did you say? Did you fangirl or something?”

You shook your head, laughing at the thought. “No, no. I was too embarrassed to even react. I just said, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and tried to walk away, but he stopped me, asked me if I was lost, and when I said yes, he offered to help.”

Sofia tilted her head thoughtfully. “So, what happened next?”

“We spent the rest of the day together,” you said, tone quieter now as you trace the lid of your drink. “He showed me around, introduced me to some of his team, and even made sure I found your grandpapa again. But by the time he brought me back, I didn’t want the day to end.”

Sofia studied you for a moment, then asked. “Was it love at first sight?”

“I knew you’d ask me that someday, you cheeky little girl!” You laughed and gave her a knowing look. “But yes, it was indeed love at first sight.”

Sofia grinned, clearly delighted by your response. “Well, I mean I can’t blame you, Papa is very handsome.”

“He was more than just being a handsome man,” you admitted. “He was kind, charming, and so full of life. It was impossible not to be drawn to him.”

Sofia leaned her chin on her hand, watching you intently. “So, what happened after that? Did you live together?”

You nodded, your expression thoughtful. “Yes. Your Papa was from Spain, and after a few months of dating, we decided to take the next step. I made the biggest decision of my life, I moved to Spain to be with him.”

“Wow,” Sofia breathed, her eyes wide with admiration. “That’s huge. You just packed up and left?”

“Pretty much,” you replied with a soft laugh. “I uprooted my life. Wherever he went, I went. It wasn’t easy leaving everything behind—your grandpapa, and my friends, but it felt so right. Home wasn’t a place anymore, it was wherever he was.”

She hesitated for a moment before asking. “And then what?”

“Three days after I moved in with him, he proposed.” Your smile widened as you remembered.

“What?!” Sofia’s jaw dropped. “Three days?!” She was shocked, and unfamiliar with Fernando’s game.

You laughed, nodding. “Three days. He said he didn’t want to wait any longer, and honestly? Neither did I. We got married not long after that, and then, we had you.”

Sofia’s expression softened, and she looked down at her hot chocolate, stirring it absentmindedly. “That’s…amazing. It sounds like a complete fairytale.”

“It felt like one,” you admitted, reaching across the table to squeeze her hand. “And you were the best part of it.”

All your life, you always try to avoid talking about Fernando with your daughter. It was the most painful memory for you, but your daughter was right, you can’t avoid talking about it forever, evading or making so many excuses as to why you can’t talk about Fernando. Especially now that your daughter is already grown up, she deserves to know about her father. It will be very selfish of you if you keep on avoiding it.

“But you know, being married isn’t always what the movies make it out to be,” you said, your voice calm but tinged with a hint of sadness. “It’s not all rainbows and sunshine, no matter how much you love someone.”

“What do you mean, Mama?” She asked, tone gentle but eager to understand.

You laced your fingers together on the table, your gaze drifting for a moment, as if the memories were replaying in front of you.

“Your Papa and I, we had a wonderful start. The kind of love that people dream about. But life has a way of testing even the strongest bonds.” You paused, meeting her gaze. “Both of us had demanding careers. My career wasn’t exactly stationary, I was always flying to another country for events, galas, photoshoots, and your Papa, he was flying all over the world for races.”

“It felt like we were always moving but never in the same direction. We were always missing each other’s milestones, each other’s days. We tried to hold on, we really did.”

“What did you do?” Sofia asked softly, her voice tinged with concern.

You sighed, leaning forward slightly as you rested your elbows on the table. “We tried everything we could think of. Marriage counseling, for one. We sat in those sessions and poured our hearts out, hoping that somehow, talking through everything would bring us closer again.”

“Did it help?” Sofia asked cautiously, as if she were afraid of the answer.

“For a little while,” you admitted. “It gave us the tools to communicate better, to understand each other’s needs and frustrations. But it wasn’t enough, there was just too much distance, literal and emotional.”

Her expression softened, and she traced her finger along the rim of her cup. “That must’ve been really hard.”

“It was, and after counseling didn’t work, we tried going away on a trip. We thought that maybe if we stepped away from everything—work, schedules, the stress, it would help. A beautiful place, with just the two of us, no distractions. It was nice, but…” you shook your head slightly, a wistful smile playing on your lips. “You can’t expect a trip to fix something that’s broken.”

You sat up straighter, your tone steady despite the heaviness of the memory. “We realized we were holding onto something that wasn’t working anymore. We still cared about each other deeply, but the truth was, we weren’t as compatible as we thought we’d be, and before things got worse, we made the hardest decision we could make.”

Sofia’s eyes glimmered with understanding, though a hint of sadness lingered in her expression. “You decided to let go.”

“Yes,” you replied quietly. “We decided to put a stop to it before we hurt each other more. It was mutual, we both knew that it was the right thing to do, even if it was painful. Sometimes love isn’t enough to make a marriage work.”

“That must’ve been really hard for you,” she said softly, reaching across the table to place her hand over yours. “For both you and Papa.”

“It was,” you admitted, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. “But we did what we thought was best for everyone involved, and even though things didn’t work out between us, there was one thing we always agreed on.”

Sofia tilted her head, her curiosity evident. “What’s that?”

“That you were the best thing to ever come out of our time together,” you said with a small smile. “We both loved you more than anything in the world. That never changed.”

“I’m glad that you told me, Mama,” she said after a moment, lips curved into a faint smile, and she looked down at your intertwined hands. “I’ve always wondered, and it makes sense now.”

“I’m glad you asked,” you said softly. “I know that it’s not the fairytale story that most people hope for, but it’s ours, and I’m glad that you know.”

The hours in the café passed by so fast, with the two of you lost in conversation. Occasionally, someone would approach you, their voice tinged with both awe and respect as they asked for a photo. You always obliged with a warm smile, and Sofia watched quietly, her gaze filled with mixture of admiration and curiosity. Once, a woman gushed about how lovely it was to see you out with your daughter, her compliment bringing a soft smile to Sofia’s face.

“Do you get tired of it?” She asked softly as you sat back down.

“Of what?” You replied, reaching for your drink.

“People stopping you everywhere.” She tilted her head slightly, observing you as though trying to decipher your thoughts.

“Not really. I’m grateful for their kindness. Besides,” You said, offering her a gentle smile, and gesturing between the two of you. “Moments like this are far more important to me.”

Her lips curved into a faint smile, and she dropped her gaze to the table. “I like this too.”

When the café began to empty and the staff subtly started cleaning up for the night, you leaned back in your chair, glancing at your watch and sighed contentedly.

“I think we’ve been here for long enough,” you said. “It’s already getting late, and we should probably head back.”

“What about the shopping spree?” Sofia asked, her tone hesitant.

You reached over, gently brushing a strand of hair from her face. “We’ll do it tomorrow, after my fittings. I promised you, didn’t I?”

“But you’ll be tired,” she reasoned, her voice soft with concern, but firm. “I don’t want you to overdo it.”

You smiled warmly at her, leaning forward to rest your elbows on the table. “Sweetheart, I’m never too tired for you. If I was, I wouldn’t have promised. You’re my priority.”

“Okay.” She murmured, looking down on her empty cup, still sounding unsure.

“Hey,” you said, reaching across the table to gently take her hand. “It’s not a big deal. I love spending time with you, and besides, I want to spoil you.” You added with a wink.

Sofia let out a soft laugh at that, finally meeting your eyes. “Alright, but only if you’re really sure.”

“Absolutely,” you said with conviction, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze.

By the time you stepped outside, the sky had turned into a deep shade of navy, the city illuminated by the glow of streetlights and neon signs. The streets were alive with energy, people bustling about, and the faint hum of conversations blending with the occasional honk of a car horn.

As you walked side by side, you instinctively wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. Sofia didn’t resist, leaning into your touch as the two of you strolled through the vibrant cityscape.

“Singapore at night is something else.” She said softly, her eyes flicking from the lights above to the people around.

“It really is,” you agreed, your gaze sweeping over the bustling streets. “Years of living here with you and it is still one of my favorite things about being here, how alive everything feels, no matter the hour.”

She nodded, her expression thoughtful. “It’s beautiful.”

The two if you continued in companionable silence, your steps unhurried. You glanced at her occasionally, your heart swelling with affection at how relaxed and eased she seemed. Spotting an available taxi, you raised your hand to hail it, guiding her gently toward the curb. The car pulled up smoothly, and you opened the door for her, gesturing to her to get in first.

“In you go, darling.” you said as you put your hand over her head.

“Thank you.” She said quietly, sliding into the backseat.

You followed, settling in beside her, greeting the driver, and giving him your address. As the car began to move, you leaned back against the seat, letting out a soft sigh of contentment. Sofia, whom you believed to be Jullianna, shifted closer, resting her head lightly against your shoulder.

“You’re really not tired?” She asked after a moment, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Not at all,” you replied, pressing a gentle kiss to the top of her head. “Spending time with you will always be the best part of my day.”

Sofia didn’t say anything, but you felt her body relax against you, her hand slipping into yours. The quiet hum of the taxi and the soft glow of the city outside made the moment feel almost dreamlike, a perfect ending to a perfect day.

When the taxi pulled up to the house, the golden lights from the grand windows spilled out onto the driveway, casting a warm and welcoming glow. As you and Sofia stepped out, the heavy front doors swung open, Martin greeted you with a slight bow.

“Good evening, madame. Welcome home.” He said, voice calm and measured as always. Behind him, a few housekeepers stood ready, their smiles polite but genuine.

“Thank you, Martin,” you said, offering a smile as you removed your heels and put them on the rack, changing into your indoor slippers. “It’s good to be back.”

Sofia stood slightly behind you, still taking in the familiar grandeur of the house, standing here still felt surreal for her. The subtle hum of efficiency in the house was comforting yet intimidating.

One of the housekeepers stepped forward and spoke gently. “Madame, all of Miss Jullianna’s laundry from camp has been taken care of and put away.”

“Thank you so much,” you turned to her with a grateful expression. “I really appreciate it, I hope it wasn’t quite the task.”

The housekeeper smiled, shaking her head modestly. “Not at all, madame. We’re happy to help.”

You then turned to Sofia, who had been quietly observing, and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Shweetheart, it’s getting late. Go ahead and get ready for bed, alright?”

Sofia froze momentarily, panic bubbling beneath her composed exterior. Where’s Jullianna’s room? The floor plan Jullianna had shown her briefly flashed in her mind, but the details were hazy. Upstairs, she was certain of it, the bedroom was upstairs. That much she remembered.

“Uh, okay!” Sofia said quickly, her voice an octave higher than usual. She gave you a quick kiss on the cheeks, and stepped back, addressing everyone as she spoke. “Good night!”

She turned on her heel and started towards the staircase, her movements quick and almost robotic. You watched her with a bemused smile, tilting your head slightly.

“Goodnight, darling!” You called after her, shaking your head lightly. “She must be exhausted.” You murmured to Martin, who gave a small nod in agreement.

“Understandable, madame,” Martin said smoothly. “It had been quite a long day for her.”

You chuckled softly and made your way toward the sitting room, while Sofia darted up the staircase with determination.

As Sofia reached the landing, she slowed her pace, looking back just in case Martin or a housekeeper had followed her. Her eyes darting to the left and right, the hallways stretched out in both directions, doors lining either side, each one identical to the next.

Which one is hers?

She hesitated for a moment, checking again as glancing over the bannister to ensure no one was watching. Then, she steeled herself and chose a direction at random, heading down the hall with feigned confidence.

If I just open doors discreetly, I’ll figure it out…hopefully.

She stopped in front of the first door, her hand hovering over the knob. Taking a deep breath, she slowly twisted it and peeked inside. The room was dark, but from what little she could see, it didn’t look lived-in. Definitely not Jullianna’s. Quickly closing the door, she moved to the next one, her heart racing slightly faster.

Come on, it has to be one of these.

By sheer luck, or perhaps Jullianna’s divine intervention, the next door she opened revealed a room that looked distinctly like Jullianna’s. The walls were adorned with personal touches—framed photos, art pieces, and trophies from school competitions. Sofia exhaled deeply, relief flooding through her as she stepped inside and gently closed the door behind her.

“Finally,” she whispered to herself, leaning back against the door for a moment.

Her gaze swept over the room, and a small smile tugged at her lips. This is where she lives, where she sleeps. As Sofia settled herself into Jullianna’s room, she couldn’t help but marvel at the sheer size and elegance of it.

The room felt like something out of a luxury magazine, spacious, meticulously organized, and exuding a quiet sophistication that perfectly encapsulated Jullianna’s personality. Curiosity tugged at her as she wandered over to one of the doors on the side of the room. That’s probably just the bathroom, she thought, twisting the handles. Her jaw dropped.

It was not just a bathroom, it was a walk-in closet. A massive walk-in closet. Rows upon rows of clothes hung neatly on gold-accented racks, organized by color, season, and occasion. Everything was pristine, almost as though no one ever touched anything. Beneath the racks were drawers labeled with words like scarves, belts, and hats.

“What in the world…” Sofia muttered under her breath, stepping further inside.

Her fingers trailed lightly over the fabrics, feeling the silks, cottons, and other materials she could not even identify. Sofia’s gaze moved up to the shelves where dozens of handbags sat like prized trophies, each one gleaming under the soft, warm lighting.

Then her eyes fell to the section dedicated entirely to sleepwear—rows of satin and cotton pajamas, all perfectly folded and hung. She let out a small, incredulous laugh.

“Does she even wear the same thing twice? Or is that against her personal code?” Sofia murmured to herself, raising an eyebrow as she scanned the collection. It seemed endless. “I swear, I’m gonna roast her so bad for this when we talk.”

She shook her head, smiling to herself as she made a mental note to bring this up with Jullianna during their next facetime call.

Turning around, she noticed an entire wall dedicated to shoes. There were flats, heels, boots, and sneakers—all lined up like soldiers awaiting inspection. She walked over, admiring them one by one, and picking up a pair of platform heels.

“Does she even wear all of these? Or do they just sit here looking pretty?” She muttered under her breath.

She walked further, admiring them one by one. The thought crossed her mind to try on a few pairs, but she resisted. Instead, she quietly thanked the universe that she and Jullianna wore the same size. At least I won’t trip over heels that are too big for me.

Sofia wandered back out of the closet, still amazed, and moved to the other door. This time, she was right, it was the bathroom.

“Okay, this is just ridiculous.” She whispered.

It was not just any bathroom. This was a bathroom that could rival those in five-star hotels. The marble floors gleamed under the recessed lighting, and a large soaking tub stood in the center, surrounded by candles and neatly arranged bath products. There was even a rainfall shower with walls of glass, and two vanities stocked with an array of high-end skincare products.

“Of course her bathroom is this fancy. Why wouldn’t it be for a pompous ass like her.” Sofia chuckled, the nickname from camp already sticking with her. “Who even needs two vanities? Well, she does.” She opened a few drawers, curious but cautious, noting how every little thing had its place.

After taking it all in, she made her way back to the main room and sat on the edge of the bed. Sofia’s carefree, camp-spirited self could not help but feel a little out of place in the polished and prim world Jullianna belonged. Their difference in style and personality became glaringly obvious as she thought how she was supposed to pull this off. She sighed, standing up and glancing towards the closet again.

How does she even decide on an outfit every day? Her mind wandered over the pre-coordinated outfits hanging together back in the walk-in closet, and decided to just stick to those. Better safe than sorry. If it’s already paired, I can’t mess up…right?

“I’m going to need to ask her for a cheat sheet or something.” She mumbled, making another mental note to ask Jullianna for advice on how not to mess this all up.

For now, Sofia slid into one of the satin pajama sets and climbed into the soft, king sized bed. The covers felt impossibly smooth against her skin, like they were made of clouds. As she lay there, staring at the intricate ceiling design, she couldn’t help but laugh softly to herself.

“How am I supposed to keep up with this?” She murmured to herself, chuckling. “This is going to be really interesting.”

Sofia lay in the king sized bed, staring at the ceiling, hands tucked under her head. The room was dark and still, with only the faint glow of moonlight spilling through the large, curtained windows. She tried closing her eyes tightly, but her mind refused to settle, the unfamiliar surroundings, no matter how luxurious, only made her miss home more. She was not used to this kind of quiet, not the kind that made her thoughts louder than they needed to be.

She shifted slightly under the covers, hugging now the pillow closer. Every fiber of her being longed for the comforting presence of her father, the warmth of his voice when he wished her good night, the sound of his footsteps echoing through their home in Spain. Sofia’s breath hitched slightly when she suddenly heard faint footsteps outside the door, her heart raced as the sound grew closer, she shifted back into a sleeping position, shutting her eyes as she tried to even out her breathing.

The door creaked open gently, and you stepped inside, the soft light from the hallway spilling in for a brief moment before the door clicked shut again. Your eyes adjusted quickly to the dimness of the room, and your gaze immediately fell on the figure lying under the plush covers. You smiled to yourself, letting out a quiet sigh of relief.

“Fast asleep already.” You murmured softly, more to yourself than to anyone else.

Sofia’s heart ached at your voice. It was so tender, so maternal, and for a moment, she almost felt guilty for keeping up this act. You moved closer, your footsteps barely making a sound on the carpeted floor. Reaching the side of the bed, you lowered yourself carefully onto the edge, mindful not to disturb what you thought was your sleeping daughter.

The mattress dipped slightly under your weight, and Sofia felt it, but she remained perfectly still. You looked at her peaceful form, her dark lashes resting gently against her cheeks.

“My sweet girl,” you whispered, brushing a stray strand of hair away from her face. “You must’ve been so tired today, huh.”

Sofia’s chest tightened. She wanted to say something, to reach out to you, but she did not. Instead, she felt the warmth of your hand as it lingered for a moment on her hair, smoothing it gently.

“You always try to act so grown-up,” you continued softly, your voice filled with affection, “but you’ll always be my little girl, Lia. Don’t ever forget that.”

Sofia’s heart skipped at the name. It was not hers, but the tenderness in your tone made it feel like it could have been. You leaned down, pressing a light feather kiss, to her forehead, and she had to fight the sudden wave of emotion welling up inside her.

“Good night, my love.” You said softly, pulling back and standing up quietly.

You adjusted the covers slightly, ensuring she was tucked in before leaving the room. Sofia’s ears picked up every little sound, the soft rustle of fabric, faint creak of the floorboards, and finally, the gentle click of the door closing as you left the room.

Only when the silence returned did she open her eyes, staring up at the ceiling. Her fingers brushed the spot on her forehead where you had kissed her, and she swallowed hard.

“Good night.” She whispered into the darkness.

< taglist > @qghosty , @seonghwaexile , @linnygirl09

[espinosaurusrexex]

Bucky who starts a purely platonic physical touch giving friendship with reader… until it turns into more

･ﾟ✫* 𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑖 𝑚𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡  ｡✭･ﾟ

It starts off so innocently. Bucky just sat really close to you one day and noticed how the touch of your shoulder on his made him tingly all over.

The same happened when your hand brushed his, or you passed close by, and he caught a whiff of your hair - something that reminds him of the feeling he now seeks out when you’re around.

It’s no secret that either of you have been single a long time with basically no prospects for a future relationship, so no one questions when you and him suddenly hang out more.

He invites you over when you ask him if he was okay, and he realized that his day was in fact crappy and that if you offered to talk to him, he’d tell you all about it.

And when you sit on the sofa listening to Bucky talk, your hand instinctively found his and before Bucky knew it, his head was pressed into your shoulder, your nails raking over his scalp releasing a feeling within him, he can only describe as heavenly.

He loves it when you comfort him, and he loves comforting you, somehow knowing that you need this part of your friendship just as much as he does.

So it becomes a regular thing: when the rest of the team returns home to their spouses after a tiring mission, you and Bucky retreat to either one of your apartments under the pretense of not wanting to be alone.

Of course, neither of you planned for it to become so touchy and intimate... no, that would be insane, right?

It’s a normal afternoon for the two of you, hanging out at your place, a movie playing on TV, Bucky’s head buried in your chest as he lays half on top of you and you with your back against the sofa. Your hand rakes over his hair as his are halfway tugged beneath your body, seeking all the warmth he can get.

The physical touch aspect of your relationship has somehow crossed the lines between friends, but neither of you care. It feels too good to be held and protected to stop.

Bucky hasn't felt the caring touch of a partner in decades and you... well, let's just say that all men before Bucky didn't feel the need to express their love through aftercare - not that Bucky is in any way shape or form about to give said aftercare... no, you are just friends. Just. Friends.

Friends who frequently hide their hands in the other's jacket when the cold catches up to them.

Friends who bury their faces in each other's chest and lap like it is the most normal thing a person can do to another.

Friends who somehow always wonder if the other feels that spark ignite whenever they hold each other close.

Bucky feels the sensation when he's practically caging you beneath his upper body of the sofa. He lifts his head as he usually does to see if maybe this time he could magically hear your thoughts.

"What's up?"

He shakes his head. "I just really enjoy this." he mumbles and blushes, and your hand suddenly stops its path along his scalp.

"Me too." you smile and look into his eyes.

normally he'd put his head back, and you'd resume watching the movie, but something is different today.

maybe it's the way his hair looks perfectly tousled by your constant motions, or maybe it's the way he slowly blinks at you like a very comfortable pet.

but you finally find the courage to kiss him.

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