#just wanted to let you know you should listen to the song version

[ghostpebble]

"#i carry your heart with me by ee cummings"

i got to sing that with my choir and when i say the song does SO right by the poem, the story feels so much like pouring your heart out because you can't keep it all inside

Alright tell me in the tags, what’s Your Poem? That poem you heard once and it has dwelt within you ever since?

[divorcedfiddleford]

and you may say to yourself: "my god! what have i done?" and you may tell yourself: "this is not my beautiful wife!" and you may tell yourself: "this is not my beautiful house!" and you may ask yourself: "well, how did i get here?"

time isn't holding up, time isn't after us, time is a pony ride! (images described in alt text)

[autisticlee]

sometimes I think about how my cousin who was born a couple weeks after me and was basically raised with me was my only one and true best friend in life. he was like my twin brother. he was my favorite person. he was *my person* and my chosen family, despite being actual family. he was the only person ever in my life even til now to treat me correctly the way I want and need to be treated. my memories are fading from that time. I can barely remember specific or detailed moments of our time together. so I can't give specific examples of why I was so comfortable and happy being with him. but I still remember that feeling well. I remember how I felt playing with him and talking with him. it's a feeling I have been searching for my entire life since he moved away. but I have never found it again. never connected or binded with another person even close to this ever again.

i'm often asked what I want in a friend. what i'm looking for. because I only ever talk about bad parts of friendships and how they fail. but don't say what I WANT, only what I don't want. i...cant say. cant describe. I want what I had with my cousin. I want *that feeling* back. what was thar feeling? it's hard to describe a vague feeling or energy or vibe someone gives you. but I can try to the best of my bad memory....

he set the standard for how i want to be treated by others. he didn't treat me as different or less for being different from him. i'm autistic and dont think he is??? (maybe adhd tho. but memories are vague so who knows) he seemed more... "normal" than me (basically other people would have seen him as normal and me as a weord creature) felt like he always knew what to do and did everything right and Iearned from and copied him. he was the leader I gladly followed. he was extroverted and inspiring. I had more trust in him than anyone else in the whole world. I completely believed in him amd trusted him completely. he was more reliable than all the adults in our lives.

he treated me equally and well while the whole world kicked me when i was down. he never told me I can't do things, never pushed me away, never bullied me in any way. sure we had our disagreements and arguments, but the fact that I cant remember a single one when I remember ones from "friends" at school and other cousins during the same time means they were never serious and we made up easily and quickly.

he never said "ew girls can't do this" like every other boy I knew. I wasn't a girl to him. we were the same. completely equal. I could be and do everything he could. gender and all that stuff never mattered at all and baby nonbinary me who never felt like a girl from my earliest memories was so happy about it. its still the only time in my life i didnt have gender applied to me and it was the best. I didn't have to pretend to be a girl, prove I wasn't one, change how I looked or acted or anything to be taken seriously. he naturally saw me as equal, just like him, and treated me how I wanted. I didn't get stopped from things I liked for being afab. he let me play with his transformers and ninja turtles that I never got despite asking for them (I got barbies instead and hated them with a passion). he got me into pokemon while the boys at school ripped my pokemon stickers and keychains off my pencil case and bookbag, yelling "this isn't for girls!" he played video games with me when the boy cousins on the other side of the family pushed me out and locked the door yelling "video games are for boys only!" he played with me outside in the mud and exploring in the woods when the neighborhood boys yelled at me to go away because girls can't go on adventures or get dirty.

he never said "ew you're weird for this or that" like other kids did because i'm autistic. he accepted and adapted to me and made sure I was having fun and could keep up. he showed me new things he liked and learned about things I liked. he never made fun of me for not being able to do things like he did or for doing weird things like organizing his hot wheels every time i went to his house because he "didnt do it right" and i needed to fix it before we played something else. he was patient and caring and made sure I didn't fall behind and never left me behind. if I couldn't do something he couldn't, he encouraged me to try and helped if I wanted. or he would suggest something else.

there was never any pressure. no worry. no guessing. no pretending. he was so easy to just *be* with. I didn't have to try. he made it so easy. and he never showed any signs of thinking I was annoying or a burden or any trouble at all. he wanted to be around me and play with me just as much I did him. he was my twin and we were glued together. he was my other half. two peas in a pod. he filled in my missing gaps. he helped me be a whole person. he was my crutch to lean on. he matched me in every way. we fit together perfectly. he played video games, I loved to watch people play. he liked to do comedy skits, I loved to watch him do them. he was the funniest person I knew and made me laugh harder than anyone else. he loved to ride my scooter while I liked to ride his bike. everything worked out so smoothly and perfectly even when it didn't.

the feeling I got when I got to play with my favorite cousin, my favorite person, my best friend, made all the other struggles in my life melt away and seem easier to deal with.

then when we were, between 8-10 (can't remember exact age) his family moved away....that time being apart made us grow apart. we no longer grew our interests together. he changed while I stayed the same. I still remember the souk crushing feeling I got when I brought out our favorite pokemom toys first time he visited after a couple years, but he refused to play with them like we used to because he ~didn't do that anymore~ every visit he did or I did we were more different from each other and further apart. I was losing my best friend over again each time I saw him.....until the last time I saw him and he didn't even say a single word to me or really acknowledge I was even there. we became complete strangers. there was nothing connecting us anymore. the final thread had snapped and my memories of him started to fade since then. now they're disconnected feelings more than actual memories. sometimes I even wonder if that feeling is fading or is maybe not the same anymore....I'll never know.

my whole life since the day he moved away and I was unable to stay in contact with him has been me hoping and wishing and trying to find a person to replace him. I tried so hard. I never succeeded or even came close. I still hopelessly try. no one fits that space he left. no one is good enough. no one makes me feel that comfortable, accepted, free, happy. I fear i'll never get that back. no one in my family is like he was. none of the friends I ever had were like he was. no one ove met or talked to have been even close to what he was.

he has set the standards for every other person so high. i've desperately tried to take anyone. but they're never good enough. they never meet my standards my cousin created. I can't keep letting all these useless people in when they can't live up to him. but i'll never get what he was to me back again.

i'm always told "one day you'll find your people/the one/the right person/etc"

I think I found that person already. I already had "my person" and now he's gone because there's too much time and distance between us now.

I lost that person, way before I was ready. in fact I would never be ready. I need this kind of person for life. we needed to grow up together and stick together. but, we haven't spoken in at least 20 years now. I wouldn't know how anymore. he's a completely different person. while i'm still much the same probably. still searching for my old best friend, my twin, my soulmate in other things and people around me.....there's no way to make up for that lost time and end up where we left off. I can never get back what we had. I can never replace him. maybe it was just the childish innocence we had back then that made everything feel so..right. maybe it's all "rose colored glasses" and foggy memories. or maybe we were twin soulmates destined to be separated. who knows.

but I can't help but think how my life would be different now if he never moved away and we grew up together....

would it have turned out better? would I have suffered less? would he have stayed my best friend? would he have continued to give me the exact support and care I need in this world? would he have been the shoulder I could lean on that i've never had up to now? would we have stayed as twins? would I still have a best friend?

can never know. but i'm sure at least some of it would have stayed the same between us or have at least been better than whatever shit I have now. maybe we would have grown and changed together to still match. maybe he would still be my best friend I could go to at the end of the day for some laughs. maybe he would be able to help push me in the right direction. maybe I wouldn't feel so alone in this world filled with way too many people...maybe one day i'll find someone who can fill in the very unique and specific hole he left in my life and my soul that never healed...

but also, what if I don't... :( he, and my short time growing up with him truly were one of a kind, once in a lifetime experience

[sleepw-me]

BF HEADCANONS HQ ࣪ ִֶָ☾.── .✦

Haikyuu version SFW

t.kageyama⸝⸝ ♡ Definitely winter is his favorite season, when you are his girlfriend he will definitely want to do some winter activities with you, such as walking around the city with a nice composition of Christmas lights. building a snowman in his yard. Throwing snowballs at each other and taking you to a nice cafe for hot chocolate.

k.tsukishima⸝⸝ ♡ We all know by now that Tsuki likes music, I'm sure he would share his headphones with you so you could listen to music together at school. When you're at his place, you just spend time with him, while he's doing his homework and you're hugging his dinosaur-shaped stuffed animal, and there's some music playing in the background. He made a playlist for you, but at first he was embarrassed to show it to you, there were songs he associated with you.

t.yamaguchi⸝⸝ ♡ During the lesson, when he gets tired of listening to the teacher, he will start drawing cute hearts and flowers in the corners of your notebook with colored pens, and if you let him, he will draw a whole meadow on your hand. You can give him your shoes to decorate them nicely with colorful flowers and drawings.

d.sawamura⸝⸝ ♡ He probably didn't know what princess treatment was before, he was just well brought up and everything he does comes easily to him, he thinks that's how you should treat your ladies. When your shoe is untied, he kneels in front of you and ties it for you. He carries your shopping, your handbags too, but not in his hand, as if he was ashamed that someone would see him with your women's handbag, he literally throws it on his shoulder and walks with it just like you would.

a.azumane⸝⸝ ♡ He has long hair, so he always has a rubber band on his wrist, so if you need it, he will lend it to you and even tie your hair for you.

s.hinata⸝⸝ ♡ This sweet little orange bun remembers the smallest details about you, even if sometimes you feel like he's not listening anymore and you stop talking, he immediately encourages you to continue. He remembers every detail, your favorite number, your favorite and hated color, the name of your first cat and he will even remember the names of your entire family if you mentioned them.

k.kozume⸝⸝ ♡ He found the perfect person to cuddle with, it's you!. Expect that if you have a large sweatshirt, he will stick his head under it and play games. When he plays on the computer, he will invite you to sit on his lap and either watch him play or teach you how to play one of his favorite games, it's funny when she controls the mouse and you control the keyboard, you will definitely hear him chuckle when something goes wrong he will succeed but he is very patient.

t.kuroo⸝⸝ ♡ Sometimes you meet at his place to study for chemistry, then he wears his black glasses that make him look so good. If you don't understand a topic, he will teach you and if you answer correctly, he will give you a juicy kiss. If you need a break, he will bring you something sweet.

r.suna⸝⸝ ♡ He will definitely take a lot of photos of you to keep the memories. You will be his private model, he definitely has one of your photos where you are drooling on the pillow while still sleeping on his wallpaper. On his phone you will find the stupidest photos, for example your 0.5x photo. Until the prettiest ones, the ones where you smile so beautifully at him.

a.miya⸝⸝ ♡ Listen, I imagine Atsumu calling you very early in the morning to go to the beach with him. He will definitely take a few photos of you in your swimsuit, but most of all you will have a great time together, sunbathing or swimming, he will pretend to be a shark that wants to eat you so that you run away from him. When the sun is not so bright anymore, he will play beach volleyball with you, laughing when something goes wrong, but then he will teach you, he promise.

o.miya⸝⸝ ♡ He will invite you to his kitchen so that you can bake or cook something together and have great fun. So what if there's flour everywhere or something spilled on the floor, you'll clean it up later and now Osamu is busy kissing you while you wait for the dough to be made.

k.bokuto⸝⸝ ♡ If you stayed overnight at his place, don't think you'll sleep late if you wake up easily, because he'll start doing his morning stretches, doing push-ups, and encouraging you to sit on his back. He will sometimes ask you to join him, but you have barely woken up, but if you join him and stretch together, you must know that he will slow down on purpose so that you can keep up, he will be very happy.

a.akaashi⸝⸝ ♡ This sweet boy will read books to you but he will also be more than willing to listen to your voice if you read to him. He likes it when you lie on his lap and play a game while he rests the book on your head and you sit in comfortable silence.

k.sakusa⸝⸝ ♡ It's no surprise that this guy takes great care of himself and is glad that you do too. His favorite activity is when you spend the night at his place and do your skin care together, he likes it when you put a mask on his face and massage him gently.

[astonmartinii]

a very nonsense christmas | charles leclerc social media au

pairing: charles leclerc x fem singer!reader

face claim: sabrina carpenter

based on this request: Hi, how are you can you please write something with Charles x singer reader like a part 2 of "nonsense... or is it?" based on Santa doesn't know you like I do music video something very wholesome idk you can ignore this if you want, hope you have a good day/night 🤍 - @rana030

MASTERLIST | BUY ME A KO-FI? | PART ONE

yourusername

liked by maxverstappen1, charles_leclerc and 1,441,934 others

yourusername: do you hear those slay bells ringing? i love christmas so much that i'm giving you guys six new songs for this holiday season !!

view all comments

user1: mama is going straight on the nice list for this one

user2: christmas is saved

charles_leclerc: so proud of you cherie

yourusername: says the muse

charles_leclerc: you're my angel on the top of the tree

yourusername: as long as you're under the tree ready to be unwrapped

pierregasly: STOP

alexalbon: we MUST protect the sanctity of christmas

yourusername: oh alex, do not listen to the ep...

alexalbon: too late just pressed play

alexalbon: YOU NEED THE CHARLES DICKENS ???

yourusername: amazing word play, am i right?

alexalbon: no.

charles_leclerc: he doesn't meant that babe. lily has a commitment, he's just lonely

user3: y/n was like "if you weren't aware, i am getting DICKED DOWN for christmas"

user4: as much as i'd peel all of my skin off to be in either of their positions, good for her

maxverstappen1: i think nonsense christmas has single handedly killed my investigative journalism career. i am not analysing charles' massive sack

yourusername: damn right you won't be

charles_leclerc: maybe you should analyse it, you could learn something from it

maxverstappen1: hOW DARE YOU

yourusername

liked by taylorswift, charles_leclerc and 1,887,341 others

tagged: charles_leclerc, taylorswift & killatrav

yourusername: thank you to all the lovely people who came to the fruitcake release party ! xx

view all comments

user7: CHARLES AND TRAVIS IN ONE PLACE ALERT

user8: so does this mean we can get a y/n and charles appearance on the new heights podcast?

charles_leclerc: do you think people could tell i was about to pass out while playing the piano?

yourusername: definitely not !

maxverstappen1: yes we could

charles_leclerc: WHAT I WAS JUST NERVOUS AND I DIDN'T WANT TO LET Y/N DOWN AND TAYLOR WAS THERE SO I DIDN'T WANT TO EMBARRASS MYSELF

maxverstappen1: okay i didn't need the pity party. you were good, unfortunately very good. i need to learn piano now. i have to beat you in everything

yourusername: maybe you should've forgone the santa suit... it was quite warm

charles_leclerc: but you wanna be mrs claus ? (i also have a big north pole lol)

alexalbon: ENOUGH

user9: wait so like, was the grid at the release party?

user10: based on most of their instagram stories, and y/n's stories i'm gonna say yes

taylorswift: i had so much fun !! i love fruitcake and tell charlie his piano was great

charles_leclerc: SUCK ON THAT @maxverstappen1

taylorswift: ?

charles_leclerc: we've got bad blood taylor's version featuring kendrick lamar?

taylorswift: i see

maxverstappen1: he's the reason we can't have nice things

user11: someone free taylor from lestappen

killatrav: okay. the girls throw the best parties. esteban and pierre i own your team now, you guys gotta get better at drinking

yourusername: careful travis they're french ...

killtrav: is your boyfriend not also french? he's like a puppy dog

yourusername: HE'S MONAGASQUE

charles_leclerc: i am NOT french

estebanocon: i only threw up because eggnog is not what you guys advertise it to be

pierregasly: i'm not gonna lie i don't remember even seeing you last night

user12: okay so get invited to one of these parties is definitely on the bucket list now

charles_leclerc

liked by pierregasly, yourusername and 1,922,033 others

tagged: yourusername, killatrav

charles_leclerc: charles and travis 🤝 just happy we got a chance

view all comments

user13: if he's not like them i don't want it

user14: if santa doesn't pull through with a man like them under my tree this year ... imma be mad

killatrav: travis and charles 🤝 having girlfriends that make us giggle and swing our feet

charles_leclerc: does the honeymoon phase ever finish?

killtrav: well it definitely hasn't for me

maxverstappen1: NOOOOOOOOOOOO

alexalbon: say it ain't so

yourusername: haters gonna hate 😎

alexalbon: he is so happy it is bordering on insufferable

charles_leclerc: alex :(

alexalbon: i am very happy for you charlie and lily is definitely very happy for you, but if you talk to me for the TWELVE HOUR flight to brazil again i will terminate this friendship

killtrav: i am so confused

user15: poor travis and taylor are just being exposed to the grid chaos

yourusername: you posting this like i'm not the luckiest girl in the world

charles_leclerc: i just love you so much and i'm so glad you shortlisted me for your music video

yourusername: yeah spolier alert there was no shortlist. i wanted you and i didn't want to get out right rejected...

charles_leclerc: as if i would reject any offer from you i think i would've torn down maranello if they said i wasn't allowed to be in it

scuderiaferrari: ?

user16: i'm so obsessed with how much charles has embraced the wag life

user17: can't believe i get to live a life where i can bop along to music about how good in bed charles leclerc is

user18: they better not break up cause i may be tifosi but i shall be streaming

yourusername added to their story

yourusername

liked by taylorswift, charles_leclerc and 1,833,922 others

tagged: charles_leclerc

yourusername: santa doesn't know you like i do baby

view all comments

user21: all i want for christmas is even more y/n and charles content

user22: mum and dad have kept us fed over the winter break

user23: i'm not ready for them to be separated when the season starts again :(

charles_leclerc: not to be that person but we're so hot

yourusername: no, you should say it louder

charles_leclerc: WE'RE HOT

maxverstappen1: can you people knock it off or we're not coming to your christmas party

yourusername: ERM ??? 🫤

alexalbon: you people have single handedly made me the grinch

yourusername: but but but ??? you all begged for an invite :(

charles_leclerc: FAKE and that's why you're all getting coal from us

user24: my god i am so lonely

user25: if i don't wake up to a charles shape gift under my tree i will not make it to next christmas

danielricciardo: just to be sure, this party is not going to be filmed and turned into a music video?

yourusername: it's just an old-fashioned shin dig girly don't worry

yourusername: or by the tone of this, should i be worried?

danielricciardo: no!

charles_leclerc: do NOT ruin my home please

danielricciardo: no promises xoxoxo

user26: y/n might want to film the party but I NEED THE FOOTAGE

user27: @tedkravitz boy do i have a gig for you

danielricciardo

liked by maxverstappen1, charles_leclerc and 1,093,445 others

tagged: charles_leclerc & yourusername

danielricciardo: do NOT drink the eggnog at a y/n christmas party this is a public safety announcement

view all comments

user28: i would commit unspeakable crimes to be present here

yourusername: if you weren't a fake fan you would've listened to fruitcake and would know we spike the eggnog 🤷‍♀️

danielricciardo: i am a fan !!!!!!!!!

yourusername: you asked me and yuki how we escaped the north pole last night

yukitsunoda0511: don't think i've forgotten about that, say goodbye to a tow in quali old man

danielricciardo: IT WAS A COMPLIMENT ELVES ARE CUTE?

charles_leclerc: don't call my girlfriend cute that's my job 🤨

danielricciardo: do you people ever let me live? i am battling a hangover like no other please stop shouting at me

charles_leclerc: maybe someone of your old age should manage his drink better

danielricciardo: THAT'S IT I'M GOING

yourusername: thanks we did actually want the kitchen floor back

user29: daniel calling y/n and yuki elves kills me

yourusername: we're not elf height we're cutie patootie height 💅

yukitsunoda0511: amen

alexalbon: i will endure the torture because that was fucking insane

maxverstappen1: @yourusername you're in charge of all after parties now sorry

yourusername: let charlie win and you got a deal

maxverstappen1: i'd rather drink my gin and tonic in a ditch than let that happen

charles_leclerc: BOOO

alexalbon: cocktail recipe immediately @yourusername

yourusername: you've changed your tune ?

alexalbon: i had fun, sue me. plus i am actually happy for charlie but please no more singing about his dick

yourusername: i can't make any promises

charles_leclerc: and there's plenty of material to get the creative juices flowing

alexalbon: FUCK OFF

maxverstappen1: FUCK OFF

user30: the grid will never know peace, not even at christmas time

charles_leclerc

liked by taylorswift, yourusername and 1,893,446 others

tagged: yourusername

charles_leclerc: nothing like the holidays with the love of your life

view all comments

user35: how down bad all men should be

yourusername: best holidays ever !!!! love you charlie xx

charles_leclerc: my christmas wish last year came true, and now you're stuck with me

yourusername: no one i would rather be stuck with

charles_leclerc: I LOVE YOU

yourusername: I LOVE YOU MORE

user36: good thing i got presents this year or the sheer sight of this couple would make me so jealous i would spontaneously combust

user37: real

landonorris: you will see to the crime of the stupid amount of mistletoe you had up at that damn party

charles_leclerc: have you seen y/n? (don't answer that) obviously i want any excuse to kiss her

landonorris: i DON'T CARE I HAD TO KISS DANIEL FIVE TIMES I WILL NEVER RECOVER

danielricciardo: i know you enjoyed baby

landonorris: @yourusername @charles_leclerc YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS

yourusername: idk it looked like you enjoyed it to me

landonorris: you WATCHED?

yourusername: i filmed it :) top blackmail material, don't crash into charlie OR ELSE

charles_leclerc: thanks babe

landonorris: @georgerussell63 get the gdpa to intervene nOW

georgerussell63: eh i'm quite entertained

user38: this really is the giving season huh

arthurleclerc: do i mean nothing to you?

charles_leclerc: you're nowhere near as cute as y/n 🤷‍♀️

yourusername: awwwww charlie

arthurleclerc: EXCUSE ME? WHAT HAPPENED TO CHRISTMAS SPIRIT?

user39: charles is really ride or die lol

note: have a very merry christmas! i hope you guys all have a great holiday season and enjoy this quick one! i've been super busy but wanted to give you all a lil christmas treat - much love xx

[emsdevs]

If you had "dragged" Jack to the Eras tour he would have pulled out a bracelet he made based on your favorite song. It's a little sloppy but it's the thought that counts. He maybe also got you a clear bracelet to signify your invisible string and held you extra close when she performed it.

a/n: so sorry for the wait nonnie! I hope you like it still because I had wayyy too much fun with this one 🫶

All Too Nervous (Jack's Version)

Jack had been quiet all day. Well, he’s been quiet for the past week or so really. You thought he was excited to go to the Eras Tour with you, but now you weren’t so sure. He’d sat through the grueling ticket-buying process with you, even made you use his card. He had let you buy him matching outfits as well. Jack didn’t want to do anything too crazy for his half, telling you it would be your night so you should be the star of the show. While you had gotten the cutest custom bodysuit, boots, and karma jacket (in Devils’ colors of course), he simply wore a t-shirt with “KARMA” across the chest paired with his favorite pair of jeans and his well-worn AirForces. The outfits were even his idea, taking inspiration from the line “karma is my boyfriend.” 

What you couldn’t understand is why he suddenly seemed so hesitant to go. He was much quieter than usual, and it almost seemed like he was avoiding you for the past week or so. Now, the two of you were in an Uber, heading to MetLife for the show, and it feels like Jack is somewhere else. He has his knees facing away from you, and the only reason you two are even touching is because you grabbed his hand.

————————————————————————

Jack was a nervous wreck. If he’s this nervous about something so small and possibly insignificant, how bad will it be when he proposes? He feels like he might throw up, and he’s not sure why. You’ve always made him a little nervous. He’s always wanted to impress you, but it had never been this bad, not even when he kissed you for the first time. The worst part is that he didn’t even know when he should do it. Should he do it when you two arrive at the stadium? Should it be in between sets? Should he do it during “Love Story”? No, that’s too much like a proposal. Does she perform your favorite song? He could do it then. No, then you would miss your favorite song. He was spiraling while you were excited to see one of your favorite artists. He should not be freaking out so much over a friendship bracelet.

He’d spent the last week and a half working himself to the bone to make a bracelet perfect. He knew trading friendship bracelets was a big part of the fan experience at these shows, and you had mentioned that you’d be making a few to trade and give out. That gave Jack the idea to make you a special bracelet, from him to you. He spent a concerning amount of money on beads and strings, and he listened to more Taylor Swift in that time than he had in his entire life. 

Every chance he got, he was sitting at his kitchen table, trying his best to make a bracelet he thought would be worthy of sitting on your wrist. In between practices, before games, after games, no matter the time it was, if he was free, he was making your bracelet. The first one he made broke two seconds after he cleaned everything up. The second one, he just hated. He couldn’t give a reason, but he did not like it. The third he thought was perfect until he noticed half the letters were upside down.

He set in on the fourth bracelet, really taking his time. He took little details from your favorite songs and added the colors of your favorite albums. Eventually, he had a bracelet he was proud of, mostly. He knew it wasn’t perfect, and that was the main cause of his worries. He had run out of time, unable to make a fifth like he wished he could. This one was okay. It was cute but simple, and Jack knew he could do better. However, this would have to be the one he gives to you tonight, so he could only hope that you’ll like it.

————————————————————————

You and Jack had finally arrived at MetLife. You were walking to the line, ready to inside, when he grabbed your hand, pulling you aside. Just when you open your mouth to tell him the line is the other way, you notice the nervousness on his face and the way he’s keeping his hands stuffed in his pockets. 

“I umm… I wanna give you something before we go in. It’s not much, but I… I thought you might like it, and… yeah,” he felt like he couldn’t breathe, terrified you’d hate it. He pulls the bracelet from his pocket, slowly placing it in your now-opened hand. You weren’t saying much, only staring at the bracelet in your palm. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not the best, but I just wanted to do something for you. The beads are kinda of see-through, so you can see the string I used. It’s um… it’s one of the clear ones so it’s like all of our invisible strings. I tried to use the colors from your favorite album too since they’re all color-coded ya know? And-” he was stopped in his tracks when you looked up at him with that bright smile he loves to be the cause of.

“Jack, you made this for me?”  you look away from the blush that’s spread from his neck to his cheeks and the tips of his ears in favor of looking at the bracelet again. He wasn’t lying, you had seen and made better bracelets than this, but none of them meant what this one did. It had colorful, transparent beads in no specific order to pattern, and you could see the clear string he had used to tie them all together through them. In the middle of all the beads were three little white beads with letters on them, Jack's initial and your initial with a heart in between. Honestly, it looks like something an elementary school boy might give to his crush on Valentine’s Day, but you loved it all the same.

“Yeah! I uh spent a lot more time on it than I’m ready to admit,” he let out a chuckle hoping some of his nerves would go with it.

“I love it, Jack. It’s perfect,” you hug him tightly, kissing his cheek as you go in for the hug. You can feel the sigh of relief he lets out at your reaction.

“I’m so glad you like it. Let me help you put it on,” he pulls back grabbing your hand that had no bracelets on the wrist, ready to receive them in trades. He grabs the bracelet, moving to put it on your wrist when he notices something off. “Wait! Is the J upside down? Are you kidding me? I tried so hard to get all the letters the same way on that one,” he sighs as the bracelet finally sits on your wrist where it belongs.

“That one? Did you make more than one, J?”

“Let’s not talk about it. Aren’t you supposed to be giving me a bracelet now? That’s how trading works, Babe.”

You giggle before pulling the perfect bracelet off of your other wrist. You had made it with Jack in mind. It was filled with light green and a few light teal beads, the letter beads in the center reading “OUR SONG”. It was one of Jack’s favorite Taylor Swift songs, and although he’d never admit it to anyone, you two sang it to each other quite often. Well, it was more like you were yelling the lyrics at each other, but you two were having fun. You cherished the smile on his face when he realized what song the bracelet was themed after before grabbing his hand and pulling him toward the line.

————————————————————————

That was easily the best night of your life. You were practically buzzing by the time the timer had counted down, and when Taylor popped up from the floor, Jack was wondering how well he’d be able to hear at the end of the night after all your screaming. You two had swayed together during “Lover”, singing to each other while your head lay on Jack’s shoulder. You sang “Fearless” to him, telling him it always makes you think of him (“You run your finger through your hair, absent-mindedly making me want you”? If that isn’t Jack what is?), and he sang “Love Story” to you. You both dramatically sang “tolerate it” to one another, pretending you could relate. When the “reputation” set started, Jack was sure he’d lose his hearing. Either way, both of you were jamming out to every song in the set, Jack being a little more excited for “Look What You Made Me Do” since it reminds him of his career. 

The “Speak Now” era began, and you both sang your heart out to the only song in the set. “Enchanted” had been on your and Jack’s shared playlist since you got together, so it was a little surreal to be singing it with Taylor. In the “Red” era you were lucky enough to get a song added to the setlist, “Nothing New” with Phoebe Bridgers. Soon, you were in “folklore” and singing and dancing to every song. Next was the era you had been waiting for, “1989”. The entire album made you think of Jack, and it was one of the first you were able to talk him into listening to. You screamed the lyrics of “Style” and “Blank Space” to one another, dancing to “Shake It Off” and adding more drama for the “Wildest Dreams” and “Bad Blood” mashup.

Finally, it was time for the surprise songs. Before Taylor even sang anything, she debuted the “Karma” music video with Ice Spice. When she grabbed her guitar, you couldn’t believe your ears. She had begun playing one of your favorite songs, “Getaway Car”, and Jack Antonoff came on stage to help her perform it. When she moved to the piano, she played a song that Jack loved, “Maroon.” When you two finally made it home, you were still reeling.

“Did you enjoy your night, Baby?” Jack asked as he knelt to take your boots off for you.“I had the best night, Jacky! Thank you so so so much! I can’t believe we got all the surprises that we did!” you were still bouncing off the walls, although exhaustion was starting to settle in. After Jack took care of your boots, you both began undressing so you could get ready for bed. Jack watched you carefully take off the bracelet he had given you, placing it in your jewelry box with all the nicest jewelry you own. He’s sure he felt his heart stutter at that moment, but he ignored it in favor of getting ready for bed. Soon, you were both cuddled up in bed, sharing your favorite parts of the night before falling asleep, still tangled up in each other.

tags: @heartsforjh @fofiquierellorar @justxpaulina @alex-wotton @devilinpradaheels

join the taglist

[httpknjoon]

an awful good girl | myg

plot | that time in december of their tour where popstar!yn sang while sitting on santa's lap. (but who's santa anyway?)

w.c | 4K+

pairing | bass guitarist!yoongi x popstar!reader

genre | fluff, enemies to lovers

note | supposed to be another song but loved this one more. also, a little manhandling somewhere there... ps. i was listening to earth kitt's version of this song before switching. hence why some parts made it here.

main masterlist | series masterlist | want to request?

DAY 64 of Love Is.. On Tour

For your first December concert in Love Is... On Tour, you prepare a themed costume and performances for your fans. But a surprise song became the highlight tonight.

@.JUN0BABY: can someone tell me what's going on tonight??!?

@.t4asteme: WTF WDYM YN GAVE A LAP DANCE ON STAGE TONIGHT

--@.THEB0YISDIVIN3: she just sat on santa's lap

@.pov.yn: siri play that should be me by justin bieber

@.3435outro: as someone who's bi, idk if i'm jealous of yoongi or yn

@.FredInTheDrums: lol santa won tonight [insert picture from the stage]

@.0nlyangelz: her bassist is so hot i can't blame her 🥵

@.loveisviscious: lol how can they do shit like this

--@.BEDCHEMENTHUSIAST: ikr?! they are prolly really good friends

---@.YNFan37489265: we <3 that yn-yoongi friendship

But how did the concert even led to these tweets?

"Okay, band, gather in."

Before the band could go on their ride back to the hotel, Paul, the tour's wardrobe supervisor, called them to the wardrobe department's area. Exhausted from just performing, Yoongi slumped on the blue couch next to Noah, who was probably the only one still having the energy from the rest of the band.

"What's up?" Akio, the band's keyboardist, asked since she had been craving to go back to her bed.

Paul clapped his hands, "Okay, so you know that days from now is December. And we only have four concert dates left before the holiday break, right?"

The band members nod in answer.

"Good. So, each concert date will have different Christmas themes for these last dates. The first one will be Santa's workshop. And I just need you to pick your characters through the fishbowl method again." Paul explained, reaching for a cup filled with folded papers.

Having themed events is not really new with the band. During Halloween week, you did the same thing. You had two concerts then and decided to turn them into fun costume parties for your staff and fans. Yoongi, who was never lucky with the fishbowl method, got to be the Danny Zuko to your dreamy Sandy Olsson. They were only a week old on the tour at that time and the couple-costume made some rumors that eventually died down after you told the backstory during the same concert.

"Do you want to look at your characters or do you want it to be a surprise?" Paul asked.

Noah and Fred answered at the same time, "Surprise! Make it a surprise."

Both Yoongi and Akio just let them. Yoongi does not really care, while Akio is just dozed off on his shoulder. He tapped her knee to wake her up when Paul began making them pick a paper. After that, they handed back their secret characters to him one by one while he listed them down in his mini notepad.

"Okay, you are now free to go. You'll see your characters in the next performance. I already have your measurements anyway." Paul concluded, knowing how much the band had been dreading to rest.

The band got up and walked out of the room. On their way to their van outside, Fred and Noah were having fun teasing the youngest, Akio, like her little brothers. She groaned at their energy to wake her up. Yoongi walked behind them, busy on his phone, reading some text messages he missed during the concert. Most of them were from his friends and colleagues inviting him to work with them. But one message stopped Yoongi for a second.

From (555) 436-*22*

Hello, Yoongi. S, here. New number. Need to talk to you about something. Please call as soon as you see this.

It was a new number on his phone. But he can already recognize who sent it. Suddenly, his heartbeats were louder than his bandmates' laughs while he stared at the message in front of him. His jaw tightened when he read the text message once again. What does she want now?

"Hey, guys!"

All of a sudden, he hears your voice, greeting the band. He looked up, pushing his phone back to his pockets. You are now back in your oversized grey sweatshirt, after wearing your sparkly outfits all night.

"Did Paul already tell you about the costumes?" you asked, striking a small conversation with them.

You, yourself, are on your way to Paul to talk about your wardrobe for December performances. Costumes and themed parties are always your thing, so you try to do them at every chance you get. Cal stood next to you, busy on her phone for your schedule.

"Yeah, but we just picked some random paper. Then, asked Paul to just surprise us with our characters." Fred replies.

"Oh, that's exciting." you smiled.

You began talking about your plans for the next Christmas themes, making Noah excited as he is another big enthusiast of the holidays. Yoongi watched quietly on the sidelines. You two barely had any interaction since you cried on stage while singing POV, which was three days ago. It was too peaceful between the two of you, no arguments at all. On stage, you have interacted more with Akio or Noah. Not like he minds at all! It's just that it feels like you are avoiding him. You laughed around with everyone in the band during the show and rehearsals except him. He remembered you were being chatty with him before the rehearsals for POV days ago.

"And I got this new notebook, so like I took it as a sign to write new songs! I already have Christmas-themed ones, just need some help with producing them so I can release them before we take a break," you shared with the band, breaking Yoongi's thoughts.

The notebook! You got them. That's good to know. Yoongi did not really know if you got that souvenir notebook he left on your door as a peace offering gift since you haven't really said anything about it. He felt bad making you cry, although that was not his goal, and he didn't know what to get you since his options were limited at the time. He wanted to apologize and talk to you personally but you were always busy and he didn't know how, where, and when can he approach you.

"I know a guy for that!" Fred exclaimed, turning around. "Yoongi, you can help with YN with that, right?"

For the first time in a couple of days, you looked directly at him. It was like there was a switch. Your smile dropped and you blankly stared at him.

Caught in surprise, Yoongi looked away, "Yeah... Yeah, sure. I can help if she wants me to."

Although they won't speak about it, everyone, along with Cal and the other band members, can feel that there is some weird tension between you and Yoongi these last couple of days. There was no petty argument even though there are times that it can potentially start. Like when Yoongi accidentally knocked over your water bottle, you didn't say anything, which is unusual. Because normally, you would make a big deal out of it and Yoongi would fight back, making a bigger deal with it. But nothing, nada. You two were just robots around each other.

"It's fine, I still have other holiday songs that I can cover later these days." you smiled back to his friends. "Anyway, I won't hold you guys longer. I know that you want to rest already— Aren't we all?"

His friends laughed. You continued, "But thank you, guys. I had the best show tonight. I think the fans enjoyed Bed Chem the most."

Oh, yeah. That performance earlier where you invited Noah for the outro part of that song. It was wilder than what you did with Yoongi since behind the curtains, your silhouettes were shown taking each other clothes before getting into a suggestive pose, which you and Noah have fun doing since it was nothing but for entertainment. You are closest with him in the band since he was the only one who stayed from your past band. Plus, he is gay and everyone knows it.

Without any reason in mind, Yoongi's face felt so hot watching the scene, he had to look away.

Two days passed by quickly, you and the entire crew are now in another city. You left the hotel earlier than usual since you were excited to try on the costumes Paul made.

"Oh my god. This is so cute!" you exclaimed, checking yourself out in front of the mirror.

It was a red mini dress with a heart cutout in the chest area. Its upper and lower hems are lined with white fur. Paul even sewed silver gemstones everywhere, still in the theme of your sparkly aesthetic. You also have the matching gloves that equally looked perfect.

"I'll just show you the other ones every rehearsal." your wardrobe supervisor said. "Just to keep you coming here excited."

"I am always excited coming here to see your creations," you told him, twirling in front of the mirror. "How's the band's costumes?"

Paul pulled a rack of costumes that were made for your live band. There are two sets of costumes for the elves, a brown onesie and headband for Rudolph, and a red sparkly suit, matching yours, for Santa Claus. The faux white beard was ditched as it might disturb the member's performance.

"So, who's my Santa for tonight?" you smiled.

The surprise performance you planned for later needs a Santa. So, other than your costume, you were also excited to know who got the special role. You don't really mind who it is since you get along with almost everyone—

"Yoongi."

2:37 PM

You looked at the time on the upper right of your phone screen. The call time was exactly thirty-seven minutes ago. Initially, the rehearsals for the surprise performance will be practiced first since it is a new addition to the setlist. But Yoongi said he'll be late for a few minutes. So, they moved to doing a soundcheck for other songs. But it has been five songs without her bass guitarist. Where is Yoongi? He has never been this late before. You walked up to Cal, who was talking with Art.

"Should we just change San-"

"Sorry, I'm late."

As if on cue, Yoongi walked on the stage with his guitar. He looked different, you thought. Maybe because it was your first time seeing his flowy, black hair in a man bun, which you won't admit looks good on him. You rolled your eyes at thinking that. Yoongi went straight to his usual spot in the band. He was setting up his guitar when you walked up to him.

"You're almost an hour late," you told him, crossing your arms over your chest.

"I know, that's why I said sorry," he replied nonchalantly, looking down at his guitar. "I told Art that I am going to be late-"

For the thousandth time, he is avoiding looking at you again. You remembered him looking away nights ago when Fred asked Yoongi if he could help you produce your self-written songs. He was also doing the same thing for like two weeks now.

"Why can't you look at me?!"

Like a volcano that erupted unexpectedly, you cut him off. Everyone watched in silence at you and Yoongi. Your brows were furrowed as you stared at him. But instead of glaring back at you, Yoongi just replied, unbothered.

"As if you weren't avoiding me these past few days?"

You blinked, "Uh... I'm not."

Thank God liars don't really get their pants on fire when they lie in real life, because you would end up burning your legs if they do.

"Yoongi, YN, please follow me. Now." Art suddenly spoke.

He's mad,. You rarely see the older guy look serious. You looked at Cal, who simply tilted her head to Art, raising an eyebrow like she was telling you to follow him. You walked when Yoongi walked past you to where Art was going.

No one spoke as you two walked behind Art. But both you and Yoongi can feel the atmosphere feeling like you two are second graders who are about to get a lecture from your teacher. Maybe get sent to detention. Art stopped in one of the vacant dressing rooms at the arena. He opened the door for you two. he did not say anything but you and Yoongi took it as a sign that he wants you to go in first.

"Please occupy the couch— the same couch." he had to correct himself when you and Yoongi sat on a different sofa that was on each wall of the room. He sighed, kids.

Following what Art said, you and your least favorite band member sat on opposite ends of the couch. An obvious three-feet distance is between you two. Your tour manager reached for a monoblock chair, sitting before you.

"I have had enough of this whole eye contact thing, okay? We have to solve this here and now. It's wasting everyone's time." Art spoke sternly like he was a dad for both you and Yoongi. "Who can tell me what's the problem?"

"He won't give me any eye contact when he talks to me," you said, trying not to sound too bratty or childish.

Yoongi crossed his arms, "Two weeks ago, she was telling me not to look at her and now, she's asking why I'm not looking. I'm just doing what she wants me to do."

Art nods, then looks at you.

"He was staring too hard that day, it was uncomfortable. And I didn't mean for him not to look at me at normal conversations on the daily." you defended.

"We never had any normal conversations." your bassist mumbled lowly, making you roll your eyes.

Art intervened before another fight ensued, "So, what do you want now, YN?"

"I... I just want him to look at me when we're talking..." your volume gets lower when you realise how that statement felt a little needy.

It was like you heard Yoongi put on a smug smirk (if that was even possible), and you turned your head to him just to confirm that yes, he had that stupid smirk on his lips.

"We never see each other eye to eye. Why are you so bothered about it?" he asked.

Before you could pause and ask yourself the same question, you replied, "Uhm, eye contact is part of having a proper human conversation. I mean, it just feels like I am being ignored when I can't see the eyes of the person I'm talking with."

What the hell even is that answer? You mentally slapped your forehead.

"Yeah, you would know something about ignoring someone, right?" Yoongi scoffed.

You looked at Yoongi, who is now looking back at you. Art is starting to feel that this is something deeper than the eye contact thing.

"Should I leave you two alone?" he asked, more careful this time.

"Yes."

Yoongi was the first to answer, being firm with it. You were taken aback for a second by how quick he was but nodded when Art turned to you to get your answer.

"Fine, I'll give you five minutes. Then, everything should be good and we'll go back to rehearsals." Art stood up.

Yoongi waited for him to close the door before turning to you. He wasted no time.

"I'm sorry."

Confused, you squinted, "For... what?"

That was not what you expected you hear from him when he agreed to talk with you alone here. You thought he would just keep on implying that you were the issue and confusing.

Yoongi sighed, "I'm sorry for saying what I said when we were in rehearsals for POV. It was not my intention to make you cry while performing it."

"Oh..." you gulped. That was not his fault. "It's a decision I made, I just got carried away, that's all."

You know that there is something more to that, but you hate to sit and drown yourself alone with your feelings. So, you won't do that today.

"Yeah, I know. But I feel like I pushed you into it. That's why you were ignoring me. Right?" Yoongi added. "I know that everything is probably still—"

"You know what? It's fine, it's okay. I appreciate your apology. But really, it's not fully on you. Let's just move forward from this." you cut him off before he can say more things.

He looked at you for a moment, like he was studying you. You hate it. That is what you mean when you say you don't like him looking at you. It was like he could see right through your lies. Like some magician.

"Please stop staring," you whispered, feeling a little small. "Don't stare like you are reading me like a book."

His stare softened when you said that. Nodding, he looks away.

You quickly spoke, "But you can look at me! Just... don't stare too hard. I'm not that kind of diva."

He chuckled, "Okay."

"Okay." you sighed. There are things that are still not discussed but you can probably talk about it next time or whatever. As you felt the awkward silence filling in the room, you asked. "Are we back to normal?"

"Yeah."

By normal, it means professional colleagues who probably still have a very tiny animosity due to their differences. Because normal, to you and Yoongi, is not being friends. You are not friends, just two people who need each other for your jobs. But now, you are about to sit on your bass guitarist's lap for a performance later.

"Are you comfortable with this?" you asked him after letting him know that he would be involved as Santa tonight.

"You're just gonna sit on my lap?" he asked with a blank expression.

"Yeah," you replied shortly.

It was supposed to be something freakier than that but considering the unexpected changes earlier in your tour, you changed whatever that is into a simple sit on Santa's lap.

"Okay."

Everyone can feel the tension lifting from you and Yoongi the moment you two returned with Art. You were communicating at each other better and they could see it especially when you began rehearsing for Santa Baby.

The dancers and other band members were teasing and laughing when you two began with your bit on Santa's throne. Yoongi was quiet, but smiling at some parts. You, on the other hand, were playing along, loving the energy with your crew. You were back in your playful persona while dancing around Santa, teasing him, just to make others entertained.

You were enjoying the song, Yoongi understands. But you cannot stop unconsciously wiggling on his open lap and you were getting dangerously close to him, while he is wearing his grey sweatpants. He just have to do something.

"Santa baby— oh."

You gasped at Yoongi's sudden pull down on your waist, making you stay in the same spot on his lap. You looked at him, instantly recognizing the slight tint of blush on his cheeks.

"Just stay here," he whispered with his voice lower than usual.

"Oh, okay... sorry." you pressed your lips together before looking away to smile at something else.

"Just don't move around too much." he added before removing his hold on your.

You nodded, "Noted."

"Good." He whispered under his breath.

"Of course, we won't let this night end without a surprise gift for you!"

The fans screamed as you announced that. You have been performing for almost an hour now. four outfit changes later, you are now in a sparkly, red cloak with faux fur on its hem, hiding your themed outfit underneath. Your surprise holiday performance is conveniently placed in the final performance of the night.

"Hit it!"

As a signal, you posed, raising your index finger and putting your candy cane before you. The local barbershop quartet that you hired for your four December shows began singing.

"Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom..."

Once the instrumental of the classic, sultry Christmas song began, Yoongi watched you turn around, instantly meeting his eyes. Unlike before, the director are now aware of your actions since you promised to follow what was rehearsed.

"Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom…"

In every ba-boom, you step closer to Yoongi with your candy cane. The corners of your lips are curved up slightly. Your eyes say nothing but mischief that Yoongi can only hope that you will not do anything that can make him trend online. Like when you did your favorite freaky position before him.

"Santa, baby. Slip a Sable under the tree for me..."

The fans cheered when your soft voice began singing. You are an angel with the spotlight serving as a bright halo behind you, Yoongi thought. Whenever you sing to him during these live shows, Yoongi sometimes finds himself getting transported to another space. Maybe it's because of the light... the songs... the atmosphere... or the way you nod your head in every word you sing like you mean it. It's hypnotizing.

"I've been an awful good girl..."

By that line, you are already next to him, leaning your back to his side like you are in distress. You continued singing next to him, while a famous Santa Claus throne was being put up on the farther heart-shaped centerstage.

"Santa, baby, a '54 convertible too, light blue. I'll wait up for you, dear..."

Yoongi bobbed his head along with you while playing his guitar, seemingly enjoying the song.

"Think of all the fun I've missed, Think of all the fellas that I haven't kissed..."

You began walking around the band and all over the stage, singing to your fans who joyfully sang along with you.

"Next year, I could be just as good. If you check off my Christmas list..."

You took the time to sing and bond with them, giggling at the funny signs they brought with them.

"Santa, honey, So hurry down the chimney tonight..."

While moving to the song's fourth verse, you walked back to Yoongi. The fans screamed when you playfully teased him with your candy cane, before pulling yourself closer to him. You clung to his arm and you two walked down to the center stage.

"Come and trim my Christmas tree, With some decorations bought at Tiffany's..."

While singing, you pushed Yoongi to sit on the throne. He acted like he would stand up but you pushed him again, placing your candy cane on his lap. Finally, you dramatically remove your cloak, revealing your shimmering your mini-dress.

"I really do believe in you, Let's see if you believe in me..."

You danced around the throne, leaning over it before finding your way back to Santa. Yoongi mentally prepares himself, and even adjusts his pants.

"Santa, baby, forgot to mention one little thing, a ring..."

As soon as you found your place on his lap, your audience went crazy. You continued singing, facing Yoongi, your Santa for tonight. You pointed to your empty ring finger. Yoongi was just vibing along to your singing, swaying his head along.

"Santa, baby, and hurry down the chimney tonight..."

But you were so into the song that you forgot what Yoongi told you earlier. You kept wiggling on his lap once again, singing along with your fans. Screams erupted when Yoongi held your waist. You felt his hand firmly holding you down, making sure that you would sit still. Although taken aback for a second, you smiled and felt blood rushing through your cheeks.

"Waiting... Hurry, tonight... Hurry down the chimney tonight."

When you sang those last lines, you acted like whispering it close to Yoongi's ear. leaning a little closer to him. Yoongi simply raised an eyebrow, an action enough to get loud reactions.

The lights slowly dimmed down with you still sitting on his lap. Fans cheered for the last time, knowing that it was the last song. But suddenly, a familiar tune plays in the whole arena.

"You didn't think that was all, right?"

note | i received your requests and i'm working on it. but please know that holiday-themed drabbles are currently prioritised 🥹 tysm for the love

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PERMANENT TAGLIST (CLOSED)

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[thewhizzyhead]

how genderbending the warriors (2024) is done not for the sole sake of "bad-assery"

okay here we go feminist ramble time for our newest chick on the block: warriors. now i'll be honest, prior to listening to the album, when i first heard that the warriors main girls were originally dudes in the movie and the novel, i thought that the decision for the genderbending, in lmm's perspective, were from the following: 1.) girl power move in like a very basic meaning of the word "bad-ass" 2.) simply a twist on a cult movie about big gang bros loved by the film bros, and 3.) a way to have the schuyler sisters back together gjfkdfldf

but when i read more about warriors and its development and how lmm took inspiration from the gamergate controversies of 2014-2015 aka among the peak of gamerbro misogyny campaigns, that's when i realized that Oh Shit Is Serious - because adapting a story about a group being framed and targeted and harassed for something they are accused of doing without any substantial proof other than a man screaming "THE WARRIORS SHOT CYYYYRUUS" with 21st century misogyny campaigns in mind makes the theme of fighting back a lot more complicated and a lot more resonant, going beyond just marketing a cast you can call "badass"

take the hurricanes' quiet girls, for example. the hurricanes (concept album version) is the only gang that lets the warriors off the hook and with a stern warning: quiet girls don't make it home. here, the hurricanes berate the warriors for not saying shit or attempting to defend themselves from accusations they know well aren't true. THIS MESSAGE IN PARTICULAR is what stays and influences ajax, fox, and swan til the very end of their stories.

literally one song after this does ajax show how easily she resonated with the hurricanes' lesson by finally sticking with her gut and actually choosing to fight back against both the baseball furies AND against the sleazy undercover cop. the latter encounter is one of the instances that really solidifies the recontextualization of the story because in the OG movie, ajax (a dude) WAS the sleazy fuck up harassing a woman in a park - and now with the literal character switch, ajax goes from being just a rebellious gangbro dude bro into someone whose want to fight is warranted. such a want to fight is seen in fox seeing as fox is the first to comment on the quiet girls scene and that, in the concept album, she is the one that instigates the rumble against the police in union square - saying that she is sick of being afraid of them and their 'fuckin powder blue' colors (also notice how she is the only warrior that really does say fuck the cops i think that's cool BUT I'LL TALK ABOUT FOX MORE NEXT TIME)

to a less obvious extent, swan also gets the receiving end of this recurring theme - by the album's finale, the usually violence-averse caution-first interim leader becomes a lot fiercer in protecting her crew. but perhaps among what i consider to be the biggest recontextualized change in the feminist sense is MERCY and her motivations to join the warriors in the first place. according to the wiki, her attraction to swan and the warriors and um seeing the orphans as wimps is what led her to switch sides BUT IN THE CONCEPT ALBUM, mercy's motivation to become a warrior is deepened, rooted in admiration rather than attraction - wanting to be like those women who hold their head up high. and again, we see this in Sick of Runnin' when she takes part in the rumble, finding her bravery within their ranks as they fight back. here, mercy becomes less of a swan tagalong and more of someone that wants what the warriors have: pride.

of course now that i type this out i realize that warriors is not based solely on the feminist rhetoric as with their theme of hope amidst adversity, the story is more intersectional and rooted in community struggle and wanting for more than that. but nonetheless, i genuinely believe that the twt filmbros arguments on why the genders should not have been changed in the first place just for "woke" points is kinda like,,,very shortsighted because not only does the narrative of women narrowly escaping unwarranted accusations actually fucking fit, but the act of learning to fight back amidst all odds - be it that of disbelieving, predatory men or the power of oppressive pigs - stays resonant for women yesterday, today, and the days to come.

ultimately, warriors (2024) is not solely a tale of female badassery - rather, it is a tale of the need for such "female badassery" in the face of past and present realities, which is why it somehow fucking worked.

[moomuzan]

— 𝖇𝖊𝖙𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝖍𝖚𝖘𝖍

they cheat on you?! dazai , chuuya , akutagawa x gn! reader , angst , requested

@vasarii

He had always been a master of deception, a man who wore his masks so seamlessly that sometimes he forgot which face was his own. Dazai Osamu laughed easily, charmed effortlessly, and lied without hesitation, building a labyrinth of half-truths that no one could ever navigate. Lies had become his armor, shielding him from the weight of existence, from the vast and gaping chasm inside him that he dared not confront. But with you, there had been no lies. At least, not in the beginning.

Unrelenting and uncontainable — You were light, spilling into every dark corner of his being with a softness that felt almost cruel. You loved him with a purity that left him raw, vulnerable in ways he had long forgotten how to endure. He had clung to your warmth, to the way you laughed like the world hadn’t yet broken you, to the way you looked at him as though he were worth saving.

But even the brightest light casts shadows.

The affair wasn’t planned; it wasn’t born of desire or need, but rather of restlessness—a momentary lapse, a fleeting distraction, something so meaningless it should have slipped from his mind as quickly as it came. And yet, its weight lingered. He felt it now, sitting across from you at the breakfast table, your laughter cutting through the morning air as you recounted a story he couldn’t focus on.

“You’re not listening, are you?” you teased, tilting your head with that playful grin that always seemed to unravel him.

Blinking, Dazai startled, before forcing a smile that felt too tight on his face. “Of course I am,” he replied, his voice as smooth and practiced as ever.

But even as you laughed, even as you returned to your story, he could feel the suffocating pull of the truth, the invisible thread of guilt tightening around his throat. You didn’t know. That was the cruelest part. You trusted him with a faith so complete it bordered on recklessness. You believed him to be something he wasn’t—someone steady, someone honest, someone capable of being the man you thought you saw when you looked at him.

And Dazai, selfish as always, had let you.

That evening, he sat on the couch, watching as you danced around the small apartment, your energy so infectious that it almost made him forget the ache in his chest. Almost. You were humming along to a song on the radio, spinning lazily as though the world held no weight, as though love were simple and unbreakable and eternal.

“Dance with me!” you called, reaching for his hands with a smile that could have lit up the darkest of nights.

Letting him pull you to his feet, his hands settled on your waist as you swayed together, your laughter bubbling like a melody only the two of you could hear. For a moment, he let himself forget. He let himself believe that this was enough—that he could hold you, love you, and bury the shadows that threatened to consume him.

But then you leaned closer, your voice soft, your gaze so earnest it was almost unbearable. “I love you,” you said, and there was no hesitation in your words, no fear, no doubt. “I love you so much.”

Dazai’s chest tightened, his breath catching in his throat. He wanted to tell you he loved you too, wanted to pour every fractured piece of himself into those words, but they stuck somewhere deep inside him, tangled in the lies and the guilt and the unbearable weight of what he had done.

Instead, he held you tighter, burying his face in your hair as he tried to keep himself from unraveling completely. “I don’t deserve you,” he murmured, the words slipping out before he could stop them.

You pulled back just enough to look at him, your fingers brushing gently against his cheek. “Don’t say that.“

It was the cruelest irony of all—that you loved him for who he was, even though who he was had betrayed you. You saw a version of him that didn’t exist, a man unbroken by the weight of his own darkness, untainted by the cracks that ran so deep he couldn’t see the bottom of them himself.

Later that night, after the world had quieted and you had fallen asleep beside him, Dazai lay awake, staring at the ceiling. The stillness of the room pressed down on him, and his thoughts began to spiral, long and unbroken, like the slow descent of a stone into a bottomless abyss. He thought of you, curled against him, your face soft and peaceful in sleep, your hand resting lightly on his chest as though he were the anchor that kept you steady. And he thought of her—the other person—the fleeting moments, the hollow intimacy, the meaninglessness of it all.

It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even desire. It was an escape—a desperate attempt to outrun the fear that gripped him whenever he thought of how much you meant to him. You were his light, his tether, his salvation, and it terrified him. Because love was fragile, and Dazai had always been the kind of man who broke the things he held too tightly.

The guilt gnawed at him, relentless and unyielding, an ache that went deeper than anything physical. And yet, he couldn’t tell you. He couldn’t destroy the fragile illusion of happiness you had built around him, couldn’t bear to see your face fall, to see the light in your eyes dim. You deserved the truth, but he was too much of a coward to give it to you.

Instead, he turned to face you, his gaze lingering on your sleeping form. You trusted him. You loved him. And in that moment, he hated himself more than he ever had before. Because no matter how much he longed to keep you safe from the jagged edges of his soul, he knew he had already cut you, even if you didn’t yet feel the sting.

But you stayed.

You stayed, even though he didn’t deserve it. Even though you had no idea what you were staying for.

And as the darkness pressed in around him, Dazai realized that maybe that was the most painful truth of all—not that he had betrayed you, but that he could never love you as selflessly as you loved him. And yet, he would stay, too. He would stay in the warmth of your light, even as it burned away the edges of his soul, because he was too selfish to let you go and too broken to let you see the truth.

So he held you closer, his lips brushing the top of your head in a silent apology you would never hear, and prayed to whatever gods still listened that you would never know the depth of his betrayal. Because even if he couldn’t be the man you deserved, he would try. He would try, for as long as you stayed, even if it killed him.

,

It wasn’t supposed to happen.

Chuuya had built his life on loyalty, on unyielding principles that had always kept him steady. Betrayal was something he despised, something he swore he’d never allow himself to commit. But here he was, a traitor to the one person who had only ever given him love.

And you knew.

When he walked through the door that evening, you greeted him with the same soft smile that always warmed the air between you. “You’re back,” you said, voice so tender it felt like a blade against his chest. You stepped toward him, your arms wrapping around him in that familiar way, and he hated the stiffness in his body, the guilt that coiled tighter every time you touched him.

He knew you could feel it too.

Bitter and sour, it was there in the way your smiles never quite reached your eyes anymore, in the pause that came before you said, “I love you.” You had noticed the perfume that wasn’t yours, the late nights that came with stammered excuses, the way he avoided meeting your gaze.

And yet, somehow, you stayed.

That night, Chuuya sat at the edge of the bed, his head in his hands, his thoughts drowning in the silence that settled heavy in the room. Your footsteps were soft as you padded into the bedroom, the faint glow of the kitchen light framing your silhouette.

“Are you okay?” you asked quietly, your voice laced with a gentleness he didn’t deserve.

Flinching at the sound, his hands tightened against his knees. “Yeah,” he muttered, but the lie felt hollow even as he spoke it.

Weighing the feelings inside, you crossed the room and knelt in front of him, your hands finding his. “You don’t have to lie to me, Chuuya,” you said, your voice trembling just enough to break him further.

He finally looked at you, the guilt burning behind his eyes. “You knew,” he whispered, his voice cracking under the weight of his shame. “You’ve known, haven’t you?”

Your gaze didn’t falter, though your eyes shone with unshed tears. “Yes,” you admitted, barely audible.

Thick with everything unsaid, the air between you was suffocating. He wanted to apologize, to fall to his knees and beg for forgiveness, but what could he say? What could he possibly do to fix the damage he’d caused?

But then, you smiled. Soft, sad, and so full of love it made his chest ache. “I don’t care,” you whispered, your fingers brushing lightly against his face. “I don’t care about her. I don’t care what you’ve done.”

“Don’t say that,” he rasped, his voice breaking. “You shouldn’t—”

“I love you, Chuuya,” you interrupted, your voice fierce despite the tears slipping down your cheeks. “I love you more than anything. More than my pride. More than my pain.” You swallowed hard, your hands trembling as they cupped his face. “I don’t want to lose you. I don’t care if it’s selfish. I just want you to stay.”

Painfully, he stared at you, his heart twisting. Fuck, he didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve the way you looked at him, the way you still loved him so wholly, so completely, despite everything.

“Why?” he choked out. “Why are you still here?”

Smiling again, your thumb brushed against his cheek as though trying to wipe away the guilt etched into his skin. “Because I know you love me,” you whispered. “Even if you’re too broken to say it, even if you don’t know how to show it.”

Of course, you were right. He did love you—more than words, more than breath, more than anything he’d ever known. But that love terrified him. It made him weak. Vulnerable. And it was that fear, that unbearable vulnerability, that had driven him into the arms of another.

The mafia executive pulled you into his arms, burying his face in your shoulder, his body trembling as he finally let himself break. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, over and over, the words spilling out like a prayer. “I’m so sorry.”

Your fingers stroked through his hair, your voice soft as you murmured, “I know.”

Later that night, as you slept beside him, your hand resting lightly on his chest, Chuuya lay awake, staring at the ceiling. He thought of her—the other woman—and how empty it all had been. It was never love, never even desire. Just fear. Fear of how much you mattered, of how much you had the power to hurt him.

Yet, the only thing that hurt was knowing how much he had hurt you, and how much you still loved him anyway.

You stayed.

And Chuuya didn’t know if that made him grateful—or if it made him hate himself even more.

,

Akutagawa was not a man of softness. His world had been carved from cruelty, shaped by jagged edges, and governed by a single, unrelenting law: only the strong survive. Love, tenderness, devotion—these were concepts that lived far outside the borders of his reality, things he neither craved nor understood. And yet, you were there, like a persistent shadow in the corner of his existence, refusing to leave despite everything he did to drive you away.

He cheated on you, of course. Repeatedly, with no hesitation and no remorse. It wasn’t about desire or passion, not even about the fleeting thrill of power that came with conquering another. No, for Akutagawa, it was something far more calculated, almost mechanical. He needed to remind himself that he could exist without you, that your love, unconditional and maddening, was nothing but a chain he could snap at any time.

But no matter how many nights he spent in someone else’s bed, he always returned to you. And that irritated him more than anything else.

Because you stayed.

Every time he walked through the door, the scent of smoke and another’s perfume clinging to him like a confession, you were there. You greeted him with a quiet smile, your eyes soft, your voice gentle as though he hadn’t just betrayed you yet again. You didn’t yell. You didn’t demand explanations or apologies. You didn’t even cry.

Instead, you loved him.

It was so silly of you to cook for him, tend to his injuries and press soft kisses to his forehead when he came home battered and bloodied. You whispered words of kindness into the silence, words he didn’t deserve, words that clung to him like a shroud long after you’d fallen asleep beside him.

And it infuriated him. So much.

“What are you smiling for?” he snapped one evening, his voice sharp and cutting. You had been sitting at the small table, waiting for him to come home, and your face had lit up the moment you saw him.

“Because you’re here,” you said simply, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

As Akutagawa’s jaw tightened, his hands curled into fists at his sides. “You’re pathetic,” he spat, the words venomous and deliberate. “You know what I do. You know where I go. And yet, you sit here like some obedient dog, waiting for scraps of affection I’ll never give you.”

Your smile faltered, just for a moment, but it didn’t disappear. “I stay because I love you,” you said softly, your voice steady despite the weight of his words.

Deeply so, he hated that answer. He despised the way it cut through him, sharper than any blade, because it wasn’t laced with bitterness or anger or accusation. It was just the truth, pure and unwavering, and it made him feel more vulnerable than he ever wanted to admit.

Akutagawa turned away from you, his coat swishing behind him as he stalked toward the window, the night air pressing in through the cracks. “Your love is useless,” he muttered, staring out at the city below.

“Maybe,” you said, your tone still calm, still infuriatingly kind. “But it’s yours, whether you want it or not.”

And that was what drove him mad. The way you refused to hate him. The way you stayed, even as he crushed you under the weight of his indifference. The way your love seemed to grow stronger the more he tried to destroy it.

Later that night, as you slept curled beside him, your fingers lightly brushing against his, Akutagawa stared at the ceiling, his mind restless. He thought about the women he had touched, the fleeting moments of distraction that never left a mark. They were nothing, hollow echoes of a need he refused to acknowledge. But you—your presence, your love, your endless devotion—were something else entirely.

Being a mirror, you reflected back the parts of himself he despised most, the parts he tried to bury beneath his anger and his cruelty. And yet, you loved him anyway. You stayed, even as he pushed you to your limits, even as he tore at the edges of your soul with his sharp words and his careless actions.

Turning his head to look at you, his gaze lingered on your sleeping face. You looked peaceful, as though the weight of his sins hadn’t touched you, as though his betrayal hadn’t left scars. But he knew better. He knew you were breaking beneath the surface, even if you refused to show it.

And still, you stayed.

Whit twitching fingers, his hand hovered just above yours, as though he wanted to touch you but couldn’t bring himself to cross that final line. You were his, completely and utterly, and yet he felt more bound by you than he ever had by anyone else.

Because your love wasn’t a chain he could snap.

It was a mirror, and no matter how many times he shattered it, the reflection always returned.

[touchme-teezme]

hi mimi! idk if u take requests but last pick was everything to me like i lovedddd the book that inspired you 😭🥹 can i PLEASE get a san version with the “did you want to watch me burn” poem? just destroy me. my heart is yourssss

This Time.

PAIRING | collegeboy!san x fab!reader

TAGS | arguments, smut with a plot, kissing, oral, angsty unprotected breakup sex, san has great pull out game, and a (sort of?) cliffhanger… again? idk i suck at writing tags and proper endings lolololol

RATINGS | NSFW 18+ (minors pls DNI/if it makes u uncomfortable don’t read it)

SONGS | No One Noticed - The Marías, Not You Too- Dr*ke & Been Like This - Doja Cat

SUMMARY | The breakup for this couple was on the horizon. One of them was in denial, and it’s not you.

AUTHOR’S NOTE ▸ thank you all for showing Last Pick a lot of love & anon for enjoying it. since a san version was requested, here ya go :) lmk which member should be next if you'd want me to actually make this into an angsty atz smut series. kinda like the idea they’re all connected?¿ like a smutiverse… im a little tipsy rn writing this part. also if u catch mistakes, no u didn’t. kk bye love uou

+ 💌 click here to see my Love Interrupted series masterlist [ot8] — check out the other parts!

inspired by a quote from Save Me An Orange by Hayley Grace: what more did you want from me? i gave you my heart my soul my body i let you build a home inside of me but you still went to the store and bought a lighter just to set me on fire did you want to watch me burn?

You’re usually an optimist but it wasn’t until San smashed the vase you bought and painted together at that one arts and crafts store that you realized optimism could only take you so far.

A screaming match broke out immediately. Words bounced off the walls, echoing in your small apartment as fingers were being pointed. He followed you around the entire house as you tried to walk away from the conversation, pinging in your ear like a fly.

San gets emotional when he cares. It was the first thing you liked about him when you first started to talk. How nice would it be to be with someone so well in-tune with their emotions that they don’t why away from it?

If only you’d known it would result in this.

The relationship was done for. It had been for a while. He had been far too busy juggling classes, work, and his new friends who seemed to suddenly fill all the time he used to spend with you. You’d barely even seen him in weeks, and when you did, it was like you were fighting for scraps of his attention.

San’s voice cracked as he shouted behind your head. “You think I don’t know I’ve been busy? I’ve been juggling everything, trying to keep it all together, and you—you—think I don’t feel guilty? You want me to just drop everything? Stop hanging out with my friends? Quit school? What do you want from me?”

He was following you now, not letting you get a moment of peace. You forced yourself to focus on the task of cleaning up the shards, trying to block out his words as you looked for the broom around your house.

“Do you think I want this? You think I want to feel like this? You think I want to hurt you? But you keep demanding more from me, and I can’t do it anymore! I can’t just stop living my life to fix yours!”

“Oh fuck off!” You barked back, finally finding the broom that was in an odd spot in your wardrobe (probably because San had placed it there the last time he used it). You were now growing more annoyed.

“Don’t curse at me! Listen to me for goodness sake!”

Your hands trembled around the broom handle, but you marched towards the vase shards and started sweeping, trying not to hear the poison dripping from his mouth. You had given up on fighting—there was no point anymore. He was too far gone, wrapped up in his own world that was so difficult for him to show up.

“You’re too much, alright?” he spat, his voice cracking with frustration. “I can’t breathe, I can’t think. Every time I try to focus on something else, you’re right there, needing something from me. I can’t fix this. I can’t keep being suffocated—“

You dropped the broom.

You turned slowly, meeting his gaze for the first time, and in that moment, you never felt like this about him before.

“Do you hear yourself?” Your voice was shaking, but it was steady, sharp. “In that whole rant you just forced me to hear, not once did you mention us—not once did you mention me like i’m not in this fucking relationship with you! Not once did you mention all i’ve done for you, and the only time you did was to insult me!”

San opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He just stood there, eyes wide, lips trembling.

You stepped forward as if to challenge his speechlessness, your heart pounding in your chest. “What the fuck are you still doing here then?!”

The room fell silent.

And then, out of nowhere, he tried to reach for you.

It was a movement fuelled by panic if he was truly honest, it was a final desperate attempt to fix things without actually knowing how.

He just knew that he had to have you in his arms and you’d melt. His hand caught yours, pulling you closer, but you yanked it away.

He stepped closer, his breath ragged, reaching for you again with a look in his eyes that was pure guilt you knew all too well.

Your stern face broke when he managed to get you in his large strong arms that wrapped around you.

You stood there, shaking, breathing hard, barely able to hold back the tears.

“Why do you keep doing this to me?” Your cracking voice was muffled against his hard chest.

And then, in his painful silence, he cupped your face and pressed his lips against yours.

You did not stop him.

In fact, you couldn’t.

His next kiss was more desperate and frantic than the last, like he was trying to compensate for all the times he had utterly let you down.

When he finally found the self control to pull back, both of you were panting, faces flushed, hearts racing. He looked at you with a mix of fear, guilt, and longing in his eyes. He wiped your damp cheeks, cupping the sides of your face.

"I don’t mean to," He whispered. “I-I swear, everything I said, I-“

You shook your head in denial, wanting to just shut him up with more kisses knowing if you both talked, you’d eventually argue.

For once, you didn’t want to fight. If the relationship was crashing and burning right now, might as well get one last lick out of it, right?

Metaphorically, and quite literally.

San groaned softly into your mouth, his hands coming up to tangle in your hair and snake to the small of your back as he deepened the kiss with his tongue.

"You drive me insane," He breathed against her lips, breaking the kiss to look into her eyes.

It was true, you always had, in the best and worst ways possible. The feeling was mutual as you stared back at him.

He couldn't resist your pull, the way you were in the moment consumed him entirely. His hands roamed your curves, and reached down to grip your ass firmly as he walked you backwards towards the couch.

You let out a soft gasp, your fingers digging into his waist as you let yourself get sat down with him positioned above you. His knee perched up right between your slightly parted legs.

The friction his knee brushing between your legs sent a jolt of desire straight to your core. He could feel your pulse quickening, and your breath hitching as he sucked and kissed the sides of your neck.

Your hands slipped beneath his black shirt, seeking for skin. With a slight eager tug, he took it off without any argument, revealing his lean muscled torso that you did not hesitate to touch and admire knowing it was going to be the last time.

Instead of letting that knowledge crush you or him, with a low moan, he just leaned into your touch.

“Tell me to stop…” He breathed out, hands on your shoulders to steady himself. He struggled to maintain control as his arousal throbbed against the inside of his zipper.

“Keep going.” You replied in a husky whisper.

With a groan, he gave in to the temptation. His tongue met yours, as his hands slid down to your chest to cup your breasts through the thin fabric of your top, having to bite back a smirk when your back arched into his technique.

Your nimble fingers freed him from his jeans. Unbuttoning, and then zipping down before massaging his hard on through the fabric of his underwear. A breath of relief escaped his lips when his throbbing cock was finally freed.

He helped you out of your top, watching you stroke his impressive length in your hands from above. His hands glided down your back and unclasped your bra, letting your breast sit in all its glory.

He was going to take care of you first until your mouth engulfed him without missing a beat.

“O-oh my god.” His hips bucked involuntarily forward as your skilled hand continued to stroke, the dual sensations of her and her fingers wrapped around his member threatening to overwhelm him.

San’s eyes rolled back as you took him entirely into your mouth. His body weight leaning on his forearms that were on either sides of your head, holding onto the back of the couch for dear life.

Your skilled tongue and throat working in tandem to bring him to the brink of madness. The wet heat blanketing his aching cock was almost too much to bear, each bob of her head sent him more and more over the edge.

"Oh f-fuck!” His mouth hung open as he fisted your hair and fought the urge to thrust deeper.

A part of him couldn’t make sense why this was happening now of all times. He could’ve just taken your desperation to touch him for granted but something about it didn’t feel right.

With effort and a hell lot of focus, San gently stopped you before he could cum. He stroked the side of your face when you looked up at him confused. He shot one of the sweetest dimpled smiles at you.

Seeing that dimpled smile light up your face.

With a hand behind your head, he laid you back on the couch gently. Your hands politely stayed on your own chest, cupping them as you watched his next move.

In one swift motion, he tugged down your underwear with your pyjama shorts and tossed them away.

One of your legs get thrown over his shoulder, and he used his other hand to part your leg wider. His head moved down to your glistening sex and his tongue licked a strip up your folds.

Air got caught in your throat. You let out a shaking deep breath through your lips. His hand on your thigh moved up to your chest, intertwining his fingers with your fingers against your racing heartbeat.

You gripped onto his fingers every time he’d do something that sent shockwaves through your body either with his lips, tongue or his nose. He kissed your sensitive clit, alternating his tongue between that and pounding into your entrance.

“San,” You whined, which only encouraged him to keep going. You tilted your chin upwards, facing the ceiling as tears began welling in your eyes. Unclear if it was the pleasure or the sinking feeling in the out of your stomach.

Then you felt that body shock again, jolting you as you let out a loud moan.

You met his eyes. Those cat-like eyes staring back at you between your legs with laser focus before lazily shutting when he turned his head to the side to lap up your slick arousal from the inner part of your thighs.

He got up and took off his underwear before hovering on-top of you, centring his hard shaft just past your entrance as he supported himself up by the armrest behind your head.

His chain necklace to drop down and dangle in your face.

He gazed into your eyes, reaching down to rub your slick folds once more. He leaned down to kiss you, tasting yourself on his lips as he readjusted his hard dick between your legs. Your hands wrapped themselves in the dip of his waist as your knees pressed against his hips.

“We can’t keep fighting forever,” You told him in a faint whisper.

Leaning down, he distracted you by capturing your lips into a tender loving kiss to slowly pushed in. He felt your teeth on his lip as your walls adjusted to him.

“I know.” Was all he could murmur against your face as a hand cupped one side of your face.

He kept having your lips in between his as he started to move, his hips rolling in a slow rhythm designed to slowly ease into you. Small gasps escaped your lips and you clutched onto his biceps for support while your neck stretched upwards.

“Baby, you feel incredible.” He picked up the pace slightly, his thrusts growing deeper, and more insistent, as he chased the intense feeling coursing through him.

The way your body clenched around his length, the soft gasps falling from your lips.

With your moans of approval, he seized the opportunity to go even deeper and quicken the pace in your wet welcoming heat. He pulled in your mouth for intoxicating searing kisses he couldn’t get enough of.

“I miss you,” You whimpered out the truth between the kisses. “S-so much.”

He snapped forward with new determination accentuated by the lewd sounds of your skin slapping against each other.

He let go of your mouth to focus on your chest. "I'm right here baby." He mumbled over your breasts as he cupped one in his large hands, brushing over your nipples before reaching down to lick.

He alternates between wet kisses and whirling his tongue, aimed to only give you pleasure. In his defence, he hasn't had the opportunity to do this in a while.

You grabbed a side of his face to look into his lustful eyes. “I really did love you.” You breathed out.

“I love you too.” He replied, too entranced by the moment to catch that single word in your sentence.

You crashed your lips against his. The technique of his kissing made you moan loudly into his mouth, and then against his jaw with your eyes shut when he was hitting the perfect spot over and over.

Your body was tensing up tighter and tighter as the pressure of the inside you. You could feel yourself teetering on the edge, ready to shatter into a million pieces at any moment.

“I’m close,” San panted. “Come for me. Come first.”

As a result of his husky words, your walls clench around him, and your climax comes crashing in. One passionate thrust as he buried himself inside your convulsing sex, the intense orgasm shook your entire body violently.

While your final convulsions faded, you slumped against the couch, panting heavily. Meanwhile, San rode off your enjoyment only to abruptly slip out of you before blowing a load inside you without a condom on.

He released himself from your legs that were wrapped around him and hurried to your nearby bathroom, his hard-on in his hands.

You lay there in a daze, trying to make sense of everything, feeling a mix of confusion and shame. You covered your face with your hands, desperate to hide from the reality of the situation.

Slowly, you pulled yourself up from the leather couch to sit up, its surface sticking a little to your sweaty skin, before you reached for your underwear lying forgotten at your feet.

You managed to get most of your clothes back on when he returned. The sight of him—his broad athletic build and that confident stride—distracted you just long enough for him to lean down and kiss you, his hands gently resting on the side of your neck.

You instinctively covered his hand with your own, locking eyes with him.

“Everything okay?” His voice was soft.

You stayed quiet for a moment, the weight of his question sinking in.

He kissed you again, his lips warm and insistent, and for a moment, the thoughts swirling in your head began to fade.

Before you knew it, he lowered himself down onto the floor across from you, wanting to pull you on top of him to straddle him.

“Stop. No more.” you murmured, pushing him away gently.

Your heart pounding as your knees pressed against the hardwood floors when you realised you were already sitting on his thighs.

San sharply sighed, a little disappointed, but he didn’t fight it. He let go of his grip on your waist, and you slowly kicked yourself off him.

The two of you lay on the floor, side by side, your breaths finally slowing after whatever that was. The silence between you wasn’t comforting in the slightest.

He reached for his underwear with his feet, slipping it on slowly, his eyes never leaving you. He was trying to read you, trying to understand what was going on.

You turned your head to look at him. His eyes turned to the ceiling, his expression unreadable, distant even though he was right there.

“San,” you began softly, your voice breaking the stillness. “I think we—”

His phone buzzed, cutting through the tension, and he glanced at it with another sigh. You felt the moment slip away as he got up and fumbled for his phone left in his pants by the couch.

“It’s Mingi,” he muttered.

“San,” you tried again, your tone heavier this time, begging for his attention. But he’d already answered the call.

You stayed on the floor, your chest tightening as fragments of their conversation reached your ears.

“Dude, what? I’m in the middle of… Huh? No, I haven’t heard from her,” San said, his tone sharp but tinged with concern. “She’s been dodging everyone since that night at Yeosang’s when you wouldn’t shut up about your conquests.”

Your frown deepened as you propped yourself up on your elbows to watch him. His brows furrowed, his full attention on the call like you weren’t even there.

“Well, maybe you should go check on her then,” San said, leaning back against the couch. “What, come over? Her place or yours?”

A pause, then his expression shifted—confusion, followed by clear exasperation.

San ran a hand through his messy hair. “Fine, whatever. I’ll come over later.” He hung up, tossing the phone onto the floor like it had personally wronged him.

“Mingi needs help with something,” he said it like that was enough explanation.

You stared at him, baffled and angry, “So you’re going?”

He turned to you, guilt flashing briefly in his eyes before he looked away. “I don’t have a choice,” he said quietly.

The words hit you like a slap, but what was worse than the sting was the inevitability that this was always how it would be. You, waiting for scraps of his time, his attention. Him, running off to play hero for everyone but you.

“You always have a choice. You just never choose me.”

Guilt and shame took over his tired expression, “That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?” You shot back. “You couldn’t even let me finish breaking up with you before answering his call.”

“What? Babe, it’s not like that. Look, he really likes her and—“

“Save it,” you cut him off, your voice sharp. “Since you’re always serious about everyone else, just go.”

He hesitated, his hand hovering near his phone. “You’re being—”

“Go,” you repeated firmly, tears welling in your eyes but your tone unwavering. “And don’t ever come back this time.”

For a moment, he looked like he wanted to defend himself, or to stay, but then he stood up. He pulled the rest of his clothes back on, grabbed his phone, and shoved it into his back pocket without a word.

He glanced at you on his way out, his gaze searching for something, anything, to make this easier. He convinced himself he’d call you tomorrow, that this wasn’t really goodbye like the other times you both have tried to end it. He didn’t realize how serious you were this time.

He walked past the shards and the broom and left. The door clicked shut behind him.

[cptnhngjng]

pretty sounds (part 3)

“let him know how good you feel.”

hongjoong gives san an exclusive show.

-hongjoong x f!reader, featuring san -2.6k words -smut, mdni, 18+ only -c/w: studio sex, fingering, exhibitionism, voyeurism, mean!joong, pathetic and desperate!san

part one two four

later that evening after you had left, san visited hongjoong in his studio. he needed to hear that song again. he wasn’t sure if his ears were deceiving him—he thought he heard something going on in the song. something that made him feel things he probably shouldn’t be feeling.

“ah, hyung,” san said as he sat on the couch. hongjoong turned his chair around to face the younger male. san was fidgeting with the hem of his hoodie, not making eye contact with the captain. “can i, uh, hear that song again? please?”

hongjoong nodded and turned back around to face his desk. a few seconds later the song started to play through the speakers. your moans mixed in the the music filled the studio. hongjoong smirked to himself as he peeked over at san who was chewing his lip while intently listening to the song.

when the song finished, san sat up straight and rubbed his hands against his thighs. oh, those were definitely moans that he heard in the song. moans that most likely belonged to you. he remembered the way he saw hongjoong gripping your thighs when everyone was in the studio earlier that day.

san could feel the blush creeping up his neck, to his face and ears. “in the song,” he started to say. “was that, uh…” he wasn’t sure how to word it. he didn’t want to sound crazy. or have hongjoong think he was thinking about his girl in certain ways.

hongjoong chucked softly. “so you noticed it, huh?” he fully turned his chair back around to look at san, who very much looked nervous to be talking about this. “yeah, that’s y/n in the song. do you like it?”

san wasn’t sure if he should answer him or not. would it be wrong to say he enjoyed hearing the noises you made? you are, after all, hongjoong’s girlfriend. san felt like he shouldn’t be hearing something so private. but at the same time, it excited him. he looked around the small room, not wanting to make eye contact with hongjoong. he wouldn’t be asking if he wasn’t okay with it, right?

“answer me, san,” hongjoong demanded. san’s eyes made way to hongjoong, who was staring him down. “did you enjoy it? yes or no?”

“it…it was really good,” san whispered. “i like it.”

hongjoong was still staring at him, and san was starting to get nervous. should he have said that? is hongjoong mad at him? was this some kind of test? san gulped and started to look anywhere but at hongjoong.

hongjoong leaned back in his chairs and rested his hands behind his head. “would you want to hear y/n in person?” still staring at san, hongjoong smirked. “she’s a dirty slut who likes to be heard by others.”

san finally made eye contact with his captain and nodded.

——

the next night hongjoong called you and invited you to his studio. he had something important he wanted to ask you. you were nervous, unsure what could be so important to have hongjoong call you and tell you to meet him at the studio. when you finally arrived though, hongjoong wasn’t alone. san was sitting on the couch.

both men turned and faced you when you entered the small studio. san looked nervous, while hongjoong looked calm and relaxed.

“is everything okay?” you ask, setting your bag down and sitting on the couch next to san.

san’s body stiffened and a blush started forming on his neck, going up to his face, turning him red. now you were really confused.

“oh, everything is perfect, y/n,” hongjoong said, leaning forward in his chair. “there’s just something we wanted to talk about with you.”

hongjoong looked at san and then back at you. “sannie here really enjoyed your addition to my song. i thought perhaps we can give him a live version of it.”

now it was your turn to turn red. you felt your neck and face heating up. hongjoong was looking at you softly, hoping that he wasn’t going too far with this. he would never push you to do something you wouldn’t want to do. but he also knew how turned on you were when you thought about the other members hearing the sounds you produced when he made you feel good.

“you…you want us to fuck in front of san?” you asked.

“only if you are okay with it,” hongjoong says quietly, taking your hand into his. “this is entirely up to you, whether this happens or not. both san and i are okay with this.”

you looked back and forth between the two men. already getting turned on by the idea of being fucked by hongjoong in front of one of his members, you squeezed your thighs together.

“you want this, san?” you ask him.

“yes,” he responds, letting out the breath he was unaware he was holding. “hongjoong hyung and i already talked about this. and if you are okay with it, i want this.”

you looked back at hongjoong. he was watching you, watching the way you fidgeted in your seat.

“of course,” hongjoong started, “there are obviously some rules that we will put in place. first, san you are not allowed to touch y/n without either of our consent. second, you are also not allowed to touch yourself. not until i tell you to. and third, the moment y/n decides she does not want this anymore, it stops immediately.”

san nodded and then looked at you. both men were staring at you, waiting for your answer. you looked between the two of them again. still very much turned on by the idea of san watching you get fucked by hongjoong. the fact that san enjoyed and wanted to hear your sounds made you want to let lose.

finally you stopped fidgeting and looked straight into hongjoong’s eyes. “yes, okay, let’s do this.”

hongjoong smirked at you before biting his bottom lip. “get up.” he said to you, motioning for you to stand up.

san’s eyes followed you as you stood up from the couch. his pants were starting to get tight from just the anticipation of what was about to happen. how is he already so turned on and nothing has even happened yet? the way your shorts clung to your ass and your thighs were just so soft and smooth. he was aching to feel them.

“turn around and face san,” hongjoong commanded, and you quickly turned to look at san, who was looking you up and down, eyes following the curves of your body. there was a quick slap against your ass and hongjoong spoke again. “shorts off. now.”

you leaned forward to slide your shorts down your legs. your tits were right in front of san’s face. he shifted in his seat and gripped his thighs. from behind you, you heard hongjoong let out a low laugh.

“bet you want to grab y/n’s tits right now, huh, sannie?”

you could just tell hongjoong was smirking at san from behind you. hongjoong stood up from his chair and snaked his arms around you, grabbing both of your breasts in his hands and squeezing. “they are so fucking soft, san.”

you let out a shaky breath as you felt hongjoong’s hands move down your body. he stopped at your hips before running his fingers along the waistband of your panties. his hands rubbed your stomach as he inched them up underneath your top, slowly making way up to your chest. he pinched your nipples through your bra, causing a gasp to escape. hongjoong sucked at the sensitive spot on your neck before lifting your shirt up and off of you, leaving you just in your bra and panties. making you almost naked in front of one of his members.

hongjoong softly nipped at your shoulder before speaking again. “san, take y/n’s bra and panties off for her.”

you could see san clenching his jaw before nodding and standing up. the younger member stood in front of you. hongjoong’s hands were holding your waist tightly, his fingertips digging into your soft skin. san hesitantly moved his hands towards your chest before reaching behind and fumbled with the clasps. he was breathing quickly, eyebrows furrowed as he struggled with your bra.

rolling his eyes, hongjoong smacked san’s hands away. “pathetic, can’t even undo a bra properly.” he growled before doing it himself.

san stepped back away from you as he watched hongjoong pull your bra off and drop it to the floor. your tits spilling out in front of him. again, hongjoong grabbed your breasts and rolled both nipples between his fingers, making them hard. you threw your head back against hongjoong’s shoulder and let out a low moan.

“choi san.” hongjoong’s voice was low and deep. “she’s still in her panties. are you going to do something about that?”

san’s eyes moved from your tits, to your face, to finally look at hongjoong, who was staring him down with dark eyes. san kneeled to the ground in front of you and you squeezed your thighs together, becoming turned on by the view of san on his knees in front of you. you could feel the wet patch in your panties getting bigger.

his hands were shaking as he reached towards your panties. his rough fingers skimmed the soft skin of your thighs before reaching the waistband. san held his breath as he slowly pulled your panties down. your cunt was already soaked in anticipation. you stepped out of the slick covered garment, feeling the cool studio air against your hot core. san stood up, gripping the lacy underwear in his hand.

san made brief eye contact with you as he tried to sneak your panties into his pockets. unfortunately for him, hongjoong’s sharp eyes caught him. he let out a low chuckle, and then tutted. “pathetic little perverted sannie. trying to pocket y/n’s panties. are you that desperate?”

you watched san’s neck and jaw tense as he took a nervous gulp. his grip on your panties getting stronger. your eyes moved down san’s body and stopped at his crotch. his erection very much obvious—straining tightly against his jeans, creating an outline. you rubbed your thighs together, desperate for some friction as you felt yourself getting more and more wet.

hongjoong’s arms wrapped around your waist as he pulled you closer to him. you could feel his hard cock pressing against you through his pants. he sucked the spot between your shoulder and neck, taking a quick bite before moving up your neck to your jawline. he places a few quick, sloppy kisses before sitting down in his chair.

“keep it,” hongjoong said with a wave of his hand. “it’s okay, right, y/n? give him a little memento of this special day.”

you bit your lip and nodded. san quickly shoved the panties into his pocket. hongjoong’s hands grabbed you and pulled you into his lap. he started to rub your thighs, nails softly scratching your skin.

“sit back down, san,” hongjoong instructed.

san immediately sat back down on the small studio couch. hongjoong shifted his work chair so it was directly in front of san, giving him the perfect view of the two of you.

“remember, you are not allowed to touch yourself until i say so,” hongjoong reminded san. there was a quick, light smack on your thigh and hongjoong whispered into your ear, “spread your legs, baby. show him that pretty pussy of yours.”

you opened your legs, and you felt hongjoong grip your thighs, his legs helping you spread out further. your leaking cunt on full display for san to see. a pathetic, whiny moan left your lips as you felt hongjoong’s fingers make their way to your core.

“tsk, what a fucking slut, y/n. you are already so wet and we haven’t done anything yet.” hongjoong slapped your pussy hard, causing you to buck your hips and whine loudly. “does having san watch you turn you on that much?”

hongjoong slipped two fingers in between your wet folds and rubbed your slick around, before making his way to your aching clit. “should have fucked you in front of the members way sooner if i knew how much of a whore you turned into.”

he started rubbing soft circles against your clit, slowly increasing pressure. you arched your back and rested your head against hongjoong’s shoulder, pathetic whines escaping from you. your fingers made way to his hair and you pulled on the short, blonde strands.

“so fucking needy, isn’t she, san?” hongjoong chucked before plunging his fingers into your waiting entrance.

“ahhh, hongjoong,” you moaned out, voice weak, as you felt him rub against the the sensitive spongy spot inside you.

“mmm, i want you to say san’s name, pretty girl,” hongjoong said, removing his fingers from you. “let him know how good you feel.”

hongjoong’s fingers made their way to your mouth. he tapped your lips, indicating you to open up. you started to suck on his fingers, as he fucked them into your mouth. drool was starting to leak from your pretty little mouth. he finally removed them and made his way back to your pussy. he started to pump them in and out, the lewd squelching mixed with your breathy moans were the only sounds heard in the studio.

“sannie,” you managed to speak out. “ugh, it feels so good. i wish i could feel your fingers in me.”

san was so desperate to touch himself. his cock was so hard. there was already a wet spot on his boxers and jeans from the precum. the pretty moans and whines coming from you was driving him insane. he wanted to feel you on him. to touch and taste your pretty pussy.

hongjoong’s other hand made way to your clit and started rubbing it while he continued to pump his fingers into your pussy. he bit your neck and sucked the spot, leaving spit and a red mark forming. your eyes were closed and your moans were getting louder. your cunt was sucking hongjoong’s fingers in and you felt close to cumming.

“don’t fucking touch yourself,” hongjoong growled when he spotted san’s hands moving towards his crotch. you opened your eyes and saw san sitting there with his hand lingering above the zipper of his jeans. “touch yourself and this ends,” hongjoong threatened.

he continued to fuck his fingers into your cunt. your wetness was covering his hand and lap. your climax was so close. you moved your hips to get more friction from hongjoong’s fingers.

“hongjoong, please!” you whined out.

hongjoong was quick to remove his fingers from you, leaving you on edge. he lightly slapped your cheek. “uh uh, baby girl. what did i say? san’s name only.”

his fingers made way back to your entrance and started to fuck you again. you looked san in the eyes as you let out a the loudest and whiniest moan “ah, fuck, san!” you yelled out as you reached your climax.

you tried to move your hips but hongjoong stopped you. he kept abusing your cunt with his fingers.

“ah, san, please,” you chanted, feeling your walls flutter and clench around hongjoong’s fingers.

a strangled moan escaped san. his face and neck were red. veins were popping out and his eyes were tightly closed. you noticed a large dark, wet spot on his jeans. san had just cum. watching hongjoong fuck you with his fingers and hearing your desperate moans and whines—hearing his name escape your lips—made him cum without even being touched.

hongjoong let out a surprised laugh as he removed his fingers from your sensitive core. you leaned against him, chest rising up and down, breathing heavily.

“fuck,” hongjoong teased. “you pathetic fucker. you came in your pants.”

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 13: The Regrets Are Useless] [Series Finale]

A/N: Below are your final predictions. Let's see how you did... 🥰

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon™️, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes.

Series title is a lyric from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Chapter title is a lyric from: “Whatsername” by Green Day.

Word count: 6.1k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Rain pours outside the cabin, mist-shrouded pine trees and still dark water, a place in southern Oregon called Lake of the Woods. The twin-sized bed with a thin foam mattress was once used by kids attending summer camp, capture the flag and s’mores, hikes and scary stories, but now the children are ghosts and the monsters are real, stumbling down streets and lurking in dark places, licking blood from what’s left of their lips.

Aemond is here but he’s also not, a castaway on an island where the world never ended, his hands in your hair as you straddle him, your hips moving tentatively, his lips and teeth at your throat, the sharp points of his canines like fangs.

“Am I doing this right?” you murmur doubtfully. “I feel like I’m definitely not doing this right…”

“Shh, you’re great, you’re incredible.”

“I’m sorry I don’t know how to do everything already, I’m sorry you have to teach me—”

“Stop,” Aemond commands, a sharp sigh through your hair. “I love this. I love you. I want to teach you things until the day I die.”

The nervous tension in your muscles unravels—peddles thrown into water, campfire smoke vanishing into indigo night—and now his hands are on your hips, steadying you, guiding you. You link your fingers around the back of his neck and try to find a cadence that isn’t uncomfortable, ungainly, effortful. You wanted to try this. You want to experience everything with him.

“Take your time,” Aemond is saying like it’s difficult for him to keep a train of thought, his eye closed, his cheeks flushed, blood-colored blooms like a dusk sky. “I’m fine down here, don’t worry about me…”

Rain drums against the windows; lightning flashes in the sky and thunder growls. From the front porch of one of the other cabins, you can hear the indistinct droning of conversations and Aegon strumming the acoustic guitar he brought from the beach house. It’s something you’ve overheard him singing before, one of his strange midcentury darlings, a song that should be too old for him to know the words to.

“All you big and burly men who roll the trucks along

Better listen, you’ll be thankful when you hear my song

You have really got it made if you’re haulin’ goods

Any place on earth but those Haynesville Woods…”

Your skin gleams with a cool sheen of sweat; there is a draft through the cabin walls that makes you shiver as you cling to Aemond. You roll your hips a certain way and he moans—suddenly, involuntarily—and you know you’ve found the right rhythm.

“It’s a stretch of road up north in Maine

That’s never ever ever seen a smile

If they’d buried all them truckers lost in them woods

There’d be a tombstone every mile

Count ‘em off, there’d be a tombstone every mile…”

Aemond is kissing you deeply, desperately, trembling hands and gasping shallow breaths. And there is not just euphoria written into the lines of his face; there is disorientation, there is wonder. He barely manages: “Alright…um…if you want me to last longer than about thirty more seconds, you should probably slow down…”

“No,” you tease, grinning as you bite at his full lips.

“When you’re loaded with potatoes and you’re headed down

You’ve got to drive the woods to get to Boston town

When it’s winter up in Maine, better check it over twice

That Haynesville road is just a ribbon of ice…”

Aemond cries out, louder than you’ve ever heard him before—you’ve never had privacy, you’ve never truly been alone—and then again, a helpless ecstatic sound, pleasure so overwhelming it almost starts to feel like pain.

“Quiet!” you whisper, giggling, touching two fingers to his mouth. “Everyone’s going to hear you.”

“Oh my God,” Aemond says. He falls back onto the mattress and brings you with him, his arms wrapped around you, kissing your cheeks and your forehead as the two of you lie there panting and entangled, his blue eye astonished. “Okay, okay, I need a minute. I think I just burst an aneurysm.”

“I killed you?” you purr with feigned distress, basking in your conquest.

“You can kill me whenever you want. You can kill me five times a day.”

“When you’re talking to a trucker that’s been haulin’ goods

Down that stretch of road in Maine they call the Haynesville Woods

He’ll tell you that dying and going down below

Won’t be half as bad as driving on that road of ice and snow…”

Aemond stares up at the ceiling—a steep gable roof, a motionless fan—and now you can tell he’s thinking about his family again, discorporate screams, misplaced trust. Otto Hightower’s bones were found in the shower, meaning he likely died before or not long after their power failed and water would have run out in the municipal system. They were probably killed before you and Aemond ever met, distant galaxies lightyears away, remote long-dead stars. And so all the blood you paid to get to California was wasted.

“Do you ever think about the people you have saved?” you ask gently as your fingertips trace the ridge of his scar. “You stitched yourself back together. You healed Aegon’s burns. You sutured Cregan’s arm. You got me and Rio down from that transmission tower.”

“I guess I did,” Aemond says, but his voice is ambivalent, as if none of these things count. He has not found someplace safe for you yet. His job is not finished; his triumphs may only be temporary.

“Aemond…back in Pennsylvania…why did you decide to help us?”

“Luke spotted you guys, and we all talked it over. If it had just been Rio, honestly, I wouldn’t have taken the chance. A man his size, and possibly armed…could be trouble, you know? But I figured since he was traveling with a woman and you seemed to be with him by choice, he was probably okay. And then when we first met, he was so protective of you…didn’t want me touching you, didn’t leave you alone…I realized he had to be a good guy.”

“He was,” you say solemnly. I was supposed to remind him about the racks. I was supposed to warn him. But you didn’t warn Rio about what was waiting to kill him in that sand-swept grocery store in Winnemucca, just like you didn’t warn Jace about radiation or Baela about the way the rungs of the ladder that ran up the side of the grain bin were rusted and creaking, and maybe there is more than enough blame to go around.

“And then after Battle Mountain, as soon as we found the gasoline and ammo, I knew we had to go back for you. It hit me all at once. I couldn’t protect you by leaving you with Rio and Cregan. And I couldn’t let you go. I’ve never had something like this before. I didn’t know it existed. I told the others we were turning around, and Aegon said: Thank fucking God. Rhaena took off sprinting towards the car.” Then Aemond kisses you again, but tenderly this time, slowly, like you’ll have forever and there’s no need to rush. “I’m going to get you to Odessa. I’m going to take you somewhere safe.”

The rain is stopping; there are still a few hours of daylight left.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Hey, Chip Skylark. Check it out,” Aegon says, grinning at you from where he’s sprawled on the wet dock and smoking a cigarette, wearing his neon green plastic sunglasses, his left leg finally freed from its bandages and on full display. You’re all wearing the same things, stolen t-shirts and shorts, sweatshirts at night when it gets cold, sneakers you can walk hundreds of miles in; but Aegon won’t give up his Sperry Bahamas. “It’s nature’s tattoo.”

You sit down beside him and admire the scar tissue, red knots and white cords, jagged terrain like a mountain range, organic highways and bridges and trails. “It’s a roadmap.”

“That’s appropriate.”

You’ve been traveling on foot for two weeks since Criston’s white Tahoe ran out of gas and was abandoned in the town of Mad River, California. Now you are only about ten miles from Odessa, close enough to reach in half a day but too far to get into town before nightfall. This time tomorrow you’ll be there, and it will either be a haven or a wasteland, and if Rio’s parents’ community in Odessa has disappeared then so has your last idea for where to go. Absentmindedly, you skate your fingerprints over the bumps and grooves of Aegon’s leg like a blind man reading braille. He shifts and clears his throat; you’ve made him uncomfortable somehow. You lift your hand away.

“I’m sorry, does that hurt?”

“Nah. I can’t really feel anything besides pressure. The nerve endings got fried.”

“Oh.” But now you don’t know what you did to upset him. Aegon doesn’t provide an explanation. Down the dock a ways towards the shore, Rhaena is reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and listening to the pink Sony Walkman formerly owned by a little girl named Ava. Inside whirls Green Day’s 2004 album American Idiot, which Aegon took from his bedroom at the beach house to add to his CD collection, a cultural archive, a gift for posterity. Cregan is teaching Daeron to fish with poles he found in one of the cabins; Helaena is bringing them worms. Aemond and Luke are gathering things dry enough to burn—books and wooden chairs from inside the cabins—and piling them up so Cregan can cook dinner once it’s caught.

“So,” Aegon says, changing the subject, scrutinizing you as he puffs on a Marlboro Gold. “Everything going okay?”

You know what he means; he must have heard Aemond earlier. “Yup.”

“Got it all figured out?”

“Sure did.”

“Great. I’m happy for you,” Aegon says, and yet there’s a twinge of melancholy he’s trying to hide. It must be hard for him; he and Daeron are the only single ones.

“We’ll find you some suitable candidates for your harem when we get to Odessa.”

He chuckles. “Oh, come on.”

“Guys, girls? Do you have a preference?”

He’s smiling wistfully down into the water, a dark rippling mirror. “I have too specific a preference, that’s the problem.”

“Yacht girls in bikinis. Golf cheerleaders.”

“There are no cheerleaders in golf, you yokel.”

“Okay, well…I’m sure you’ll be very popular with the lonely, traumatized, widowed women of the apocalypse.”

Aegon gazes morosely out over the lake. He pitches the end of his cigarette into the water, and your eyes catch briefly on the black ink of the tattoo on his forearm: It’s not over ‘til you’re underground. “I don’t know. I’ve been sober for two weeks and now everything is annoyingly clear.”

“What’s bothering you?”

He waits a while before he answers, evasive. “I’ve never been good at anything.”

“Everyone feels that way sometimes. Luke thinks he’s not good at anything either.”

“But Luke’s nice. I’m a rat bastard.”

You laugh. “You’re kind of nice, Aegon.”

“Yeah right.”

“No, seriously. I like being around you. You make me feel better. You’re like…” You ponder how to word it. “I feel like I could tell you whatever and not worry about being judged for it.”

He snorts. “As if you’ve ever done anything judgeable.”

You shrug, peering out over the lake. “I abandoned my family. I stopped sending them money, I stopped calling. And when everything happened…the zombies, the world ending…I didn’t even consider going back to Kentucky to try to help them. I went west with Rio instead. And now they’re probably all dead and it’s my fault. That’s evil. I couldn’t have gotten away with that level of betrayal. I must be cursed.”

Aegon is watching you, eyebrows raised. He has never heard this before. “But your family sucked, right?”

“Yeah,” you admit. “I think it would be hard to argue they didn’t.”

“So fuck ‘em,” Aegon says simply.

You smile at him, touched, grateful. “Okay. Fuck ‘em.”

“I’m relieved my family’s gone,” Aegon confesses, something so brutal he’d never tell anyone else. “I mean…I feel kind of bad about my mom and Criston. But as long as they were alive, I’d always be the person they raised. And if I could bring someone back, it wouldn’t be any of them. I’d pick Rio.”

“I would too,” you say softly, staring down at the faint burn marks on your palms from when you were stranded on that transmission tower with him, talking him out of suicide, so adamant that both of you were going to make it to Oregon. And you were wrong.

“So if you’re cursed, Pita Chips, sign me up because I’m right there with you.”

Rhaena pulls out an earbud and says to Aegon: “I don’t get this album.”

“What?!” he exclaims.

“It’s so good!” you concur. On the shore, Cregan is spearing several gutted rainbow trout on sticks so they can be roasted over the fire. Ice is gleefully gulping down fish organs.

Aegon continues: “Whatsername! St. Jimmy! Jesus of Suburbia!”

Rhaena blinks, glancing between you and Aegon. “But neither of you grew up in the suburbs.”

“It’s not about the suburbs, Rhaena!” Aegon replies with frenetic hand gestures. “It’s about being disillusioned and angry and failed by all the adults in your life, and self-medicating, and losing love every time you get a taste of it, and wanting to burn everything down and start over. It’s about hating the world and the world hating you back.”

“Okay, sure. I still don’t get it.”

You say: “You might have had too happy a childhood.” And you and Aegon burst out laughing.

“You guys are so weird,” Rhaena says, but she’s smiling. She stands up, gives Aegon back his Walkman, and walks to the end of the dock where Cregan is cooking the rainbow trout. Aemond and Daeron are gathering up the aluminum buckets found at the campground and set outside earlier today to collect rainwater. There is one five-pound bag of trail mix left to share, and then all the food is gone. If Cregan doesn’t kill something, you won’t eat.

“We should go help them with dinner,” you tell Aegon.

He groans. “Should we really?”

“Yeah. We should.”

“Fine.” He takes your hand when you offer it and struggles to his feet. Then you inhale a lungful of the scent of roasting trout, and startlingly powerful nausea punches through your stomach, so repellant you have to clamp a hand over your mouth to stop yourself from retching.

There has to be something wrong with the fish. It’s never smelled like that before.

Aegon seems baffled. “What? What’s wrong?”

“Does the trout smell right to you?”

Aegon sniffs the air like a labrador. “I guess…? I barely smell anything.”

“Well you probably destroyed your nose cells with all the coke.”

“That’s discriminatory. Addiction is a disease.” But his brow is furrowed with concern. “Seriously, are you okay? You look awful. Not like that. You know what I mean.”

“I’m fine.” You don’t feel fine; but everyone down by the fire is chatting and joking around nonchalantly, and surely if there actually was something wrong they would have noticed. “I’ll be back in a second.”

“Sure,” Aegon says, perplexed.

You hurry past the others and take refuge in the cabin you’re sharing with Aemond. Inside the trout smell isn’t so strong. You sit at the edge of the bed and suck in several deep breaths, trying to calm down, willing the confounding wave of nausea to pass.

Did I eat something bad, did I get bit by a spider or something…?

You are checking your arms and legs for little raised bitemarks when Helaena enters the cabin and shuts the door behind her. When she opens her burlap messenger bag to root around inside, you glimpse photographs she must have taken from the beach house, the frames left empty on the mantle of the fireplace. Then Helaena pulls out a pregnancy test, just one, Clearblue.

You gawk at it. “What are you doing?”

“You look sick,” Helaena says matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, but I don’t think it’s that.”

She is puzzled, wide innocent blue eyes. “Why not?”

“Well…I mean…that would be freakishly quick, wouldn’t it? Like…quick as in immediately. People can’t get pregnant the first time they have sex, right?”

“Huh. They really don’t have sex ed in Kentucky,” Helaena says, and leaves you alone with your pregnancy test. You don’t feel so nauseous anymore, but you sneak around the back of the cabin to take it anyway, because now you’re thinking about the possibility with a vividness you’ve never experienced before: a round blossoming belly and tiny handprints and Aemond cradling his child in his arms. And by the time you get the result, you aren’t even shocked. It feels like something that’s supposed to happen.

You and Aemond don’t have a moment alone together until after dark, sitting on the porch swing outside your cabin for first watch, everyone else asleep, Ice dozing serenely by your feet. The only sounds are the breeze through the pine trees, cool and damp, and the hoots of owls, and the chirping of crickets and cicadas.

“So guess what,” you say casually as moonbeams float rippling and fractured on the surface of the black-glass lake.

Aemond smiles drowsily, not expecting anything. “What?”

“In approximately eight months, I might be having your baby.”

At first, he doesn’t speak; he only studies the test when you hand it to him, and then looks at you like he’s not convinced you aren’t angry, like he can’t quite bring himself to believe that you’d want this with someone like him. “Are you afraid?”

“No,” you answer honestly. Maybe you should be, but you aren’t. “I’m hopeful. I feel like as soon as I realized it, everything got brighter. And now I’m thinking about the future instead of the past.” They’re not going to grow up like I did. They’re never going to think they aren’t loved. “What should we name it?”

“Not Otter.”

You laugh, trying to muffle it so you don’t wake anyone. Ice lifts her head and stares at you curiously, her shaggy grey ears straight up.

“I don’t know, I’m terrible with names,” Aemond says; and now he’s smiling again, a wide radiant smile, and you know he’s thinking about the future too. “Hope or Peace or something. Something happy. Something about starting over.”

You take his hand. “I can’t wait to start over with you.”

“Just one more day,” Aemond says.

One more day.

~~~~~~~~~~

“So what am I going to do in Odessa?” Luke asks as the eight of you—nine, if you count Ice—trek eastbound on Route 140. You are about five miles from Lake of the Woods and halfway to your destination. It’s only 80 degrees and overcast, good walking weather, although there is a looming threat of rain, occasional rogue drops and far-off rumbles of thunder. “Everyone has valuable skills except me. Chips has great aim and can build things, Daeron has his compound bow, Aemond is basically a doctor, Rhaena is learning how to shoot guns and treat injuries…”

“Aegon has skills?” Cregan jokes, casting him a good-natured grin. Aegon acts like he’s going to whack Cregan with his golf club, which he’s spinning around haphazardly. Both his Marlin .22 and acoustic guitar are slung across his back. There aren’t many bullets left, but everyone has a few.

“Aegon can navigate,” Luke says. “And probably impregnate ten women a day. Very useful during a population crisis.”

“We don’t need that in the gene pool,” Rhaena notes.

“You wrote stories in college, right?” you ask Luke.

“Screenplays, yeah,” he says hesitantly. “But I wouldn’t say I was super talented or anything.”

Aegon claps him on the shoulder “Well I’ve got good news for you, kid. A big chunk of the world’s screenwriters are probably dead now. So you’ll look so much better in comparison!”

“Thanks…?” Luke says.

“What I mean is,” you continue. “You could write books for people to read, since there aren’t really libraries or Barnes & Nobles anymore. And you could interview people to get their life stories and then record them so they aren’t lost forever. The next generation should know what the world was like before the zombies.”

“Yeah,” Aegon says as he pets Ice. “Someone has to tell them about blue raspberry Icees, right Blue Raspberry Icee?”

“Maybe,” Luke says thoughtfully, and you notice that he’s smiling a little.

Ice begins whining, and there is a rustling in the woods to the north, low-hanging branches of bigleaf maple and dogwood and Douglas fir trees being forced aside. “Zombie!” Aegon announces, pointing. Immediately, Daeron nocks an arrow and then releases it, and the figure draped in the shifting shadows of foliage drops to the ground.

“Hey Aegon,” Daeron says after a few seconds.

“Yeah?”

“That was actually a zombie, right?”

“Totally,” Aegon replies, but he doesn’t sound certain.

Aemond turns to his older brother accusingly. “How sure are you?”

“Like…50%.”

“Aegon!” Rhaena cries, petrified, and everyone rushes off the road to investigate.

Blessedly, the felled creature is long-dead, a former park ranger whose tan uniform hangs in gore-stained tatters. The nametag reads: Underwood. The arrow pierced its soft rotting skull and remains lodged there until Daeron pulls it out to be used again, giving Aegon an impatient scowl as he does.

“Close call,” Aegon tells him. “Think they would have charged you as an adult?”

“Lord almighty, that gave me a scare,” Cregan says, chuckling. Helaena spies a blackberry bush and begins picking a handful, and Cregan goes over to join her. Rhaena and Luke are telling Aegon that he needs to be more responsible and should have waited for Luke to confirm it was a zombie with his binoculars. You exchange a glance with Aegon: he rolls his eyes, you offer a smirk of commiseration. Ice is already trotting back towards Oregon Route 140.

You haven’t told anyone else that you’re pregnant yet, but eventually they’re going to notice that Aemond won’t leave your side. He sighs and asks you: “Have you had enough of this little field trip?”

“Definitely.” You head for the road. Aemond walks with you, placing you not on his left side but on his right where he can see you. You ask, smiling: “You don’t trust me to watch your blind side anymore, huh?”

“I prefer the view the way it is.”

You are only a few steps from the black artery of pavement that cuts through the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, a 114,000-acre preserve of wilderness that somehow—although it is 2,500 miles away—reminds you a bit of eastern Kentucky, endless emerald forests, the omnipotent shadows of mountains. And because you are on Aemond’s right side, he can look down and see something just in front of you on the earth strewn with knobby roots and pine needles and dead leaves.

“Don’t!” he shouts, snatching your forearm and yanking you backwards, and he’s never touched you like this before—so forcefully, so violently—and you stumble and almost fall, and your arm burns and aches where he grabbed you, and people are asking what’s going on, and you peer up at Aemond with confusion, fear, mistrust.

“Why…?”

And then you hear it rustling from the same place where you were standing a moment ago. The others yelp and dash out of the way as the snake escapes into the woods, a drab spotted olive green, a rattling tail, an angular skull like an arrowhead.

“Aemond?” you say, because he hasn’t moved, hasn’t made a sound. He looks down, and your gaze follows his. On his right calf, just a few inches above his ankle, are two small puncture wounds from the snake’s fangs, each dribbling a thin river of blood.

“Northern Pacific rattlesnake,” Helaena says, her voice shaking, tears welling up in her horrified eyes. “Venomous.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Aemond has one arm draped across Cregan’s shoulders, the other over Aegon’s. He’s moving slower, or is that just your imagination? His steps are less steady, his breathing more labored. His leg is swelling, a deep blue phantom of a bruise spreading beneath his skin, so tight it looks like it might split open.

“We’re almost there,” you say; you keep saying it, because hopefully that will make it true. “We’re only a few miles from Odessa, and we’ll find people who can help us.”

“Aemond, you’re a doctor,” Luke says.

Aemond’s voice is weak, pained, hazy. “I’m not a doctor.”

“You know what I mean!” Luke yells, frantic. “How do we fix you? What can we do?”

“Nothing,” Aemond says listlessly. “There’s nothing you can do without a hospital. I’ll either get better or I won’t.”

“People in Odessa will know how to help,” you insist. “They’re outside all the time, they hike, they hunt, they fish, they’ve seen snakebites before. They must have. They’ll have treatments.”

“Aemond,” Rhaena breathes, and you turn to see there is blood running from his nostrils. You scream, and Aemond touches his fingers to his face and then watches as they come away bloody.

“Put me down,” he tells Cregan and Aegon.

“No—” you begin, but then his knees buckle and he’s on the pavement anyway, blood pouring from his nose and his lips, blood filling up his right eye. Cregan walks to the shoulder of the highway, his head in his hands. Aegon stays beside Aemond, and you’re kneeling there with him, both of you using anything you have to clean the blood from Aemond’s face: the corners of your shirts, your bare hands.

He’s covered in blood, you think. Just like Jace, Baela, Rio.

“Can’t clot,” Aemond is murmuring. “The venom causes coagulotoxicity. Internal bleeding too. I feel like…like there’s all this pressure inside…”

Rhaena is taking Aemond’s pulse like he taught her to, fingers on the underside of his wrist. “It’s really faint,” she says quietly.

You grab a plastic Gatorade bottle filled with rainwater out of your backpack and tilt it against Aemond’s crimson-stained lips. He manages to swallow some of it. “Aemond, listen to me,” you say as calmly as you can. “You’re so close. We’re almost there. I need you to hang on a little longer.”

He shakes his head, slow dizzy motions. “It doesn’t matter.”

“They might have doctors in Odessa.” This is a fantasy, but you can’t resist it.

“Even if they do, there won’t be any antivenom. And it’s too late anyway.”

“No,” you say savagely, a sob ripping through your throat. “We didn’t cross 3,000 miles so you could die here. I won’t let you. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not fair.”

“Aegon,” Aemond says, reaching for him, drained and fumbling.

Aegon catches his hand. “I’m here.”

His eye—crystalline blue corrupted with red, blood in clear water—drifts to his brother. “You have to get her to Odessa. You have to help take care of everyone.”

Aegon is weeping. “Man, it’s supposed to be you. How can I still be here if you aren’t?”

“You can do this,” Aemond says.

“I’ll try.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, Aemond,” Aegon says, then crawls away on his hands and knees and collapses on the pavement, gutted, inconsolable, hemorrhaging grief instead of gore.

Everyone is crying and touching Aemond—his face, his hands—saying goodbye, accepting tasks, and they come away stained with red, and rain has begun to fall from a dark sky growling with thunder. Rhaena takes his medical kit. Helaena takes his Glock and stows it away in her messenger mag. Then Aemond looks for you, and now you are alone with him here in the middle of the highway, two golden lines on black asphalt, and with your thumbprint you whisk away the rivulet of blood that is spilling from his eye.

“You’re going to be okay,” he whispers as his heart fails, as his lungs fill with blood instead of air, as his pores leak rust and ruin. “Odessa will be everything we hoped for. I just won’t be there with you.”

“You can’t leave me,” you’re saying as rain patters against the road. I left my family and now my family is leaving me.

“Love,” he sighs, almost too softly to hear. “I don’t want to.”

You lie down on the pavement with him and rest your head on his chest, feel it rise and fall beneath you as the rain descends in sheets. And then Aemond exhales, deep and rattling, and he never tastes oxygen again, never speaks, never touches you. You don’t move from where you’re lying. You’re there until you’re drenched to the bones with rain and the world is a cold mist of pine trees, of wilderness, and you can never go back to any of the places you’ve been before, you can never get back the people you’ve left there.

Aegon is shaking you. “We have to keep moving,” he chokes out through tears.

You reply without looking at him. “I’m giving up now.”

“No you’re fucking not. We have to walk to Odessa.”

“Everyone’s dead in Odessa. Everyone’s dead everywhere. I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to stay in a world like this.”

On the periphery of your vision, you can see Aegon glancing at the others, standing just off the highway and under the canopy of the pine trees. He seems defeated, he seems lost.

Then suddenly Aegon turns back to you. “Hey!” he screams, so loudly you jolt upright, your palms on wet pavement, rain dripping from your hair. “I’m still alive. You’re still alive. This isn’t over yet. I said I would get you to Odessa, so that’s where we’re going. Stand up. Right now.”

Aegon holds out his hand. Thunder booms, lightning strobes, and then you take it. He pulls you to your feet and hesitates, as if he didn’t think he would get this far. Then he throws his arms around you, a crushing desperate embrace, a wordless devotion, a silent vow, sobbing into the curve of your neck, tasting the copper and iron of his brother’s blood on your skin.

“We have to keep moving,” he says again, like an apology, like he understands how impossible it feels. “The storm’s getting worse. It’ll be too dark to see soon.”

“We can’t leave him alone like this.”

“That’s not Aemond anymore,” Aegon pleads. “Aemond’s gone. And he would want us to live.”

Now the others are here on the road too: Daeron, Helaena, Cregan, Rhaena, Luke, Ice whimpering and licking scarlet stains of blood off your hands. You’re all holding each other; you’re all any of you have left. Cregan carries Aemond off the pavement and on a patch of grass alongside Route 140, the seven of you cover his body with branches of pine needles and white petals from dogwood trees. Rhaena is the first person to begin walking again, heading east. One by one you follow her. The downpour is torrential; if you are attacked now, you are nearly blind. Aegon stays beside you no matter how slow your steps are. You think if he disappears, you will too; the strings that tie you to the earth will fray and unweave and your bones will turn to mist, your voice will only be the wind howling down mountainsides. You have no way of knowing how long you’ve been walking or how many miles are left. You wonder what will happen to Aemond’s child if there is nothing for you in Odessa.

The rain is stopping. Now you can hear crows, woodpeckers, formations of geese honking in a foggy sky and squirrels scrabbling up tree trunks. Falcons perch watchfully on dead power lines. Rare aisles of sunlight are breaking through dissipating clouds.

They rise up out of the verdant jungle, a tangle of Pacific ninebark and blue elderberry: four figures in green camouflage, two men and two women, all wearing tactical sunglasses and wielding assault rifles, M16s you’re fairly sure, automatic and with 20-round magazines. Daeron moves to nock an arrow and then stops when he sees you’ve put up your hands. The others follow your lead: palms empty, willingly surrendering.

It’s them, you think dazedly. The people in Odessa. They’re alive, they’re real.

“Please cooperate and hand over all your weapons,” one of the women says, fifties, muscular, alert hawkish eyes.

No one moves. Then you unholster your Beretta M9—received from the U.S. Navy almost exactly five years ago, a different lifetime, a different world—and hold it out to the woman in your open palm. And now everybody else is giving their weapons over too: Aegon and Luke’s .22s, Rhaena’s Ruger, the spare Ruger and Aemond’s Glock hidden in Helaena’s burlap messenger bag, Daeron’s compound bow, Cregan’s axe. Ice peers up at Cregan anxiously, her yellowish eyes wide, but she wags her tail when he runs one of his large, calloused hands over her rain-soaked fur.

Aegon is still clutching his golf club. One of the men stares at him, incredulous. “You can keep that, son,” he says.

The woman nods to the men. “Nick and Glen will escort you five miles up the road, and then return your weapons. We ask that you keep moving and do not turn around. We don’t want trouble, but we can defend ourselves. Don’t think you can double back tomorrow and try to loot us or anything. This is your only warning. Do you understand?”

Aegon nudges your hand with his knuckles, then taps you harder when at first you’re too shellshocked to notice. You have to explain. You have to tell them why you’re here.

“I…I…” You begin, unable to make the words leave your lips, rats from a sinking ship, plummeting bodies from a burning building. Here you stand on a precipice, and with so many other people to save. “I served in the Navy with Bryan Osorio. We left Saratoga Springs together. He told me it would be safe here.”

Now they are interested. Slowly, the woman lowers her M16. “You know the Osorios?”

“I do.” I’ve known them for half a decade.

“Could any of them identify you and verify what you’re saying?”

“His wife, Sophie. She’s blonde, and she likes elephants, and she had a baby recently.”

The woman is scanning the faces behind you. “And where’s Bryan?”

“He’s not here anymore,” you say, and now you’re sobbing again. Aegon is squeezing your shoulder, his head bowed. “I’m sorry. I wanted to help him get home. I was supposed to warn him, I was supposed to stop it from biting him, but I didn’t and now he’s gone—”

“Okay, okay.” The woman motions for you to calm down, but her voice is kind. “Who are these guys? Your colleagues, your friends?”

“They’re my family.”

“You can vouch for them?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll all submit to searches for bitemarks?”

“Yes.”

The woman turns to the men she called Nick and Glen. “Take them inside, will you? Get the ID verified and then we’ll process everyone.”

“Got it,” the older man says. And then, to you and your companions: “Follow me.”

Nick and Glen lead you into the forest, the canopy of pine needles so thick the daylight turns to dusk, and you think of lightning bugs, of firelight, of drinking Guinness on the beach with Rio on Diego Garcia. There are several patrols, groups of four or five, that approach to stop you until they see Nick and Glen and wave you through. Then the trees open into a meadow of buttercups and daisies and pink fawn lilies, and beyond that an immense village, some houses decades old, others currently being constructed with logs from pine trees. There are hundreds of people tending to livestock, hanging up laundry to dry on clotheslines, digging in gardens, making candles and soap and butter. There are children playing without fear, giggling as they chase after scampering dogs, challenging each other to games of kickball and Uno.

In front of one of the houses that predates the apocalypse, brick with a screened-in porch, there is a small blonde woman standing in a garden, smiling and chatting with a middle-aged couple. The baby she carries against her chest in a blue sling has dark curly hair like Rio’s.

Sophie and the baby are here. They’ve been alive the whole time.

You rest a palm on your belly without realizing you’re doing it. “What happens now?” you ask Aegon.

“The rest of our lives.”

It is unimaginable, it is impossible, it is so full of luminous potential you feel like the light will spill out of your pores like blood, it’s an oasis, it’s a second chance, it’s an island in the vast lethal untamed blue of the Indian Ocean.

“Let’s go,” Aegon says softly, taking your hand and leading you across the field of wildflowers, kaleidoscopic blooms in the last days of summer.

[wlntrsldler]

almost (sweet music) | luke castellan

synopsis: exbf! luke castellan goes on a date with another girl after your death. went back to my roots and wrote an aphrodite reader!

song: almost (sweet music) by hozier

it's been a year.

it's been a year since percy uttered the words, "we need a shroud, for the daughter of aphrodite." it's been a year since he survived the battle of manhattan and you didn't. it's been a year since hermes had to pull him off your dead body as he thrashed and mourned your death.

he's out of camp half blood now, which he thinks you'd be surprised to learn. you always joked that he'd end up taking over mr. d's position if he wasn't an immortal god. luke had a special relationship with chb, just like you did. back when he was sixteen, the first time he kissed you, he let himself think about growing old with you there.

maybe taking over the summer activities and planning. living in a small cabin just on the outskirts of camp. he thought about making it into a welcome center for new arrivals, somewhere where they could have a hot meal and have a room of their own before they inevitably ended up in the hermes cabin with his rowdy siblings.

those were the easy days. back when his biggest fear was losing his best friend if he told you how he truly felt about you. it seems silly and trivial now that he looks back at it. he wishes he told you how he felt sooner, just to get those extra years, extra days, extra seconds with you knowing that you were his and he was yours.

but now he's in his twenties and you were six feet under. it wasn't fair and he felt disgusted with himself as he prepared for his first date with a girl chris set him up with from his sociology class at nyu. he knew that you would've wanted him to move on, after all, you always said that your favorite version of him was when he was in love. something about how his eyes sparkle differently and how his voice turns softer, kinder, when he spoke, but luke didn't know how to tell you that he was only like that when it came to you.

the date was fine. the girl was pretty. she had the same hair color as you and same giggly laugh, and luke should be grateful that chris knew his type, but all luke could do was compare her to you. it wasn't fair to the girl. she was lovely and she deserved someone who didn't think about their ex-girlfriend every time they looked at her.

when she showed up to the mom and pops restaurant luke picked out for the date, she was listening to your favorite artist. luke almost felt like he was back in the aphrodite cabin, listening to the song on your record player, swaying you back and forth in a lousy attempt at slow dancing. if he tried hard enough, he swore he could feel the sound of your heartbeat pressed against his chest, reminding him that you were still there, still alive.

it made him so dizzy that his date had to ask him if he was okay. he turned pale, all the color draining from his face. luke meekly nodded and told her a half-truth. i haven't gone on a first date in a while.

the girl smiled at him kindly, just like how you did when you first met him, and told him she understood. she sat across from him and sipped on her water, trying her best to keep the conversation going, but luke could tell that she knew his mind was elsewhere.

his mind was at camp half blood, in the sheds by the strawberry fields. his lips were on yours, a smile grazing his face that you had to pull away to tease him. he was always so smiley with you, no facade of the brooding, tough as nails, hermes head counselor that everyone else got from him. with you, he was luke, young, naive, and helplessly in love. when he closed his eyes, he could still feel the ghost of your lips on his, cherry lip gloss teasing his tastebuds.

his date complimented his necklace and for the first time that night, luke gave her a genuine smile and a look of interest. it was the necklace you bought for him for his seventeenth birthday. you'd saved up all your money from your part-time job at the froyo shop in ohio during the year. it was a silver dog tag with an engraving of mercury and venus circling each other. he hasn't taken it off since you put the necklace on him years ago.

when she asked the story behind it, luke spoke your name for the first time in a year to a stranger. when he caught himself talking about you in the present tense, a bitter taste lingered in his mouth and he had to gulp down the rest of his water to wash it away. he flexed his hand, a nervous habit that he had. and when the girl leaned over to place her own hand over his to steady him, luke pulled away from her like she just burned him.

he apologized profusely and it became clear to the girl that luke was not ready to go on a date with anyone. luke saw a flicker of disappointment in her eyes and he wondered if he'd looked like that the entire time, disappointed that it was her in front of him and not you. but then she tapped the back of his hand in a friendly way and leaned back in her chair and said, tell me about her.

you were his favorite topic of conversation. he recalled one too many conversations with chris and the stolls where they'd complain about how every conversation somehow ended up about you. so luke obliged and told her the story of how the two of you came to be. he kept the details vague, deciding that exposing olympus and the existence of the gods would be too much for a first date. maybe sixth, or seventh, but he doubts he'll get that far with her.

when the date was over, the girl gave luke a hug and whispered, i hope you guys get back together. it seems like you really love her.

luke wanted to tell her that if he had the power to be with you again, he would do it in a heartbeat, but that was beyond his control. luke thanked her and said, i hope so, too.

[mysticheathenn]

Mystery Pick-A-Card Pt. ll

Hi, Hexlings!

This pick-a-card reading is about whatever the cards have to say. I shuffle the cards and whatever message comes out is your reading. I couldn't decide on what reading should be next as so many messages wanted to come through, so I decided on this way. This may be about love, academics, friendship/family, money, or careers. Whatever the cards have to say, will be said.

This is a general reading, remember to take what resonates and leave what does not. This reading does not supplement your need to seek professional help. Tarot should be used as entertainment and not a for sure answer to your problems but as a guide, a sense of hope, and amusement.

Take your time when choosing your pile. Ask yourself the question and choose the picture that you can’t stop looking at. Listen to your intuition.

MasterList

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TW Ahead Read With Caution

Pile l:

What is your Mystery Reading? Tarot: Page of Swords, 5 of Swords, The Chariot (Clarified by The Reversed Empress), Justice (Clarified by 9 of Cups), Ace of Wands

"There's no kindness in your eyes The way you look at me, it's just not right I can tell what's going on this time There's a stranger in my life You're not the person that I once knew Are you scared to let them know it's you? If they could only see you like I do Then they would see a stranger too" - Hilary Duff, Strangers

TW: Body image, Self Esteem, Anorexia, Dysmorphia, Etc

Even though Strangers by Hilary Duff is a love song about a toxic relationship this is about you having a toxic relationship, but with yourself. You are so skilled at faking smiles and pretending everything is okay while you suffer on the inside with your constant negative talk to yourself. You could say things like how ugly, fat, and disgusting, you are to yourself and spew all of these lies that aren't true. Some of you could possibly be dealing with body dysmorphia where you see yourself as one way one moment and another moment you do a complete 180 or 360 depending on what it is about your body you are speaking negatively/positively about. Some of these feelings, thoughts, and emotions may have come from your childhood/adolescence where your family constantly pointed out changes in your weight causing you to have these feelings or body disorders. This makes me sad because I don't need to know what you look like to know that you are handsome/beautiful/spectacular/ and everything that's as sensational and bright as the sun. This reading has left me in a pickle as I have never pulled cards dealing with this subject before and don't want to overstep or cause any damage, as I'm not a psychologist/therapist so I can't give you the guidance you need in order to see yourself for all its glory, but your guides want you to know it's time to start seeing the light. They can't help you if you don't try to help yourself first by seeking help for the thoughts that plague your mind on a daily basis. You may like to listen to sad songs when you're sad so you can remain in your sadness because being happy with who you are is too unbearable to think about. It's time to begin your journey of healing and surrounding yourself with people who see you for who you really are and not the versions in your head that you see or the versions your family likes to place on you because of their own f*cked-up views and opinions about themselves. Try seeking out help from a therapist/psychologist, or a trusted friend. Also, remember that you are more than just your looks, you have a personality that I am sure shines bright as gold and a beautiful future ahead where you are thriving and seeing yourself as truly divine.

Pile ll:

What is your Mystery Reading? Tarot: The Devil, 7 of Cups, 8 of Cups (Clarified by The Star), 9 of Pentacles (reversed)

"There's things I wanna say to you But I'll just let you live Like if you hold me without hurting me You'll be the first who ever did There's things I wanna talk about But better not to give But if you hold me without hurting me You'll be the first who ever did" - Cinnamon Girl by Lana Del Rey

TW: Self-Sabotage, Vices, etc

This reading can go so many different ways but the overall message is that there is something in your life that isn't good for you that you can't see to walk away because you either feel you have no better options or you don't want any other options. For some of you, this could be a relationship you refuse to let go of because of fear and for others of you, this could be vices like drugs, alcohol, or even self-sabotaging things for yourself because you don't see how bright your future or how brilliant you are. Some of you are so far down the rabbit hole that you don't see a way out, you have let this thing or person consume your every being to the point there is no moon or sun in your work only complete darkness. It's as if you have fully accepted that this is your life now and the thing about that pile ll is this doesn't have to be your life. You have The Star card in your reading showing you that you are more than capable of being someone other than the version you are now or even finding better elsewhere if this is about a relationship. Freedom is just a few steps away you just have to be the one to see the light at the end of the tunnel instead of always pulling the blackout curtains over any and all kinds of light that touched your domain. You have options...you just rather not take them because of having to deal with the pain that comes along with it. Again this could be vices that you pick up every time life gets even the smallest of inconvenient for you and others it's a relationship that you wholeheartedly either believe is as good as it gets for you because of your low self-esteem or because you don't want to leave this person in their darkest hour not realizing that they too are slowing taking you under. Your light is so bright pile ll and it's been trying to show you in your darkness but you refuse to answer or grab its hand. It's time to walk away from the things that keep you mentally, emotionally, and even physically stuck and walk away. Do some healing or find other solutions that can help with your vices. Similar to how chain smokers replace cigarettes with snacks...replace what this toxic energy is with something better.

Pile lll:

What is your Mystery Reading? Tarot: The Lovers, The Hierophant, The Devil, The Moon, 3 of Swords

Two Messages - TW: Toxic Relationships (Romantic & of the Self)

So many Major Arcana cards pile lll. You may have been drawn to Pile ll, this reading somewhat mirrors that pile also. The only difference is that you acknowledge your unhappiness while Pile ll...well...yeah. Anyway, pile lll I sense your unhappiness within your relationship and possibly within yourself too. With the lovers and devil card in this reading, I sense that this is mainly a relationship reading but if not take what resonates and apply it to you being single. Single messages are later in this reading. Overall you are unhappy with how your relationship is, it's as if you romanticized what it would be like with this person and decided to go with the flow of everything even when things didn't feel right and now you are unhappy because you don't want to "disturb the peace" in your relationship but you also are feeling yourself chip away each and every day. Maybe this is the kind of relationship you thought you wanted because society or your family have always had this kind of relationship and you thought this is the way it has to be not realizing that you have a say in how your relationship should be, feel, and look like. You don't have to sit in silence and possibly cry yourself to sleep every night wishing things were different when you can just leave if the relationship is not serving you the way your soul wants to be fed. For just a few of you this may be an abusive or toxic relationship and this relationship while it is abusive you have only known chaotic and toxic love so anything else just doesn't feel right because you are so used to chaos and drama not realizing that's not love. For those of you who are single, this feels more so of you not feeling one with yourself. You're catering to everyone else but what your soul has been telling you all along. There is so much hidden potential in you that you don't realize because you are listening and entertaining others. Going back to those who are in abusive or toxic relationships if you can and only if you can seek help. There are so many people out there willing and wanting to help you get out. Last for those who are single and try and tap into the parts of you that are screaming for you to release and see where it takes you. I am going to let you know that you tapping into yourself will cause friction to those who are only around you for their own benefit...are you ready to lose those around you when you stop entertaining others' opinion of you.

Pile lV:

What is your Mystery Reading? Tarot: Ace of Pentacles, 7 of cups, Strength, Ace of Cups, 8 of Pentacles, Hanged Man

This is the only good happy-toned reading out of the remainder of the other piles and I can't tell you how happy I am for you. Whatever it is that you have been working on specifically dealing with career as I see a lot of money and emotions cards. Needless to say, that emotional fulfillment is coming in for you pile lV. Please don't doubt that what you are doing is a waste of time because it's not. If you aren't working on something you may have had several opportunities or ideas come to you that you have questioned whether they will lead you to financial stability and abundance and with the 8 and Ace of Pentacles card it is a yes. Yes, one of your ideas will bring you the money you have been trying to manifest or pray for. Some of you that may have multiple ideas or opportunities may not be sure as to what you should take that will lead you down this road and it's the one that gives you the most emotional fulfillment. If you still aren't sure close your eyes and picture yourself doing each opportunity and if it doesn't give you a feeling of peace washing over you...onto the next idea or opportunity. This path will also force you to have strength pile lV as this is not a quick road to riches and stability. You will be tested and have setbacks as well as being stuck in limbo but overall this will be worth it and is exactly what you have been wanting in your life...it's just going to take a bit of work to get there but financial abundance is on it's way to you, just have patience, dedication, and focus on the prize.

Thank you for liking and reblogging my readings. I always appreciate you guys on here and on Patreon.

Stay safe and be blessed

[caramelpenguin]

Felice mouths a 'thank you' at Sara over the choir teacher's shoulder as she closes the door. This should hopefully give them atleast ten minutes, and if Sara can stall her for longer, maybe twenty.

She turns back to face the choir, her hands firmly planted on her hips. Felice isn't even close friends with most of these students, but right now, that doesn’t matter. If they’re going to pull this off, she needs as many as she can on board. Clearing her throat, she eyes them all slowly, "Do you all remember the song Simon wrote? That we performed once and never sang again?"

The room erupts in murmurs and whispers.

"You mean the one based on the school anthem?"

"Yes! That one."

Someone snorts from the back. "The one that's not even subtly about Wilhelm?"

"Exactly." Felice squares her shoulders. "What do we think about singing that version on the last day instead of the original? As a way of surprising Simon?"

There’s a pause, followed by a sharp voice from the front row. A girl with neatly braided hair and a skeptical expression raises her brow. "And why would we do that? There’s no real reason."

Oh, Felice is ready for this. She counts off on her fingers, her words measured but pointed. "First, this might be our last performance as a choir. Wouldn’t we rather do something meaningful for ourselves than just the boring school version? Second, we've all seen the horrible crap Simon’s had to deal with recently- it's awful. It’s the least we can do to show him we’re on his side." She pauses, letting her words sink in before delivering the kicker. "And finally—his version is way better than the original. You all know it."

The murmurs in the room shift, tinged with curiosity and a few nods of agreement.

Then, from the back, a new voice cuts through. "Yes," Felix says, his cheeks lightly flushed. Felice has noticed him glancing at Simon during rehearsals, expression soft in a way he probably doesn’t think anyone else sees. "I think that's a great idea."

His endorsement cracks the ice. Someone in the second row murmurs, "I mean, it is better than the original."

Another chimes in, "And Simon would definitely love it."

"He's a good guy. Amazing voice, too."

Felice thinks of the way Wilhelm talks about Simon - this boy who treats him with gentle touches and loves him in a way that he deserves, like he’s something precious. She thinks of Simon as a brother to Sara, unwavering and loyal and someone who's stuck by ,who's dealt with the harsh blows. She thinks of Simon with his loud opinions at the start of the year, unafraid to challenge what he felt was wrong.

That’s why this matters. This isn’t just about the song. It’s about Simon. About reminding him that he’s seen and valued and that what he’s brought to this group has meant something.

Felice looks around the room at the hesitant faces, at the whispers still swirling among the group, and lets her determination harden.

“Listen,” she says, her voice firm, “this isn’t about whether or not we get in trouble. It’s about doing something that actually means something. For Simon. For us. If you don’t want to do it for him, fine. Do it because this choir deserves to go out on a high note. And because we’re capable of more than just doing what’s expected of us.”

No-one speaks up to argue. Slowly, the students begin to shuffle into position, the energy in the room shifting. Someone hums the first note, and the familiar melody builds—hesitant at first, then stronger, richer.

[inesbaby21]

omggg hii loved ur inês head cannons!! was wondering if you would do like singer!reader x inês !!

10000x yessa guys look at my username .. i LOVEEEE ME SOME INÊS DOWN DO NOT PLAY WITH IT 😜

INÊS BETTENCOURT X SINGER!READER HEADCANONS

Definitely has a playlist dedicated to your songs/ Songs that remind you of her

I'm also getting nepo baby vibes from singer!reader, but not like you guys are probably thinking..I seeing like former WNBA player mom, or NBA player dad that follows singer!reader like a HAWK honey ..

Anyways, this girl cannot shut up about you in post game interviews- like she's getting side eyed by kk and ice for mentioning your new EP/new album

"Yeah no, my pregame playlist is full of Y/N-" Inês says, full blown smile- eyes gleaming full of adoration.

"The fact that she's not even lying is the best part, she's so whipped that we can't even MENTION Y/N being in the stands- or even like coming to a game without her squealing like a little girl .." FT A NASTY the side eye BAD.

I definitely see Inês getting in trouble for missing practice to see you perform- or like begging you to come to a home game for weeks and like freaking when you finally do.

"Paige help me- I didn't think she was actually gonna fly in to watch me play. SHE JUST HAD A CONCERT IN ARIZONA."

"nesh don't task me- I've never had to stop someone from getting on a plane to see me the next day" Paige says muting the live as Inês marches in the room terrified

FASHION. KILLERS. cmon now, like seriously do think Singer!Reader would let nesh walk around looking like a hobo?

Jokes, Jokes, the two definitely match- but like Mary Kate and Ashley match (I'm a twin fun fact! and my mom would match me and my brother this way!)

Definitely always Inês plus one to events- and vise versa.

"But Y/N/NNNNN I really want you to go to our pregame dinner- meet my teammates and friends! I literally live with most of them" The tan girl says pouting as she raises her head from the dip of your chest.

Poor baby definitely (accidentally) exposed your relationship on live with Kk, Paige, and Azzi somewhere in the background. Definitely got laughed at while she freaked out.

"Paige- You know that Y/N/N is coming from california after todays performance and she's coming to see meee" The girl says, completely disregarding the fact that they were on live. UNMUTED with over 5k active and listening fans, fans who commonly screen recorded the lives.

Poor baby ended the live so fast, and rushed to call you and let you know that she had exposed your almost 7 month relationship on accident (while sobbing)

"And- and like I said something about you coming to see me after your performance in Cali, a-and like We were on live. With you being in Cali right now- about to perform in a few hours- plus Y/N being your name they know i'm talking about you" The girl says In-between sobs.

"Oh Nes- I'm not mad baby, I had no problem with going public I just wanted to make sure you were ready" You said doing your best to comfort the obviously distraught girl- who was convinced that you would be upset with her.

Cutest paparazzi pictures of you two on the beach, or on stage before a concert- and don't get me started on the date/late night pictures of the two of you out.

Definitely having to get Inês used to people following her around, getting picture of her, and the Gala's (Not that ANY of the things paparazzi do should be legal, but just so it's less stress on the poor girl 😞)

Definitely writing a few (a whole notebooks worth) of songs about inês

Also definitely comes to see Singer!Reader live/ on stage after hard launching each other and Is invited (dragged) on stage as she sings an acoustic version of a song she wrote about Nesh

Definitely spends all of her free time on the phone with you, or if your schedules line up little vacations/get aways because with both of your demanding schedules sometimes you two need a little no phone, no wi-fi, no service break you know ?

A/N I love my sugar plum blum Inês! I can't waittt to see her do great things this season, even if she's not with Uconn! also remember that these are HUMAN BEINGS with emotions, feelings, and personal behind the scenes things that we don't know about. Meaning that her transfer really is none of our business, as for other players transferring schools/being traded off in the WNBA. Our "Job" is to support these women, watch them do what they love, and to honestly mind our business 🤷🏽‍♀️.