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elliespillowprincess · 1 year ago

Text

SHES MY DRUG

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pt 1

pt 2

pt 3

a/n: this is my first ever (kinda) fic so it kinda sucks and is all over the place.. also this one will be a bit longer than the others! i hope to just make this an ongoing series with no real end? idk yet!!! it’s kinda all over the place

c/w: TIME SKIP??, modern au, reader is in med school, biker!ellie!!, rich!ellie… kinda toxic!ellie? angst, addiction, substance abuse, joel’s death makes an appearance, fluff, fem reader, plus size reader, insecure reader, race of reader not specified, smut, strap-on usage (r!receiving), cum eating, spit?, tribbing, fingering (r!receiving), breeding kink, TERRIBLY WRITTEN, not proofread

WHY YOU SHOULD NOT SUPPORT NEIL DRUCKMANN

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ELLIE WILLIAMS

her name is everywhere now. after leaving your town, her music had blown up more than ever before. 2 years had gone by since the two of you shared your last kiss, and for the first few months the two of you texted constantly.

ellie🤭: how’s my pretty girl?

ellie🤭: hoping to come back soon

tours been getting crazy

ellie🤭:

missing you

it felt like a dream, texting one of the worlds biggest rockstars while she was on tour, her sending photos of her adventures. but all dreams end in you waking up.

you: hey wyd?

you: hoping you’re coming back soon

you: hey ellie?

we haven’t talked in a bit

i miss you.

the dream ended. just like that, you were just another girl. after waiting for replies, you decided to move on. this fantasy wasn’t real, the dream was over. ellie was now famous for hooking up with her fans, videos popping up constantly of her leading them out of her concert and onto her bike, just like she did to you.

you were just another girl.

you graduated university as the top scholar in your small town, liliana just behind you. both of you applied to a med school in new york, both getting accepted. your best friend kept telling you you’ll forget her, but how could you? she was everywhere.

eventually, there were some days you could go by without thinking of her. you decided to quit drinking and smoking, and focus on schooling. you got your pleasure elsewhere; hooking up with whatever girl swiped right on you on tinder that day. they always looked a little like her. if they didn’t have that auburn hair, they had tattoos, if they didn’t have tattoos, they were a musician, etc.

“hey, y/n?” you hear a familiar voice say. “wanna go out tonight? i feel like we haven’t gotten to hangout in ages. you don’t have to drink or anything, promise!” liliana practically begs you. it was true, the two of you hardly had any time outside of schooling to hangout, so hesitantly, you agree. she tells you all about this new club that opened, how its invite only so there won’t be too many people, and how there’s surprise private performers. she got the invite from her boyfriend, and was allowed to bring one extra person: you. you decide to use the rest of your day off prior to your later plans to take an everything shower, shaving and exfoliating your whole body. when you get out, you go to your closet to pick out something to wear, still in your towel. your new wardrobe consisted of mainly business casual clothes and scrubs for lab days, so you push them away and dig through the back of your closet. you go through the pile of clothing, until you hit something hard. you grab it, pulling it into the light. when you realize what it was, you feel lightheaded.

it’s her helmet.

tossing it to the back with a pit in your stomach, you grab three random items of clothing, shutting the door. it was exactly what you wore when you first met her: a lacy cami, short black skirt, and a leather jacket. you threw the outfit on, hoping to cover up the old memories with new ones. after you touched up your makeup, you, andrew, and liliana started pregaming. you didn’t want to overdo it, but you also wanted a small buzz for this intimidating of a club. your plan was to leave around 9, it was 8:47. “i’m actually excited, i haven’t been this excited for an event in a while!” you say to the group, feeling a buzz. the three of you are laughing and talking until you get a notification, indicating the uber was there. driving to the club, the driver put on the radio. of course, it had to be her.

the loud music and sweaty atmosphere of the club made you feel dizzy. the only thing keeping you from running away was a tall girl eyeing you across the room. she had short, dark hair, freckles, and a sour face as she looked at you like prey: your type. after a while, you notice she comes up to you, asking if you want anything to drink. agreeing, you thank her and start talking. “where y’from angel?” she asks. “nowhere near here, i used to live in a small town, goldwhit grove?” she looks at you like you’re crazy, rolling her eyes. “never heard of it. hey wanna get outta here?” you look over to your friends, liliana dancing against andrew, and remember how mad she was last time you ran off with a girl without telling her. “i don’t know i’m here with my frie-“ your sentence was interrupted but the screams of the drunken club goers around you as they all flock to the front. looking over to the stage, you see who they’re going crazy over. and of course,

it’s her.

she was everywhere, it was like you couldn’t escape and forget her no matter how hard you tried. she’s stumbling all over the stage, and slurring her words. bras were being thrown at her, and she just had this stupid look on her face. like she was loving it. she was looking around the crowd, for what you assumed to be a girl to take back to her hotel, she made eye contact with you. it felt like the whole room went quiet, even though it was far from it. you wanted to scream, call her an ass, throw drinks at her. but found another solution. turning to the girl next to you, you began rubbing against her, feeling her biceps as she wrapped her arms around you, kissing your neck. you did all of this while making eye contact with her.

“i.. i um… sorry guys.. can’t-can’t perform t’night.” she says, rushing offstage. this makes you smile, knowing you got under her skin. you continued to dance against the stranger to whatever shitty music the club put on between performers. then, it felt like the world went back into focus, your phone buzzing in your hand waking you up. “hey hold on, gotta take this.” you say, lightly pushing the girl off of you and pulling out your phone.

???: what the fuck is wrong with you

who is that???

answer me y/n i’m not fucking around

the unfamiliar messages creeped you out, so you simply blocked the number and went back to the girl, making small conversation. then, another one.

???: don’t block me

can we talk??

come to the bathrooms

rolling your eyes, you type a response.

you: idk who you are but leave me alone

it’s weird

are u stalking me??

another.

???: please

abiding by this stranger could put you in a life or death situation, but all of the adrenaline from seeing ellie and the alcohol made you lose your senses. “hey, i’ll be right back. gotta use the bathroom.” you tell the stranger, making your way through the crowds into the shitty club bathrooms. as you approach it, it seems oddly quiet for a club bathroom. you walk in, and instantly feel a hand grab your wrist, pulling you in and locking the door. “hey what the fu-“

then you see who it is.

confusion turns to shock, shock turns to anger.

“what the fuck ellie? you really think you can just ditch me for 2 fucking years and just be like ‘surprise! i’m back!’” you yell at her, pushing her away. “i’m not playing your fucking games, i feel dumb for even thinking we had something! had me waiting months for you to reply just for you to get with any groupie you come across?” she’s not saying anything, and it only makes your blood boil even more. “are you just gonna fucking sit there? i’m trying to have a good night! i caught fucking feelings for you, you made me feel like i was worth actually fucking loving, and you just threw it all away!” she just sits there, letting you yell. “fucking say something!” your voice becoming weaker, trying not to cry. looking into her eyes, you can tell she’s on something. they’re red and blown out, she reeks of alcohol and weed.

“you’re wearing the outfit.” she says flatly, looking at your outfit. you laugh, actually laugh at her. the fact you just spilt your heart out and all she can do it’s compliment your physical traits. “oh.. oh my god. you- you got problems ellie.” you say with a huff, pushing her away and heading for the door. “i’m leaving, and i’m gonna go back to a girl that maybe actually gives two fucks about me, unlike you.” reaching for the handle, you feel her grab your waist and pull you to her back. “please, don’t go.” you sigh against her, starting to tear up. “let-lemme go ellie..” you barely try to fight her grip. she doesn’t do anything, just breathes you in. “don’t… don’t go, please.” she says softy against your neck, her voice cracking. it feels like you’re melting.

turning around, you look directly at her. “i want an explanation.” you say, wiping tears from your eyes. “you told me you’d come back, you told me you missed me. where did that all go?” you look at her with doe, tear-filled eyes. she just wraps her hands around your face and admires you. “it.. didn’t go anywhere. jus’ a lot happened okay? i just need you to believe me.” your faces are mere inches away, and she’s staring at you with pleading eyes. “how can i believe you ellie? you’re not even sober.” she just wraps her arms around your neck, pulling you in and hugging you.

then you start to hear crying- no, sobbing. she sobs into your shoulder, trying to speak but unable to get words out. she casts her spell on you once again, drawing you in and making you hug her back. “just… just tell me what happened okay?” she’s barely breathing, and you rub her back in an attempt to calm her down. “he- he died!! he fucking died!” she says between cries. “who? who died ellie?” you say softy into her ear. “joel! he- he took care of me i- i- was so mean to him!” she cries against you. “hey, hey it’s okay ellie, just breathe.” after a few minutes of her crying, she starts to breathe slower, eventually pulling back and wiping your face. “can.. can we go somewhere else please?”

it was like déjà vu, being back on ellie’s bike. you had her other helmet at your apartment, so she gave you hers instead. you were honestly scared, she looked intoxicated, but she assured you she was fine to drive. speeding through the streets of new york, you arrive at ellie’s penthouse, of course. the walk into the building in the ride up the elevator is quiet, the only noise coming from ellie sniffling.

unlocking the door on the top floor, she lets you in. the place was trash. liquor bottles, pill bottles, baggies with unknown substances, different girls clothes. you were a little disgusted, but ellie ushered you to her room, which was much cleaner in contrast. you hesitate to sit down, thinking about how many girls fucked her on that bed. “no girls have been in my bed, promise.” you hear her voice say, sitting down.

the two of you just sit there, waiting for the other to speak. she finally gets the nerves to, and starts off. “i just wanna say i’m sorry, y/n. you didn’t deserve any of this.” she looks over at you with hooded eyes and continues. “when he… died, i didn’t know what to do- it was when i was in london.” that was around the time she stopped texting. “i just.. turned to a lot of stuff for comfort. i didn’t know what to do- i know it’s not an excuse..” she stares at you, waiting for a response. “thought about you every fucking day. honestly.” your heart starts to melt. “i don’t expect you to forgive me, but let me make it up to you okay?” you nod silently. this doesn’t feel real. “please say something..” she begs. your eyes meet hers and you just word dump everything that’s been clouding your mind for the past two years.

“look, ellie, i understand where you’re coming from. i just.. i need you to know how much it hurt me, seeing you get with all those other girls, it made me feel ugly. inside and out.” her gaze softens and she unexpectedly pulls you in for a hug. “fuck. i’m so fucking sorry, y/n. you’re the most beautiful girl i’ve ever fucking seen.” she says, her head buried into your shoulder. “everytime i was with any of those girls, i thought about you. anytime i was anywhere doing anything, i thought about you.” her words contrast her actions, but her soft words and tears make you start to believe her.

you hug her back, the two of you laying down in her bed. it all feels so wrong, but so right, she was like an addiction; she was horrible for you but you just kept going back. she softly rubbed your hair, causing your eyes to feel heavier and heavier until you fall asleep in her arms.

fuck.

you wake up, and the first thing you see is ellie. she’s awake already. she smiles at you, a genuine smile. you on the other hand, look horrified. “goodmorning.” she says, pushing your hair out of your face. “how’d you sleep?” you’re lost for words at this point. you start to remember why you don’t drink anymore. “i.. um.. i gotta use the bathroom.” you mutter before getting up, grabbing your phone from her bedside table, and locking yourself in the bathroom. you open your phone.

lili🦄: wya?

you slipped off again

where’d u go?

hello?

dude don’t do this again

ur freaking me out.

is that u that i just saw leave?

i’m following u

who is that?

where are you going??

dude answer hello??

you reply with a spew of apologies, telling her you’re safe and you’ll be home soon. “y/n?” you hear ellie shout from another room. “i made breakfast!” what the fuck? it was like she was a different person, like nothing that happened in the past actually happened and the two of you were a happy couple. you unlock the bathroom door, creeping into the living room. your jaw dropped, it was spotless.

“wow! you uh.. really cleaned up the space?” she smiles at you, plating what looks like eggs, bacon, and toast. “couldn’t sleep. i know you usually wake up early so i slipped out of bed last night and made it back before you woke up.” she waves you over to the table. “come, eat.” you tiptoe to the table, still in your clothes from the club the night prior. sitting down, ellie sets your plate down, along with some water before sitting herself down across from her. it’s quiet, uncomfortable. she decides to break the silence before you start eating. “i’m done with the pills, y/n.” she says bluntly. it kind of takes you by surprise, not the fact that she’s doing it, but the fact she announced it so bluntly. “gonna better myself. better myself for you, us.” she says. her words almost feel like knives to your heart, why was she changing all of this now? “i know it’s late, but i want to be better.” you put a piece of bacon in your mouth, swallowing before speaking. “i’m glad, ellie.” you say softly. the meal remains quiet, but its shifts from an uncomfortable to a comfortable silence.

“hey, i have to go home, can you text me please? for real this time.” you say half heartedly. she puts your dishes away in the sink, nodding. “i’ll take you home, don’t want you in those ubers, they’re not safe.”

the next few months consisted of you texting ellie, again. but this time, she came back very often. as soon as a show ended, she’d be on the next flight to new york to see you.

ellie🧸: boarding the plane rn

can’t wait to see u :)

both of your schedules were tight, but you still worked in time to see each other. ellie often cancelled entire shows just to see you, losing all that money. but she didn’t care, she just wanted you to be happy.

you: i miss youuuu

when r u coming back?

ellie🧸:

rn tbh

it felt like a dream once again, but this time, you had a feeling she wasn’t gonna let go. you hoped she wouldn’t. the two of you hung out constantly, going to her shows and being in the first row, her singing directly to you. going on walks at times square, ellie wearing a mask to hide her face of course. and sleepovers at each others apartments. liliana kept telling you to be careful, to not get hurt again.

not only were you guys talking again, but she was making it very apparent to her fans. saying things like “this one’s for my girl, she’s watching at home. see you soon, sweetheart” before playing love songs. even though you guys weren’t official- you haven’t even kissed since your last one almost 3 years ago- she sure acted like it. she was almost always sober, only ever smoking weed or having small amounts of alcohol before performing to lighten her nerves: never with you.

you were going over your neuro notes in your room, when ellie calls you, and you pick up.

you: “hey! what’s up?”

ellie: “i just got off the plane, gonna pick you up in 30 kay? wear something nice pretty girl, we’re going out.”

you: “what? where?”

ellie: “just be ready, kay? mwah i gotta go!”

the call ends and you laugh at how dumb ellie was, making kissing sounds. you quickly get up to find something to wear and throw on some makeup. you didn’t know how fancy you had to be, so you stuck with a tight black dress, black heels, and the necklace made out of pure gold ellie bought for you a couple weeks ago.

ellie🧸: come outside

her text makes your heart skip a beat, and you go out to see ellie standing next to a car. from your knowledge, she didn’t own any cars; just bikes. she was wearing a fucking suit: white button up that she of course didn’t button up all the way, black pants and jacket, and her dumb converse that completely contrasted the outfit. she smiled when she saw you. “ellie? what’s this?” you laugh, going up to hug her and smell her cologne. “y’like it? had it delivered earlier today before i got home for tonight!” she says with a coy smile. you let out a breathy laugh at the fact she can just buy such an expensive car for no good reason.

“it’s gorgeous, ellie.” you smile at her and she pushes herself off the car, turning around to open the passenger side. crawling in, you admire the inside. it was all black, with silver accents and a large carplay module. the passenger side had some photos of the two of you, and your name was engraved into the dashboard. it looked engraved by the fucking manufacturers.

she shuts your door, walking to the drivers seat, plopping inside. “whatcha think? paid a pretty penny for them to customize that.” she looks at you nervously, hoping you’ll like it. “oh ellie, you didn’t have to do this! you’re so sweet.” she smiles. “i’m glad you like it, babe.” she presses the button to turn the car on, and it unleashes a loud roar. as if she couldn’t get any hotter, the car was a manual, and she knew very well how to use one. the two of you leave the parking lot of your apartment complex, speeding through the buildings. you can help but stare at her, as you never got to see her face when she was on her motorcycle. she was focused; shifting gears strategically without stalling. you just stare at her face, her slightly unbuttoned shirt, her hands: your face becomes warm. “something wrong?” her voice snaps you out of it, noticing you’re staring.

“oh um- i’m fine! sorry..” you laugh quietly. “it’s okay to stare y’know? i stare at you all the time.” she says simply. god, she says everything with no fear. “where are we going?” you ask, curiously. “uhh i think it’s called masa’s sushi bar? heard it was really nice.” your eyes widen and your jaw drops. “WHAT??” you ask her, dumbfounded. “ellie that’s like $600 a person!! i can’t afford that right now i-“ “i got it, don’t worry ‘bout it kay?” she interrupts you. “ellie i don’t need to be taken out to nice places- id love to just sit in one of our apartments and watch cartoons.” you start feeling bad.

“you deserve it, let me take you out okay?” you put your head down, feeling terribly guilty. “hey, don’t feel bad okay? this is what i want to spend my money on.”

the two of you arrive at the restaurant, and before you can open your door, ellie screams “WAIT!” before jumping out her side and running to your door, opening it for you with a smile, reaching her hand out. you can’t help but laugh. “you’re such a nerd, ellie!”

the dinner consisted of the two of you laughing at each other, almost getting kicked out a few times for your loud behavior. “ellie! be quiet! that guy has come over a million times to tell you to be quiet!” you say in a loud whisper. when the check comes, you see the total and feel like vomiting. “$2,457?? ellie you’re crazy! i feel so bad let me give you someth-“ you try to pull your empty wallet out but she stops you, “i got it, don’t worry okay?” she tips the workers a large amount and gets up to grab your purse, and walk you out. walking to the car, she opens your door, handing you your purse before getting in herself.

“i have one more surprise, we’re going back to mine tonight.” she says while starting the car. “another? seriously ellie i dont want you spendi-“ “nuh uh, don’t wanna hear it. you deserve this okay?”

the ride home was fast, and filled with tension. you were nervous for what else ellie had in store for you. arriving at her penthouse, she lets you out and leads you to the elevator. you’re shifting nervously on your feet, and she notices. “what’s wrong?” she asks you, stepping a little closer. “i’m nervoussss! what is the surprise?” “gotta wait, sweetheart.”

arriving at her door, she opens it and holy shit. it was covered in flowers, slow music playing in the background. you followed the trail of flowers to the dining room table: the place the two of you spent countless meals together just basking in eachother presence. on the table, was a small white box. you lift it up, having no clue what could be inside. “open it, princess.” she says with a goofy, excited smile. you open the box, and oh my god. it was a gorgeous golden necklace, with an “E” attached to the chain. it wasn’t obnoxious, it was beautiful.

“ellie! what is this?! it’s so pretty!” you smile at her, hugging her. “do- do you like it?” “like it?? ellie i love it!!” you say into her shoulder. the two of you hug for a moment before she pulls you back, pulling a necklace out with your initial on it from under her shirt. everything feels electric, fuzzy, and warm. “let me help you put it on.” she says, gently grabbing the necklace out of the box. you turn around, lifting your hair, allowing her to clip the necklace around your neck. you turn around to look at her, and she adjusts it so it sits centered on your neck.

“you’re so pretty.” she just stares at you for a moment, admiring your features. she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, opening them again before asking,

“can i be your girl?”

it felt like you were floating. her cologne was filling your nose, her eyes searching for an answer in yours.

“i know it’s a lot to ask- i just- i really like you y/n and-“

she’s cut off by you pressing your lips against hers, wrapping your hands in her hair. her eyes stayed open for a moment before the closed, kissing you deeper. she wrapped her arms around your waist, wanting to feel you closer. the two of you stayed there for a moment before you pulled away with tears brimming your eyes.

“yes, yes i’ll be your girl ellie!” you say, laughing deeply and throwing your head back as she places playful kisses along your jaw. “fuck yes, yes!!” she says, laughing with you. the two of you just stand in the dining room for a bit, gently kissing one another before you pull back, leading her to the bedroom.

you grab the collar of her shirt, pulling her ontop of you, kissing her deeply. the two of you spend about 15 minutes just enamored with one another’s mouth, when she notices you squirming, pulling back. “what’s wrong baby?” she asks, innocently. “s’hot ellie..” you say, mascara running and your cherry lipstick smudged. she smiles, dipping down to suck on your neck, leaving dark marks, running her tongue over them to soothe the pain. her lips travel down, meeting the top of your dress. “can i take this off for you?” you nod immediately. “gotta tell me with your words, princess.” you whimper at her request, obliging. “yes.. yes you can take it off els.”

“good girl.” she gently removes your dress, followed with your bra and underwear, leaving you naked under her. “so pretty, my gorgeous girl.” she coos. she begins kissing down your collarbone, and to your chest. she looks up at you as she practically makes out with your boobs, giving equal attention to both of them. she lifts her head, looking at you with lust filled eyes as she steps off the bed to undress, completely naked. you’re practically drooling, looking at her toned abs, perky tits, and the freckles that litter her body. she goes back up to kiss you, before asking, “are you still sure? “fuck- yes fuck els- just… please”

“okay, baby.”

the speaker in the living room begins playing Let the Light in by Lana Del Rey. she lifts your leg, allowing it to limply lay over her shoulder as she slowly lowers her cunt over yours. the sudden contact causes both of you to let out a breathy moan before she begins grinding against you. “so pretty, my pretty baby..” you can barely respond, the feeling of her cunt directly on yours making you dizzy. it feels so intimate, but so right.

“never.. never leaving your side again you understand?” she says between grunts. “you and me- fuck- forever baby.” she’s grabbing at you: your tits, your hips, kissing your face. the air in your lungs feels like it’s being sucked out. “els… please i- more..” you beg. her pace speeds up, her eyes locked on yours. “gonna… gonna take care of my girl ‘kay?” you feel yourself getting closer and closer to the edge. “els… m’gonna cum!!” you moan, grabbing at her arms. “me too- fuck- cum with me baby cmon give it to me.”

and that’s all it takes.

your orgasm rips through you, making your vision blur as hers follows right after, riding both of yours out. the room is filled with moans, squelching, and grunts as you both come down from your high. she collapses beside you, kissing you softly and cuddling you. she pulls away for a minute to just admire you. “y/n i.. i love you.” she says, smiling nervously. you can’t help but giggle as you pull her in closer, saying,

“i love you ellie williams.”

1 year later

you were getting ready for ellie’s private concert, wearing the same outfit you wore when she asked to be yours. it was your anniversary, and she was gonna take you out to a nice dinner followed by a surprise after the show was over. “baby? you ready?” you hear your girlfriend say, walking over to her to show her your outfit. “oh my goddd” she gawks over you. “look at my princess.” she says, grabbing your ass as she pulls you in for a messy kiss.

you two were late for her concert.

your heart was so full watching your girlfriend perform onstage. you were right up front, catching each others eye constantly. the sound of squealing girls around you threatened to drown out ellie’s singing. you look around, growing insecure at all the girls throwing themselves at ellie. she was smiling, enjoying the crowd and attention. girls were flashing her, holding up provocative signs. normally it didn’t get to you, but tonight it did.

finishing the concert, ellie’s bodyguards escort you to join her backstage. ellie notices your mood, and asks what’s wrong. “nothing ellie, jus wanna go home.” you reply blankly. “okay.. okay let’s go home yeah?”

arriving at her house, you walk to her bedroom, plopping yourself on her bed. she follows close behind after setting down her bag. “what’s on your mind, you seem sad?” she asks innocently. “the fact all those girls throw themselves at you! i mean, i don’t usually get so insecure, i know you love me jus…” you choke on your tears. “they’re so pretty, els. scared you’re gonna leave me for one of them y’know? i know im not the prettiest, i don’t have the best body-“ ellie cuts you off, jointing you on her bed. “hey, hey. don’t say that okay? you know i only have eyes for you.” she says softly, kissing your forehead. “you’re the most beautiful girl in this world, love. your body is beautiful.” she kisses all over your face, making you giggle.

it was like all your insecurities flew out the window. the two of you were laying on her bed, kissing each other softly. “m’sorry i ruined your surprise.” you say sadly. “hey, you didn’t ruin anything okay?” she reassures you. “what was the surprise?” her face turns a light shade of pink, stuttering. “we don’t have to- it’s was just if-“ you become more interested in what it was. “cmonnnnn just tell meee!” you say, the curiosity killing you. “are you sure? it’s not- if you’re not in the mood-“ “tell me ellie!” she sighs, grabbing your hand gently and placing it over her crotch. your eyes widen and you instantly feel wetness pool to your cunt.

she bought a strap on.

“we don’t have to, sweet thing. we can ju-“ her sentence is interrupted by you kissing her deeply, spit mixing with one another’s. she sat up so you could sit in her lap, her palming the fat of your ass. the two of you already removed all of your clothing besides underwear, the skin to skin contact making you dizzy. the make out session turned sloppier as minutes went by, and you became needier: grinding against her thigh. she noticed, and inquired you about it. “what’s wrong baby? needy for me?” you nod, almost forgetting ellie always wants you to use your words. “want.. want your cock, ellie.” you say, whimpering in her mouth.

“lay on your back, lemme do all the work.”

she helps you pull your underwear down your legs, followed by her boxers just after: causing the strap on to bounce out and fuck was it big. probably 7 inches, extremely thick and a dark shade of purple. you practically drool at the sight of your naked girlfriend in front of you, all strapped up. “gotta make sure you’re ready first, okay baby?” she tells you, gently pushing her fingers into your wet hole. “your so fuckn’ wet, baby. i do this?” you nod aggressively, making her add a second finger. “cmon, mama, gotta tell me with your words, how else will i know?” you loved when she was demanding, it usually only happened when she becomes really possessive.

“yes ellie- fuck! yes it you that made- made me this wet!” you say between moans. after a few minutes, she pulls her fingers out. “suck.” she demands. you oblige, taking her long digits in your mouth and sucking every last drop off. “y’ready? i’m gonna go slow okay?” she says whilst gently pushing the tip in. she goes slow, waiting for you to ask for more before she goes deeper. once she’s all the way in, she’s drooling at the sight of you swallowing the silicone. “can feel you squeezing my cock, baby. fuckkk look at her.” she presses your thighs to your stomach, ensuring she can get as deep as possible. then, it’s like the world is on fire.

she starts pounding into you animalisticlly, watching the ring of white forming at the base of her fake cock. she leans down to suck on your tits, sloppily making out with them as you scratch her back up with your long nails. this time, it isn’t slow or gentle. it’s hot and fast. needy. most of the time, she coos you through your orgasm, going slow and gentle. times like this, however, it’s like she has her mind set on one thing: making you finish. her words become more vulgar.

“fuckkkk look at that pretty pussy baby, she’s just taking all of me huh?”

“all. fucking. mine.” between thrusts.

“can see it poking through your stomach, sweetheart.”

“gonna fill you up, mama. carry my kids?”

the last line makes you moan loudly, as you didn’t know it was something you liked. she smiles, continuing her pace, out of breath. “yeah baby? you like that? want me to fill you to the fuuuuckin brim? dirty girl.” she makes out with you sloppily, drool dripping down your faces. “ellie.. ellie fuck i’m gonna cum!!”

little did you know: she was too.

the base of the strap had been rubbing perfectly against her clit, her pace speeding to make the two of you finish.

“fucking cum all over me- fuck- cream my fucking cock baby. fuckkk”

the two of you scream out, as your orgasms rip through at the same time. all you can hear is ellie saying “iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou!!” as you come undone, her fucking you through every last bit of your orgasm. she collapses next to you, pulling out. you whimper at the feeling of emptiness. “i love you so much.” she says, wrapping her hand around your waist basking in the skin to skin contact. “i love you, els.” she kisses you softly, rubbing your plump hips.

“i love you most sweetheart, happy anniversary.”

#ellie williams #ellie x fem reader #ellie williams smut #rockstar ellie #ellie x plus size reader #ellie x you #ellie williams fluff #ellie x reader #ellie fluff #ellie angst

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ludinusdaleth · 11 months ago

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i dont know how to put this one into words properly but something about the way relvin is imogen's actual blood father, but due to liliana (& relvin)'s physical and/or emotional absence, ludinus has taken the actual role of shaping imogen like a father would, as the shadow looming over her. the way imogen is liliana's spitting image but has traded her cowgirls clothes from gelvaan for archmage robes so like ludinus's. she even uses his old staff at times. both bear the burden of leadership from their party even as they insist they're on equal grounds. both seem to believe they need someone to be their tether, as that someone is drowning in their own powers. both, frankly, understand what needs to be sacrificed more than liliana.

liliana wants to come home to her simple life, an untouched relvin & imogen. but imogen is far from the sum of her & relvin's parts. as she marches to war, she has become the sum of her & ludinus's parts. due to her own mother she is not the farmer side of liliana, but her warlord one. and i dont think liliana's mind could bear to take that in.

#critical role meta #critical role #campaign 3 #liliana temult #imogen temult #ludinus da'leth #relvin temult #after last eps convo my friends are high on 'ludinus did you fuck my mom' memes #but like. genuinely theres a bit of freud here (especially if you believe the ludinus is the rq's son theory)#also this is not a 'imogen is secretly evil and selfish post' at all this is just.... look what a mother did to her kid #imogen wants things to be normal & kind again too. what seperates her from her mother is she isnt deluded.#she's had to toughen like an aeorian survivor against the ruidian wind.#💙🔴

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ratsoh-writes · 8 months ago

Note

They don't bother the two for a while. Until a pair of seagulls flies by, and they don't look to good to be honest.

Naturally, the animals let their crap go down, right where the three were.

Lliana made a barrier to shield the three from the poop, then went back to drink the challenge.

At one point they drink something that made them burp square bubbles. It made them chuckle a bit. The human next to them drinks one that makes them spit fire, a little bit of that went right on Liliana's hair as they were drinking something that made their voice high pitched.

Lliana: Huh? Oh feck!

The human apologized and helped kill the fire.

Lliana: That was way too hot for my linking.

Right then, another seagull pooped on the human's shoulder.

Lliana:... hhhnnn...

They were reaaaally trying not to say a pun there.

They knew the two skeletons weren't gonna talk now. But... it was okay. Is not like they will ever see THESE two again.

Wine and sans dutifully ignore lliana probably not wanting to cause a scene. Wine winds up with a potion that gives him big circles on his cheeks shifting colors with his mood. Sans potion hilariously turns his bones green

Sans: hey! You’re yellow now! What does that mean

Wine: WHY DONT YOU TAKE A GUESS GREEN BEAN~

Sans snorts at him

Sans: hey! I resemble that heh

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theartofruling · 1 year ago

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“He not only wanted to take the kids from me by changing me. He wanted me to be recognized. Caught playing the game of pretend he started. I look just like my mom. Spitting image of her. People who remember him would remember her. They would see me, and see her. That’s why I altered my appearance in the first place. So this is the original model. Liliana Rhys. The kid that got lost when shunning my dad and putting my mom away happened.” She nodded in agreement of her nieces probably missing her. “Honestly, they probably have forgotten about me.” That was a fate worse than anything them forgetting her.

“There’s no fun in you not having a name.” She pouted. “Just when I think you’ll be fun. This is like twerking and you just standing there all over again. I’ll never forget that by the way.”

Markus laughed and shook his head, "no I don't want to go back over them." He nodded knowing it may not be the greatest idea but at the moment what needed to happen was protection first, planning second. He ran his hand over his face and nodded, "yeah. Yeah, he does. I'd love if you did that honestly because I have no clue where to even start. He may not hurt them but he involved them when he messed with your looks, you obviously miss your nieces terribly and I'm sure if you miss them they miss you."

Markus raised a brow, "I don't need a name." He matched her smile though and nodded, "we will get you day, Toni. I promise."

#[Antonia]#[Antonia:Markus]

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sabineelectricheart · 2 years ago

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Roses, Not Lilies

Summary: Nicola throws up roses at an alarming rate. Things are coming to an end, and he reflects how he got to that point and what shall be done.

Rating: M - Not suitable for children or teens below the age of 16 with non-explicit suggestive adult themes, references to some violence, or coarse language.

Explicit depiction of violence. Reader discretion is advised.

Words: 1000

Notes: I never cared for the hanamaki trope, but it turned out good, didn’t it?

Coughs and wheezes wreak havoc on the man’s toned body as he spits the last rosy petal into the pure white marble of the sink in the ostentatious bathroom his too many times great grandfather had built for a woman that was not his wife.

“God damn it...” He muttered, wiping the blood from his mouth and gathering the plant for burning.

He had hired help to clean the house, but he does not care for his condition to be out in the small town. It is not good for a criminal to be seen as weak in this dog eating dog world. Not that any would manage, even in his weakened state, but dealing with assassination attempts is always cumbersome.

That is a lie, of course. He does not want for one particular person to know it, he does not want to be pitied by them, and, in an uncharacteristic act of selflessness, he does not want to upend their life over it. Best to fade away with the flowers, in quiet anguish, rather than to make great commotion.

His voice has grown hoarse after the ten torturous minutes of releasing yet another dying flower from his lungs.

Nicola sighs, raising his eyes to meet his own in the cloudy mirror. A grimace quickly spreads across his face as he takes it all in; he takes in his dishevelled hair, the growing bags underneath his eyes, and his bleeding lips from the flower’s thorns. They were roses, not lilies, as they were supposed to be.

Lilies represent the grace of God, they are the flowers of the Virgin Mary, of relief and return to the sinner’s primal condition. Nothing to do with him. Roses, in the other hand, represent passion, shame and secrecy, all things that he dealt with at a daily basis, and things he has refused to renegue even at his dire straits. The thorns are just the sadistic creativity of the divinity, for straying from his ordained path.

Once, he was the handsomest man in the commune. Now, he is dying, and it shows. Once, there was no woman who could deny him a thing, then one did, and now he is dying.

“Ah.” He dryly laughs as he watches his own reflection.

He cannot help but to once again be reminded of the cause of all this. It is all her fault anyway. Liliana Adornato is too sweet on him. Just too damn sweet. Worst part of it all is that she probably does not even know it.

Rejecting his advances time and time again is what really caused all this, loving another is what caused all this. Preferring the slow and tender love of his cousin’s over his own. Staying with the ordained function she plays on the sick cosmic theatre of God and the Church of Jesus Christ, even if she is not really aware of the choice she made.

Nicola does not fool himself into thinking that she would pick any different if she did, and he does not fool himself into thinking that she would pick him over Dante if their roles were reversed. That would be pathetic of him, and so he does not do it.

Entertaining those fantasies hurt.

All this experience, all these women, all this beauty and all this wealth were of no use when he actually tried to make something out of it, when the buds on his lungs were on the way. He was woefully unprepared, if pathetically disadvantaged, when he tried to play the real game.

He could not lie, he could not deceive, and he could not manage to be real and direct, either. He could not make himself desirable, he could not give it back what he received. He could not do a thing but to want and watch it being slowly taken away.

“Pfft, ‘Can never love me’.” He scoffs, shaking his head in denial as another cough came crawling up his throat. “As if.”

Denying him, teasing him, loving him, and then going away into the sunset with his cousin. She must know how much he appreciates a challenge, a lost cause to masterfully finding a way out. How thoughtful.

Only, there is no way out. There is only one Liliana Adornato, and two hearts that want her. One shall have it, and the other drowns in roses.

He leans back some, stretching his sore back before standing again to his full height and glaring down at the mess in the sink. So much, so many. His breath is short and the bouts of the disease grow closer and closer together as the weeks go on.

There is not much life left on him to live. There is not much time to revert this situation, not that he intends to do anything about it.

“I can’t do this shit forever, Lili.” He reaches over to his jacket hanging on the back of the bathroom door and shrugs it on.

The blond mafioso wipes his mouth on the white and soft towel sitting on the sink, his signature smirk rolling back in as his hand finds its way back to the gilded pistol left haphazardly next to the tap. He takes one last look at himself and runs his free hand through the mess atop his head.

“I really fucking won’t.”

Yanking the stately wooden door back open, he swings the weapon in his hand to rest back on its concealed holster.

“We still got more shit to do.” He said to himself, walking downstairs.

With quick strides, he goes down to the dungeon beneath his home and is met with the twitching, bloodied body of the creep of a police officer who had given her the eyes.

Nicole would inflict upon his bones all the pain he feels in his ailing lungs, and then he would move on to the next, for as long as there was still a warm breath in him.

Then, he shall be free of it.

*_*_*_*_*

Piofiore Masterlist

#piofiore #nicola francesca

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reinvent-and-believe · 4 years ago

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saying your names

Prompt: hallucination Relationships: Geralt & Visenna Rating: T Content Warnings: unintentional but constant misgendering by a parent; depiction of gender dysphoria in a small child; reference to child self-injury (scratching); abandonment issues; minor book spoilers Summary: Visenna's child is claimed by a witcher through the Law of Surprise. When she bears a daughter instead of the promised son, she thinks she's cheated Destiny. But Destiny rarely accepts such defeat. (Or - the trans Geralt mommy issues fic)

@witcher-rarepair-summer-bingo

i. The Brave Knight

There’s an old fairy tale from far-away Toussaint, one Visenna remembers her grandmother telling her when she was little more than a babe, of a cohort of the bravest knights who gathered at the behest of the first duke to slay monsters and defeat villains and protect the land from all manner of evil. They were five in total, but none rivalled the gallant Sir Geralt, who defended the innocent and the weak, who perfectly embodied the Virtues, who fearlessly and faithfully loved the beautiful maiden Liliana. It’s a story like no other, full of heroics and chivalry, grand quests and epic romance. Visenna remembers sighing as a little girl, of braiding flowers into her shining copper hair and pretending to be Lady Liliana, rescued by that most puissant and most chivalrous of knights.

She hopes that her own daughter will love the tales as much as she did, so she recounts them while Greta lies in bed, wide dark eyes barely blinking as she soaks in every detail. She’s two now and obsessed with stories, any silly rambling thing Visenna remembers from childhood or improvises about the forest creatures near the village, but none have captivated her quite like this tale.

The next day, Visenna hears her daughter whacking at the swaying cattails at the bank of the river with a stick. “I defeat you!” comes the tremulous cry. “I Sir Geralt! I brave knight!”

It’s a small thing, and silly, yet Visenna goes cold.

ii. The Babe

When she realizes she’s with child, Visenna knows it will be a boy, feels it as sure as she feels the wind on her face, the blood pounding in her veins. She’s happy for a time. She knows the horrors women face, has seen, has felt firsthand the cruelties the world inflicts on beautiful little girls. Better a boy, then. Better a boy with a chance at a good life, a boy she can teach and train, a boy who won’t beat or violate or torment.

A mere month before the babe is due, the man returns, and finds her with child, and tells her what he’s done. He blames Destiny and the Law of Surprise and Tradition as Visenna learns a new type of cruelty men can inflict.

And so she hardens herself, tells herself that she will not become attached to what’s growing within her, this life promised to pay a life debt. “Don’t be absurd,” her friends tell her, through nervous glances. “You always assume the worst. It may well be a girl. The witcher won’t have need of a girl.”

But Visenna knows it, feels it with every spark of chaos within her and every pulse she sends out. The babe will be a boy, and she will have to give him up to the witchers, to be trained and transmuted into something other, something more and something less than the child she’ll birth.

And so Visenna grows cold.

When the midwife puts the squalling red girl with dark hair and wide dark eyes in Visenna’s arms, she sobs for days, sobs until she has no tears left and her eyes are raw and swollen. She won’t let the tiny thing out of her sight, barely lets others hold the babe, even in her utter exhaustion. Destiny may have promised her child to the witchers, but Destiny made the folly of giving her a daughter instead of the promised son.

iii. Greta

Greta will not wear her clothes.

At first, it’s almost a game. Visenna dresses her in a frock while the three-year-old protests then glares in turn when she’s overridden. She moves stiffly in the garment, pulling at the sleeves and tugging at the skirt, but she complies. But the minute she’s out of her mother’s sight, the dress comes off, and Visenna finds her naked, regardless of the weather. And the process repeats.

The struggle over clothing is only the beginning. Generally obedient, respectful, intelligent, Greta is nonetheless not an easy child, prone to inconsolable fits of panic and distress, prone to disappearing if not constantly monitored. It’s as though Visenna has birthed two different children. There’s the sullen, timid girl who hates wearing clothing, who barely speaks, who flinches at the sound of her own name, who stiffens in panic sometimes when she’s called, who cries at the slightest provocation, who goes missing only to be found after a frantic hour of searching lying on the floor in the narrow space between her bed and the wall, staring blankly, hearing nothing, seeing nothing. Then there’s the other child, the one who cuts dark curls short with the pruning shears from the shed, who runs fearlessly through the woods, slaying invisible monsters all around, yelling and laughing and breathless.

When a young couple with a son not much older than Greta moves into a nearby cottage, Visenna hopes that companionship will stabilize her daughter’s volatile, inexplicable moods. Instead, it leads to an immediate altercation: on the first day Greta and the boy Marek play together, the boy’s father shows up on Visenna’s doorstep, furious, with a wide, bleeding gash in his hand. He’d found them wearing each other’s clothes, he tells her. Greta had refused to surrender Marek’s clothes, and when he moved to force her out of them, she’d bitten his hand. “Like a rabid beast,” he spits out as Visenna runs past him to the small shack where Greta makes herself as small as possible, shaking all over.

Visenna shoves a few coins at the man with a glare. “Buy your son another outfit,” she snaps, and when she kneels down to Greta’s level the terrified child’s arms wrap immediately around her neck. She takes her child home in the roughspun tunic and trousers.

(Maybe she should punish the child for biting, but Visenna knows the ways men can be cruel, had seen the terror in her child’s huge brown eyes. Even if he meant no harm in trying to retrieve his son’s clothes, she can’t help being glad the child bit him rather than permit his touch.)

Visenna has never listened to Greta’s thoughts before, rarely listens to anyone’s on purpose, hates the uneasy sense of violation the act stirs up in her. But as she carries the silent, shaking child home, the thoughts ring so loudly she can’t keep them out.

Not an idiot girl. Not an idiot girl. Not an idiot girl. Not an idiot girl.

Then:

Not a girl.

iv. The Child

The morning after the incident with the neighbor, Visenna lays two outfits side by side on the bed: the tunic and trousers nicked from the neighbor boy, or the dress most frequently tolerated, a plain shift of soft linen, comfortable and loose.

"Which would you rather wear today?" Visenna asks, making the beds as usual. She hears the sharp intake of breath, sees out of the corner of her eye the hesitation, and then the child grabs the boy's clothes and cradles them in trembling arms.

Visenna visits a tailor and trades in little frocks for breeches and shirts. She watches her child’s face light up when she presents them, watches the child run reverent fingers over each garment, little hands doing their best to neatly fold each piece.

She stops calling the child Greta; stops calling the child anything but child. The child doesn’t seem to mind this namelessness; on the contrary, the child thrives. The too-thin frame rounds out with healthy, nearly chubby development as the child begins to eat more than a few bites at each meal; weak, skinny arms and legs grow strong with constant running and playing in the woods near the house. Banished is the pale, terrified little girl; only the rambunctious, talkative, joyful child remains.

"When I'm a knight," the child tells her one day, coming in from the yard wearing a bucket as a helmet, "I'm going to ride a big horse."

"Oh, a big horse," Visenna echoes, ladling the soup into a wooden bowl and blowing gently to cool it. "What will you name the horse?"

The child considers this. "Does it have to have a name?"

"All creatures need a name."

The child doesn't speak for a long while. Then that piping, gentle voice rings out. "What if the horse hates its name? It won’t be able to tell me."

Visenna sets the bowl down on the table. She doesn't ask any of the questions pounding through her head as she looks at her nameless child, lost in thought. She doesn’t think about Destiny, how a witcher may well show up at her door at any moment looking for their payment, doesn’t think about taking the child there herself. "Helmet off," she says instead, running a hand through dark curls when the child obeys. "Come, eat your soup."

v. The Butcher

She first hears whispers of the Butcher of Blaviken when she’s traveling through Poviss, brought north by an outbreak of smallpox needing healers. She hears of the vile, deranged, white-haired witcher who slaughtered nearly an entire village unprovoked, even women and children. She thinks little of it. The child she left with the witchers over half a century ago had brown hair, and the years would not have turned it so quickly, not on a witcher.

If he’s even still alive.

She puts the thought away, carefully, as she has for decades.

She thinks of it a little more in Kovir. “You’re one of them!” shrieks a woman in the tavern, pointing at a bulky man sitting in the corner. “One of them witchers like that Butcher! I seen your wolf necklace!”

All eyes train onto this disfigured witcher who is not Visenna’s child. (Does her child bear scars like this? Do his shoulders stoop in such defeat?) He scrubs a square hand over his face, looking almost pained, before he shoves away from the table in silence and leaves.

School of the Wolf, then, just like the witcher she’d surrendered her child to with naught but a letter left at the inn where he was staying. Your Child Surprise will be at the crossroads by the river at midday. A few brief, stilted sentences explaining that the child was different from other boys but Destiny had chosen him nonetheless. A terse plea that the witcher treat the child with kindness, to protect him if he could. A postscript, written in a shakier hand than the rest of the letter. My son’s name is Geralt.

Vesemir. The child’s father had called him old, grey-haired even then. Is Vesemir this Butcher, the ruthless, barbarous old witcher who leaves a trail of fresh corpses in his wake? Had she entrusted the helpless child to a merciless brute all these years ago?

It’s not until the notice board outside of Tridam that she understands. It’s a fairly standard notice concerning some vague, nondescript monster that’s caused disappearances, pleading for help from any witcher, excepting the butcher Geralt. Show your face in Tridam and we’ll finish you off like they should have done in Blaviken.

Her child, the Butcher of Blaviken.

She doesn’t know what happened in Blaviken, can’t find a clear telling. Killed a woman, some say, killed an army, killed all but three people, killed everyone down to the dogs and cows and sheep in his rage. Tales grow in the telling, she knows, but she can’t dispute it. Perhaps he is evil incarnate, perhaps by sending him to the witchers she doomed the continent to bloodshed, perhaps he is the monster in these furious whispers.

But she can’t help remembering the tiny, terrified body, rocking in the corner of a shack, those wide eyes staring up at her in panic. “Like a rabid beast,” the man had said, but Visenna found only a petrified child shaking in the corner.

vi. The White Wolf

The young man swaggers towards Visenna. Between the bright turquoise doublet, the enormous feather swooping dramatically through the air on his jauntily tilted hat, and the self-assurance of his stride, he looks like a veritable peacock.

It’s her own fault. She knows she’d been staring, but the sound of that name on his lips…

“Lovely evening, isn’t it?” His smile is bright and surprisingly genuine, reaching all the way up to his eager blue eyes. He’s younger up close than she’d imagined from across the tavern, barely more than a boy. “Though not half so lovely as you, I daresay. Might I interest you in a drink?”

She nods, silent. Watches him charm a passing barmaid who blushes and quickly returns with the desired ale. He slips into the chair across from Visenna, resting his elbows on the table and lacing his long fingers together beneath his chin, fixing her with a wide-eyed, adoring smile.

Before he can speak, she asks, “Your song. About the witcher.” She pauses, unsure what she means to ask. “Did you write it?”

Somehow the boy looks even more delighted. “Indeed I did! By the gods, it’s wonderful to chat with a fan. It’s one of my most recent compositions. How did you like it?”

“Hmm.” The boy’s song had been so jarringly different from any reference to the child she bore than she’s ever heard. In the bard’s honeyed voice, he sounded almost heroic. She hesitates. “Do you know him?”

“Only a little,” he admits, but there’s a slight flush on his childish face that he attempts to cover with bravado. “The song is the true telling of our grand adventure. I accompanied the White Wolf on his quest to defeat the Devil of Posada, the most terrifying monster to ever...well, terrorize the good people of the Valley of the Flowers.”

“And he’s...he’s not what people say?” Those huge brown eyes staring up at her, tiny body trembling. “Not a butcher?”

“Oh my good lady, not at all!” The bard’s expression of dismay is guileless, earnest. “He saved me, put himself between me and harm’s way when we were captured by the elves, offered his own life for mine.”

A life debt. Just as the child’s father had promised the Law of Surprise to the old witcher, the vow that had set the course of Geralt’s life before he was even born. And now this strange boy owes Geralt a life debt of his own.

“So that’s why,” she confirms cautiously. “Why you write songs for him. Make him the hero when men would be more than happy to remember him as a monster.”

The boy hesitates, his charismatic blustering slipping as he bites at his bottom lip. He reaches distractedly into his pocket, finding some trinket he rolls about in his palm to occupy his busy, nervous hand before he slowly answers. “Even if he hadn’t saved my life I would have written about him. Well, not if I hadn’t survived that particular encounter, of course. But if I’d gotten away myself, or if I hadn’t followed him into the wild in the first place, I would still have written about him.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I…I don’t think he’s known very much kindness.” The bard doesn’t look at her, quite, as he speaks, slower and softer than before. “You ought to see the way he responds to a simple compliment, you’d think his head might explode, he twitches and looks bewildered and grunts angrily. It’d be amusing if it weren’t so very sad.” He’s quiet for a moment, tracing the wood grain in the table with his eyes as he gathers his thoughts. “But he’s kind, even if the world isn’t. He gave his reward for the contract to the…well, to someone who needed it more. And before that, he…” He glances down at the dull gold coin between his fingers, rubbing absently at worn, beveled edges, his face flushing prettily. “He liked my singing.”

She watches the bard, lost in thought and fiddling with a lone coin, for a long while.

vii. Geralt

A slip of a thing running through the woods. Frightened. Alone.

A fight. Gruesome, brutal, fast.

The stench of decay.

“And me? What did I do? I bandaged a wounded man who’d fainted away and put him on my cart and didn’t leave him to expire. It’s an ordinary matter.”

“It’s not so ordinary. I’ve been left...in similar situations...like a dog.”

Blood. Not running, red and healthy and clean; slow. Thick. Dark. Foul.

Infection.

Youths dancing in lusty delight on a warm spring night. A woman with raven curls, naked and wistful in his arms, the warmth of a bonfire lighting her face a beautiful gold. Children screaming, playing in a dried moat. A queen, formidable and sneering, full of contempt.

Hideous wounds, threatening the leg. Amputation may be necessary, without immediate intervention.

Resin in the air.

Ashen hair matted over the clumped, drying cake of blood deforming half of a pale face.

Black potion with a green seal. And then darkness.

Visenna awakes with a start.

The druids’ campsite is still, the last embers of the fire the only light in the darkness of the forest. She pulls the woolen cloak around her thin shoulders, grabs her medical bag, and goes to find the witcher that was once her child.

She finds him a pale and bloody mess on the back of a cart, eyes open and unseeing. He’s racked with feverish chills as his body desperately attempts to fight the infection poisoning him.

She helps the merchant move Geralt carefully onto blankets on the ground. She tends to him, as she’s tended to thousands of others. She cleans his wounds, scraping destroyed, decaying flesh away from healthy tissue, pulling the gentle pulses of chaos from the earth to purify his blood, draining infection and necrosis and narcotic alike from him.

She’d cleaned blood and dirt and debris from scraped knees, once, the too-fast beating of a little, huge heart pounding so loudly she could feel it. The wounds of childhood.

His pulse is slow, the drumbeat of a dirge.

She’s warm all over, suddenly, then cold. Her vision swims before her eyes.

A little more. The pulsing wanes, wavers as she begins to join him in the dark void beyond consciousness.

No.

She breathes, her eyes closed, then returns to her work.

She feels him stirring before he makes a movement, senses him swimming to the surface, coming to. He’s quiet, still, blank. When his eyes open, he’s staring at the treetops above them. His face is impassive. Lifeless.

The way she would find him, sometimes, after he went missing as a child. Staring at nothing. Trying not to be.

She can hear it in his voice. He knows.

His leg will heal, now. She’s done all she can.

She moves on to the bedsores, massaging ointment carefully into the open wounds. His body is stiff and unyielding beneath her touch.

She gives him what she can. “It’s my profession,” she says. Her voice is steady, cool. It’s no excuse, no answer, but it’s what she has. “The only thing I’ve ever been good at.” This much at least is true. This much she can give him.

She’s always known she would meet him again. She never sought him out, never avoided him. “People linked by destiny will always find each other.” She hears it, as though it’s someone else’s voice.

“I want you to look at me.” It’s a snarl. Not a sound she’s heard from those lips before. “How do you like my eyes? Do you know, Visenna, what they do to a witcher to improve his eyes?”

She knows enough. She meets his gaze.

Those eyes, the greatest marker of his difference, his inhumanity. They’re golden, now, instead of brown. His pupils are wide, round, black, pained. They aren’t so different. So monstrous.

Just the eyes of a terrified child lashing out in desperation.

“Do you know it doesn’t always work?” he demands.

“Stop it, Geralt.”

And something breaks.

“You don’t get to use that name!” There’s a frantic rage dripping off every syllable, hatred and agony, like a festering wound ripped open and left to bleed. He glares at her with a wild fury. “Vesemir gave me that name.”

And he’s a child, he’s three years old and screaming like he’s being tortured when she calls his given name. He’s five and distraught over the thought of a horse who hates its name and can’t tell anyone. He’s four and he’s a trembling mess with blood beneath his fingernails, shaking and unable to stop ripping at his own flesh.

“You trusted Destiny rather than trying to find me yourself,” he begs.

A child with nothing in the world running through the forest and into the arms of a witcher.

There’s a tear running down her face. It’s the only thing she can feel. “Don’t ask me any more questions,” Visenna says softly.

“Why?”

She’d known since before he was born that she wasn’t to keep him. That Destiny had other plans.

When she thought she had a daughter, there was hope.

“The answers will only hurt us both.” Carefully, Visenna presses him back into the makeshift sickbed.

“Yen was right.” His voice is low, barely audible, a broken murmur. “It’s not enough to be destined for each other.”

A child runs through the woods and finds a witcher waiting.

Brown curls become ashen locks. Eyes swirling brown and gold and green.

“Something more is needed.” He’s not speaking to her anymore. He’s staring up, at the treetops and through them to the stars above, his eyes losing and regaining focus. “I...I want…”

“No.” Her voice is soft, and she sees him relax into the smooth cadence in spite of himself. “Go to sleep, Geralt.” She hesitates as his eyes grow heavy, begin to drift shut, and she can’t help leaning toward him to gently whisper, “And just between us, Vesemir didn’t give you that name.” She lets herself reach out, carefully brushing white hair off his sweating brow. “It doesn’t change anything, but I’d like you to know that.”

“Visenna…”

“Sleep. I was just a dream.” She hesitates, watching silently as he fights the exhaustion, like a child fighting to stay awake past his bedtime, begging for one more story. “Sleep, Sir Geralt.”

He does.

viii. Sir Geralt

She does not see him again.

She travels to Sodden and heals the injured, soldier and mage alike.

She hears tales, as she has for years.

Geralt’s kidnapped a young Cintran princess for unspeakable, nefarious purposes.

Geralt died on Thanedd, caught up by chance in the mages’ bloody revolt.

Geralt led the forces of Lyria and Rivia against Nilfgaard, earning himself a knighthood and a position in Queen Meve’s army.

(She doesn’t believe any of them, doesn’t let herself care either way, but she hopes the latter is true. Hopes he lives out the rest of his days a brave knight, as he always dreamed of becoming.)

Visenna works. Cleans and stitches and bandages wounds, wanders from battleground to battleground. There’s no shortage of work for a healer.

So many tales of Geralt the witcher, Geralt the traitor, Geralt the butcher, the knight, the outlaw, the hero, the father. Of his victories and defeats, his loves and enemies, his transcendence, his demise.

Visenna listens to them all. Collects the stories, the lies, the praises, the calumnies. She draws them carefully within her. Carries them with her as she continues on the path.

For all the rumors and speculation and ballads, of all things, for all the different Geralts, there’s one that’s hers and hers alone. A skinny, adventurous child with brown curls and a bucket-helmet falling into his eyes who swings a gnarled oak stick as a sword. He’s ever vigilant, ever ready to defend the weak against the unrelenting onslaught of monsters only he can see.

#the witcher fic #the witcher #geralt of rivia #visenna #trans geralt #my fic #still don't really know how i feel about this but here it is #witcher-rarepair-summer-bingo

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mikecuenca · 2 years ago

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Trash Heap Souvenir No. 7

Punk Rock & Horror Shows.

October 10, 2022

I call my mom to verify facts.

“The teacher had you write an essay about your parents and your home life and you typed up a whole newspaper,” she tells me then laughs.

“Wait, what?” I vaguely recall this. I mean, I don’t even remember where I park my car half the time.

“You were in second grade. It was supposed to be a blurb and you brought her a stack of pages!”

On that typewriter in my dad’s office I started making up stories. And I went above and beyond on creative school assignments. Math and history assignments? Horrible. Get me to pay attention in class and you’d receive a medal. But when I was given wiggle room I’d go to town.

“That’s what happened. You had a teacher and you showed her that her statistics were wrong. School officials noticed and that’s why you were taken out of high school.”

At fourteen or fifteen I was placed in a dual enrollment program at Santa Ana Middle College High School: you’d take college courses and also receive high school credit. And it happened at the best time. Because I took a film history class. And that changed my entire world. It really did.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Since the reason I had a social worker it’s ‘cause I had gotten arrested.

“You started wearing all black, and spiking your hair and dressing the way you did. Which was shocking. Neither of your brothers turned out that way and we didn’t know why you did. They sent over a social worker who told me and your dad that you’re a good kid. ‘He’s intelligent and has high grades. You just need to see what he has on the inside; not what he wears on the outside. You have to accept who he is.’ And because of what she told us we did. And I’m not calling you out now, you’ve made your decisions, but you received three scholarships, mi niño —three scholarships and you turned them all down because you didn’t want to go to school anymore. You said for what you wanted to do, you didn’t need it.”

Jesus Christ.

===

1996-1998.

To say I was peculiar is a nice way of putting it. Misguided. Upset. I was a Freshman in high school and nobody, not one soul knew I was dating a popular cheerleader a grade higher. Especially not the boys who picked on me; athletes Liliana hung out with. It was as cliché as it gets. They would gang up on me and mock me and spit on me in gym class. So I started carrying a huge knife in my backpack. Next time I get shoved around I’m gonna stab a motherfucker.

I got this ghoulish preoccupation with vampires. One kid in school, whose name totally escapes me, would go to the Barnes and Nobles in Costa Mesa and steal a shit ton of books and flip them at a huge discounted rate. In some way, similar to what I used to do with my bootleg music tapes. I had him nab me almost a dozen books on bloodsuckers.

“Secret destroyer, hold you up to the flames.”

My favorite band were The Smashing Pumpkins (MELLON COLLIE being the one CD my dad ever bought me, a double-disc set too). I spent many late afternoons lying on my bedroom floor, staring at my glow-in-the-dark-star covered ceiling, listening to that album as darkness enveloped the room. And soon their goth-pop masterpiece ADORE would be released. The song “Bullet with Butterfly Wings”, as popular and overplayed as it is, carries a title that perfectly describes exactly what that band is. How they feel. Which is how an eccentric, angsty yet hopeful teenager feels. And Pumpkins fans, actual Pumpkins fans, are very special people I’ve come to find out. Nirvana fans were angsty and rebellious, but their time had passed, and now this band was the most popular in the world. Sure, they too were angsty and rebellious, but they were also romantic and mystical and covered an array of styles, reflected in the hearts of their listeners.

SCREAM had been released and I watched it about six to eight times in theatres. I wanted to hear what people would say when the killer was revealed. This one guy during one of the showings goes, “Who is that in there?” I think about his frustration all the time. It made me chuckle at the moment. SCREAM lead me to pay close attention to HALLOWEEN and PSYCHO; Hitchcock becoming my favorite director. It was easy. He was a household name. I was fucking blown away by PSYCHO. The goddamned dialogue. The pacing. That music. And then one nite during a SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE commercial break I’m flipping channels and I stop on PBS and it’s showing this old black and white movie with an eerie, chilly score. I don’t know what it is but I am captivated. A brother is taunting his sister at a cemetery telling her that they, whoever they are, are coming for her. I couldn’t stop watching. And when the ending hit it fucking hit, let me tell you. I was in shock. Couldn’t believe it. But I fell in love with NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. I immediately brought it over to Alex Solis ‘cause I showed him everything.

“Dude, we gotta watch this!”

“Whoa, this is just like RESIDENT EVIL [the 1996 video game]! But better!!!”

My mom was a horror nut. I say was ‘cause now she hardly goes near them due to her health issues. She gets too involved with them. But that’s all she ever watched: Spanish soap operas and horror movies. My dad? Hated ‘em. So when he was off gambling on Sundays my mom would sit on her throne and marathon all the horror programs UPN would screen: THE PUPPET MASTERs, HELLRAISER, CUJO, the FRIDAY THE 13THs, this one flick whose ending haunted me forever and I recently learned was BURNT OFFERINGS, and so forth. But no vampire movies at nite. No way. They gave her nightmares and she’d always wake up checking her neck for fang marks. Nite or day, you couldn’t trouble me with any that stuff. At five years of age I’d hide under the coffee table when the Freddy’s coming for you song would play on the TV. I was such a ‘fraidy cat.

Until I got a taste of the real thing.

1994. There was a burglar, maybe serial rapist preying on our neighborhood. It was a Sunday. My dad was off who knows where and my mom was marathoning her horror shows. There’s a knock at the door. This is right when we had moved to Seventeenth Street. We didn’t have a peephole. After this we did. I look through the blinds covering the window to the left of the door. I see a white tee, blue jeans, kind of like a greaser/mechanic, and I immediately associate the person with Luis, my brother. He usually visits late Sunday afternoons after he gets out of the car shop.

I don’t know how she sensed it from the entertainment room on the other side of the house. Call it instinct. I go to unlock the door and my mom flies in like a bullet screaming, “No! NO! NO!”

The guy kicks the door open and my mom throws herself right at it as he rabidly swings his arm through the crack, trying to grab at her.

“Call the police!” she screams.

I panic. She’s shrieking. The guy is yelling angry nonsense.

“CALL THE POLICE!”

The rotary phone is literally next to me. I can’t think clearly so I run across the entire house, through the entertainment room, into my dad’s office and phone from there. I’m yelling at the cops about what’s going on. I run back to the living room, to the front door of the house and my mom is on the floor in tears. The door has been shut.

My mom, who is far from an athletic woman, found the strength in her to protect that entry. The guy gave up and ran away. Of course, it took the cops a good hour before they showed up. And by that point Luis had arrived. I told the cops I thought the guy was my brother. They give Luis a hard, suspicious look. I gave them one too. The following week a neighbor a street or two down wasn’t as lucky. I was too young to care to learn if the criminal was ever caught.

Enter: THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

You know when you never hear or know of something and then you come across it and now all of a sudden you’re noticing it everywhere? That’s what happened with CHAINSAW. I was eleven and I kept seeing the name TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE everywhere. So I rented it and watched it with my parents, my aunt, my uncle, my cousin (all who lived with us at the time), super late at night. It was the greatest, most terrifying thing I’d ever seen. It was beautiful. And I was scared for my life. The whole time I’m sitting there convinced it’s a true story. And I can’t believe this happened. Months later when we’d go on a cross-country road trip my heart raced as we drove through Texas at dusk.

The movie ends. I’m trembling, making my way to my sleeping quarters (I no longer had a bedroom). My dad stops me and goes, “Where do you think you’re going?”

“…whu--- huh--- what?”

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s Sunday night.” I blink my eyes at him a few times. He concludes, “Take out the trash.”

The garbage men come by on Monday morning. I forgot.

Uhhhhh………..

It’s two AM. I’m dragging the garbage bins out. And as I’m making my way to the sidewalk from a distance I hear… bbrrrrrr… BRRRR… BRR! BRR! What sounds like a fucking chainsaw!!!! I am not kidding here. I fucking hurl the trash bin, all the garbage falls out, and bolt inside the house in terror!

My dad, “What in the hell…?”

Turns out it was our meth head neighbor down the block who was mowing his lawn in the middle of the night.

But TEXAS got me cinched. And I delved into horror.

So here I was, a freshman, the Smashing Pumpkins on my discman, meat clever in my backpack alongside a stack of Dracula books. And no friends.

The way Saddleback High worked is that the freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors all had different lunch hours. Hence, nobody knew I was dating Liliana. Which I was actually relived by because she was cute and I was a lot younger (adding that I was a year ahead in school) and a skinny-bone-Jones and a dweeb and no one would believe their eyes anyhow. But because of the school’s offbeat scheduling you just never crossed paths with anybody anymore. My nerdy MacArthur junior high friends all went to other schools and I never saw them again. And our schedules clashed so I rarely saw Solis outside of our Saturday hangs which were becoming less frequent.

But when we did hang Solis and I would goof off with our large assortment of action figures. We’d have them get into adventures and I’d tape the whole thing. Listen, this is as dorky as dorky gets. I spent many hours in my bedroom, yeah, playing with action figures until I was about eleven years old. But I’d make up stories and give the toys dialogue. With Solis now puppeteering I could actually record this.

And this is not long after I gathered the school kids who made that video homework assignment. If they could make a movie, I could make a movie. So I wrote some sort of script. My memory doesn’t serve me well so I have no idea what it was about. But I rehearsed them and started taping them with my camcorder. We got into a verbal fight, never spoke again, and I never finished the thing.

A year later is when I was dropped into Middle College High. I was supposed to be a high school sophomore but instead I was on a college campus! Chris Pierce and Jonathan “Deez” Saldovar were my best friends. I’d gone to grade school with them but we didn’t actually become friends until Santa Ana Middle College High. There was this punk rock kid named Max in one of our classes. And Max always wore a Circle Jerks shirt and Sex Pistols patches. I inquired about those bands and he gave me shit. Typical punk. Chris and Max became friends and in the blink of an eye Chris was an anarcho-punk.

I was either in a history or who knows what class. There I met Megan. “It’s pronounced Me-Gan,” she’d say. And Me-gan had a boyfriend, or someone, can’t remember, who was roommates with Travis Barker. And this was when he was still with The Aquabats. Just some random trivia. I see Me-Gan working on this cool poster. She’s drawing this punk with spiked hair (“They’re called liberty spikes.”) who’s protesting and there’s a bullet going through his head. I asked her what that is. She said it’s from an album by her favorite punk band. “Do you listen to punk?”

“Punk? What’s punk?” I asked her.

“Here,” she reached into her backpack and slammed a CD case on our shared school desk. “You can borrow it but bring it back. If you don’t I swear I’ll beat the shit out of you.” I put this scene into SCENES FROM OBLIVION, my abandoned first feature film.

I didn’t quite get the Subhumans. But I tried. I played THE DAY THE COUNTRY DIED over and over, reading along the lyrics. I gave Me-Gan back the CD and eventually nabbed Subhumans - EP/LP and Crass – CHRIST – THE ALBUM (next to BEST BEFORE, certainly the weirdest and most inaccessible Crass album) from a grimy (and nifty) Tower Records at the Anti-Mall. The rest is history.

By the time I was supposed to be a junior I dressed like a walking newspaper.

The first concert I’d ever been to was Green Day opening for Madness. With Chris and Deez. And then the first show I ever went to was also with Chris and Deez at The Showcase Theater in Corona; Narcoleptic Youth and Atomic Bombs on the bill. I always thought musicians were like Gods; you could never meet them in real life. They were ants on a stage and that’s as close as you got. And here they’re right in front of your face, playing loud, playing fast. After their set they’re selling their own band tees and patches at a booth in the venue. They were so approachable. This is what punk meant to me. These musicians were real people like you and I. That night I came home a tad late without calling in. My dad lost his shit and hurled me against the closet door. And our callous feud began.

I got into politics. It was 2000. Chris, Deez, and I were about to head off to the Warped Tour. I was gonna pass out all these flyers. The flyer had a drawing of Christopher Columbus on it and at the top in bold black letters it read “RAPIST”. I made about fifty to seventy copies but I also made a big mistake. I left the original flyer in my dad’s photocopy machine. And when he saw that shit, oh my God. He flipped his lid and accosted me, yelling that this is communist propaganda.

A year later when I was trying to get a band together, this girl Monica, a guitarist accomplice of mine, we were working on songs in my room. She had parked in our driveway and on her rear windshield she had a decal of Che Guevara. My dad saw that and— let’s just say Monica left exasperated and sobbing. No commie anything around my dad. Nothing, nothing near him that resembles the country he was forced to leave.

Our collective parents gave us so much shit. Deez’s parents were chill but Chris’s were conservative Christians. They’d scoff at our “anarchist leanings”. We were fledging and naïve and thought we could change the world. We couldn’t even change our band patches without leaving huge holes in our clothing. I was dressing now in all-black with sewn on patches everywhere and political logos, raiding record shops for anarcho or crust albums.

I picked up The Adicts’ SONGS OF PRAISE from Black Hole Records thinking I was in for some crusty stuff and then I was shocked to hear this dude that reminded me of Robert Smith belting out the catchiest punk singles I’d ever heard. Still one of my favorite bands. They all are. I’ve never abandoned anything I grew up listening to.

What I consider one of the greatest coming-of-age summer days of my life, one which I intended to loosely replicate in BOYS ABOUT TOWN and wasn’t able to, is when Deez, Chris, and I hit up Bionic and I bought two albums that forever shaped me: Rudimentary Peni’s DEATH CHURCH and The Adolescents’ blue album. That afternoon I met my future second girlfriend Amanda #1 aka Chris’ cousin. A couple rounds of truth or dare later and I was beguiled. With time, me being with Amanda would cause my friendship with Chris to dissolve. Went from best friends to full on enemies. We patched things up as adults.

Liliana had been the girl next door, personality-wise. She actually lived at the opposite end of the block. We didn’t have much in common except for sharing first experiences. She was my first everything and I was with her from the ages of twelve to fourteen. Amanda was definitely not as conservative as Lily. She was into punk. And movies. She most definitely loved SCREAM and its trail of teen slasher knockoffs and watched BUFFY regularly on TV. She was offbeat. Adventurous. And loved to cover her face in glitter. That was the first thing I noticed about her. That and her radiant cat-like green eyes. I found her really beautiful and she even shared a prominent resemblance to Katie Holmes, a compliment she got a lot; DAWSON’S CREEK was all the rage amongst young teens at the time. Amanda also went to school in an entirely different district. In Fullerton. And get this: she too was a cheerleader.

Remember Angie? The stoner who was into the Doors, Misfits, and Smiths at Middle College? Well, she hung around this other group of kids who I wound up getting along with really well. And these kids were very much into ‘60s and ‘70s rock. There was this girl Kat. She was into Janis Joplin. Boom. Off I went and got The Big Brother & the Holding Company’s albums and Joplin’s PEARL from Columbia House. I didn’t know shit about this music. How could I? My parents only listened to old school Spanish stuff. There was no such thing as dad-rock, a term that used to send me laughing. “Yeah, dad-rock to me is Julio Iglesias.” Because of my Janis Joplin deep-dive I thought Robert Plant was a woman. I got lent Zeppelin’s first album and I’m playing it in my mom’s car as we’re driving away from the video store and “Whole Lot of Love” comes on and I thought, “Man, this chick sure knows how to belt!” I got Led Zeppelin’s entire discography in box set form and played it endlessly in my room. Amanda and I would spend hours on the phone talking. She’d ultimately get aggravated and tell me to put some other music on in the background because it’s been five months of NON-STOP LED ZEPPELIN. Her dad chimed in, “What’s wrong with that?”

And I must have played Sabbath’s PARANOID album about eight-thousand times. That album is the most addictive album of all fucking time. And soon I got into Donavan and Dylan and Jefferson Airplane and Creedence. And MORRISON HOTEL, the Doors’ best album, IMO. I was hearing all these things for the first time. And one day I go into Bionic and I buy a Dystopia album along with the Beatles SGT. PEPPER’S. The middle-aged clerk gave me a puzzled look, “These both are for you?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re a very strange kid.”

That Beatles album knocked me out. When I’d take over the stereo in my parents’ car while they were driving, as any teenager should, that’s the album I’d pop on ‘cause I knew they both wouldn’t get annoyed by it.

I just got reminded how I caught my mom humming along to my NEVERMIND CD.

“What’s your favorite band, ma?”

“Los Bukis.”

So I got into all this different kind of rock music all at the same time. Some of the ’70s loving schoolmates also dug the shit out of the ‘80s and soon I was drowning myself in The Cure and Depeche Mode and New Order, Bauhaus and Siouxsie. Goddamn, man. To be a teenager and discovering all these worlds and really marinating in albums. Really marinating in them. I would give anything to experience all those tunes for the first time again.

Rewinding back to the first year at Middle College High. 1998-1999. Deez, Chris, and I bonded over our love of Korn. Uh-huh. Those first two albums. But the third one was the bait-- Todd MacFarlane of SPAWN animated one of their music videos. But we hit it off like you would never believe. The two had been childhood friends and now I had joined the party.

I was so damn angry right before we had become friends. So pissed off. Tired of being bullied around. Ignored. Cast aside. Here I was at this new school and I didn’t know anybody. I ended up befriending this shifty tall kid named Rikk. And Rikk had major chicken pox scars. And he was super deep voiced. There definitely was something odd about him. And we talked a lot about our love of slasher movies. And soon we were talking about the kids in school we hated. Specifically, which ones we would kill had we the chance. This gets very dark here-- we’d go over how we’d murder with knives. And it got to the point where we’d act it out. Soon we were drawing maps of where we’d commit these acts. There was this outdoor elevator right by our school bungalows. Boom. We’d get so-and-so there. And I’m not kidding when I say it started to get too grim. And me? I just went, “Fuck it. Fuck them. Fuck everybody.” But my moral compass sounded off. No way was I actually going to do any of these things. I stopped hanging out with Rikk. Instead, because of my love for horror movies I started writing a slasher script where two school kids do exactly what we were jokingly going to do and they film the whole thing and release it. But I don’t know anything about making movies. Maybe I should start taking this seriously. I was on a college campus and there were a ton of film courses! What am I waiting for?

But my friendship with Deez and Chris and all the shenanigans we got into distracted me from my goals. One afternoon we caught this new music video. It could have been CKY. And the music video is made up of pranks done on a camcorder. Remember when I used to hurl rocks at cars from my rooftop? Now I was like, “Dude. We should do pranks and I’m gonna record it.” And we did. Cut to Deez pushing Chris in a shopping cart down Seventeenth Street during rush hour and he’s mooning all the cars. Got it on video. That school elevator? Pissed in it. Got it on video. The Taco Bell drive-thru sign? Kicked it down. Got it on video.

My neighbor was Elvia Palacios. My mom’s friend. Also Cubana. Her son Gilbert was a handful of years older than me, Deez, and Chris. We gave him dough to nab us beer from the local 711. And we got Tequiza. The first beer I ever had. And actually, I didn’t even drink much of it. I downed about two-and-a-half inches worth. I just didn’t see the appeal. I didn’t know what being drunk was. I didn’t know that’s the reason people drank. Chris finishes his beer. We’re on the Santa Ana college campus now; I lived three blocks from it. We’re in the lunch area on the second floor and I think it’s a weekend so the whole school is deserted. Or so we deem. I see this group of cholo-looking kids walking below us. I grab my camcorder and look at Chris. “Dude. Throw it.” Deez chuckles. I turn the camcorder on.

Chris doesn’t even think twice. He gets the beer bottle, and I think I even get one too, and we all hurl them at the mini-cholos. We don’t even wait to hear the bottles break. We high-tail it, laughing our asses off, camera still running. We run into that famous elevator laughing so damn hard. I tape us having a grand ol’ time in there. We hit the bottom floor, the elevator doors open, we rush out and --- WOOOOOOOP! Campus security corners us.

They take my camera. They sit us against a wall. The cops show up. They take a good look at the three of us. “What gang you in?” Santa Ana used to be riddled with gangs. We don’t say a word.

The other cop takes a look at our shoes. “Huh. Never seen a gang wearing Chucks before.”

Campus security hands them my camera. “They have this.”

They look through my recordings. “Oh,” the cop chuckling. “This is incriminating.”

There it was, all immortalized: all the vandalizing, the pranks, and if you rewound far enough, footage of Solis making his action figures hump (“Hey, make sure you don’t see my face!”).

And on our persons? The rest of the Tequiza bottles.

Oh, man. Oh, man. We were in hot shit. We’re cuffed. Thrown into the back of a police car. Neither of us is able to mutter a word. My dad is going to fucking kill me. My dad is going to shit. My dad is going to fucking shit my skeleton out through my mouth. I glance over at Chris who looks as upset as I feel. We realize the cops are playing The Offspring in their vehicle. Welcome to OC.

“I’ve got a bad habit.”

My dad and I had been getting into it bad. My mom had been away in Cuba that past summer and my pops without my mom around was a wreck. He didn’t know how pick his own clothes, couldn’t handle laundry, kept forgetting to eat, kept forgetting to shave. And we would get into yelling matches all the time. It was terrible. One day he caught me, Deez, and Chris paired off with girls (me with Amanda), doing some questionable sexual activities in separate rooms of the house and he threw me out. I had to go stay at Amanda’s parent’s place.

Now we were in a juvenile holding cell awaiting our murky assignations with our parents. We thought we were going to do time. In juvey. We didn’t say anything for a while. I then said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a zombie attack and all the cops get eaten and the zombies can’t get in here and we’re just like here watching them die?” We started to laugh. Cheer up.

I was the last one to leave. And I sat there by myself for a very long time, shitting bricks. Apparently, they showed all our parents the footage. Ay caramba!

The cops, “They won’t say how they got the beer.” I grew up around my dad’s love of gangster movies. I knew better. Rats don’t make it past the front gates. Mum’s the word.

It’s my turn to go. My parents have zero expression on their faces and they’re there with my niece Karina. She just gives me a look. I get into the back seat of the car. No one’s said a word. We get home. No one says a word. Definitely not what I expected. My parents are very colorful and dramatic but now they’re on silent. I go to my room. My dad comes in. And he just says to me, very low-voiced but stern, “All the times I invited you to have a drink with me and you never did. Instead you vandalize and get wasted with a bunch of delinquents.” And he walks away.

I wish I knew what happened to that tape.

#trashheapsouvenir

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decahedron-crabclaw · 3 years ago

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The Craftsman

I arrive fashionably late to @brutal-nemesis ‘s whump of the month prompt because I am an animal

contains: torture, interrogation, mild gore, restraints, lady whumper, male whumpee, fingore, fingernail gore, just a smidge of dehumanization, and, of course, the stars of the show: snips and pliers!

Reblogs and comments always appreciated! :3

Liliana loves her tools like her father before her. She remembers loving them like she loved her father. When she thinks of her tools, their worn handles and polished steel, she thinks of a soft sunny day with the hospital room window left open so that the warm wind could swirl inside and make the gossamer curtains dance. She thinks of the hours she spent sitting on her father’s lap as he introduced her to each and every member of his toolbox.

She hadn’t known enough to appreciate the care and craftsmanship put into each piece at the time, but things changed. She didn’t know the rituals and love that her father gave to each tool, but as he withered and withered into that hospital bed, she learned. She learned how to maintain their joints, how to use each one correctly so it would last forever; how to worship them.

After all, she owed her living to them, yes?

So now she walks down the hall, that old weathered box bouncing softly against her thigh with its contents clinking oh-so gently within. It’s a bright sunny day like it was back then, but nobody here would know it down here.

Room 17. Her work is stored here, waiting for her.

She knocks at the door with her free hand.

“Good morning, love!” She says. Silence. “We’re starting bright and early today!” Still no response. With a scowl, Liliana twists the doorknob and begins to creak the door open. “I’m coming in, okay?”

Room 17 is open.

The work remains exactly as she left him. He’s lying face down on the steel table in a puddle of his own blood. His hair is matted with the stuff too, sticky and still a bit wet. One of his eyes is swollen shut. The other is a dull glassy green. Although Liliana stands over a meter away, she can hear the rattle of his labored breaths hasten at the realization of her arrival.

“Now now, don’t get too excited,” she says, setting her toolbox down next to her. With some effort, the work peels his face from the table and lifts his head to stare in Liliana’s general direction. “We won’t be doing anything new today unless you don’t tell me what you need to tell me.”

The work just watches as Liliana gracefully takes a seat across the table from him. He’s trying to appear composed, relaxed; in control, even. His tense jaw betrays him, unfortunately, the strained muscles a stark contrast from his relaxed shoulders.

Liliana snaps open her toolbox. Then, she carefully lays down three objects on the table. On her left, a pair of small wire snips. On the right, a pair of pliers. In the middle, placed last and turned to face the work, is a grainy black and white photo of a man in an alleyway.

“You’re really gonna keep me here until I lie to you about who that man is, yeah?” The work sighs, leaning back as much as he can. “I told you and I’ll tell you again, I have no idea who he is or what he’s doing.”

Liliana lifts her fingers off of the edge of the photo and instead points to the snips. The work glares at the craftsman across the table.

“Do you enjoy this?” He asks. He coughs before spitting blood onto the floor next to him. “You a sadist? Just lucky enough to find work with this fucked up government?”

“Are you going to tell me who this man is or not?” Liliana asks. She knows the answers to the questions he asked, and after yesterday, hell, he probably did too, but she was the one interrogating here. She could afford to be more patient, as this was ending up to be an exact mirror of yesterday’s efforts, but interrogations often need to be a bit repetitive to bear fruit. Repetition without iteration is a recipe for insanity, and sometimes insanity is needed to crack open a man’s skull to reach the meat of his secrets.

“I told you,” the work mutters, “I don’t know. Even if I did, I don’t think I would tell you, considering that I don’t know what he did.”

Liliana slides her hand over to point at the photo. “We believe he’s a smuggler. More specifically, a trader of illicit goods— unapproved stimulants, bootleg low-g development supplements, high density calorie and nutrient rations. Whatever is in demand.”

That gets his attention.

“In demand because the prices are jacked up,” the work says. “Jacked up so the workers this damned government hired to build their fancy spaceships and mine the asteroids don’t have a choice but to work for you rotten bunch.” He’s fighting against his restraints now. Liliana can almost envision the folds of his wrists blistering, rubbing raw against steel.

“I’m not here to debate about the politics of it all,” she says. It takes quite a bit of effort to not immediately reach for the snips and get to work, but she was getting somewhere different from yesterday. Why not entertain this new thread? “I’m merely a worker. Even if you do find some injustice in the way the system works, there is no way I can change it. My bosses make changes. I simply work for them down here.”

“You want me to rat out someone who is providing things your government can’t? Someone who is brave enough to give starving and underdeveloped children enough food to live through the day?” He spits again, this time onto the table. “Maybe feed your people first and I’ll consider it.”

Liliana grabs the snips and stands up. She slowly walks behind the work, the sharp clack of her heels the only sound breaking the silence. His gaze follows her until he cannot turn his head far enough.

“I am going to describe exactly what I’m going to do to you, as I did yesterday,” Liliana says, kneeling down behind the work. His hands are balled into tight fists. Little lines of blood seep down from the handcuffs. Despite the strength he showed yesterday, Liliana can unfurl his hands with ease. “Whenever you don’t tell me about the man, I will cut one of your fingernails in half. When you deny me again, I will pull out one half. I will then pull out the other half. When I run out of fingers, I will move to the toes. When I run out of toes, I will find a different method.” She gently strokes the side of the man’s left pinky finger. “Of course, if you don’t want any of this to happen, you can tell me about the man. Any kind of information will be useful. Hair color. Eye color. The sound of his voice, even.”

“I told you, bitch,” the work squeezes what parts of Liliana’s hand he can reach, “I don’t know him.”

Liliana ignores the nearly bone-crushing pressure around her right hand’s fingers and slides the points of the snips as far as they can go under the work’s pinky nail.

Liliana takes pleasure in the procedure. It’s simple, just squeeze, snip, and push until she reaches the cuticle.

Like yesterday, the work screams, kicking the floor with his shoddily patched up boots and biting down hard enough to chip teeth. Liliana keeps her distance from his flailing hands until he calms down. She gives him about five more seconds to rest and reconsider as she stands up and grabs the pliers from the table.

She catches just a glimpse of venom from the work’s visible eye before she kneels behind him once more and grips one half of his fingernail with the pliers.

“The photo on the table is taken from your apartment complex’s security cameras,” Liliana continues, voice flat. “There are at least three instances of footage in our database that show you talking to this man. There is no denying that you do not know him. Now, would you kindly tell me more about him?”

“Go to hell.”

It takes a little strength to keep the work’s hand still and a little wiggling to get the length of nail out from its bed, but Liliana manages. She stands up. The work isn’t sobbing quite yet. An improvement from yesterday, on his end. She wordlessly places the fragment of nail onto the table and kneels behind the work once again.

The pliers rest around the other half of the nail. Liliana watches blood drip from the empty half of the nail bed.

“Would you kindly tell me more about the man in the photo?” She asks.

#whumpblr #whump #whump prompt #whump of the month #tool whump #hardware whump #my stuff #interrogation #torture #lady whumper #fingore #please lmk if you spot any typos #I just finished this up real quick while taking a break from other stuff lol #whump writing #whump oneshot

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sakuramidnight15 · 3 years ago

Note

“you vex me.” with Melanie and either of the demon twins and “are you blushing..?” with Liliana and Geoffrey

Oh heck-

Meeting Cattleya was indeed the non bomb set-off, but seeing her twin brother was another meaning.

Infact Louise was a little afraid of him if he's ever mentioned, but not as much as Melanie though. That lasted till they finally met eye to eye.

"So, you're the human princess that my twin sister is seeing?"

"A-ah... Well- I-"

Melanie was now in a very difficult spot, and was looking for some words to spit out from her mouth. But in the end, it was rather a complete mess which the Blood demon didn't seem to notice.

"Fine. We're going to end our chat here, but... You surely vexed me."

...what?

Clearly the stern dance instructor was taking a break from the lessons he send to the dancers and was a bit exhausted.

So he went the casino division to catch a drink at the one of the bars till he heard the sound of an empty wine glass breaking to the floor.

He then noticed the fallen angel cleaning the mess from behind which she thought that no one saw her but-

"You already broke another one? This week already?"

"GAH-"

"Calm down, be lucky that it's just me."

Needless to say, Geoffrey had helped Liliana cleaned up the mess, much to her surprise despite the fact of his face was so intimidating but she couldn't help by the fact of looking at him for about a while-

"What the... Are you blushing?"

"HUH- AAAAHHHH-"

"Will you keep that down?!"

What a odd day for them.

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op-peccatori · 5 years ago

Text

Hopefully, Yours (part 1) | MLQC Victor

Fandom: Mr Love Queen’s Choice

Pairing: Victor/Fem!Reader

Rating: Mature

Word Count: 8823

Summary: A fight between co-stars leads to you taking their place, along with the man you’ve been carrying a rather fervid torch for. A happy accident—except it’s a dating show and you have to pretend your feelings aren’t real. | Part 2

Warnings/Tags: language, fluff, oblivious behaviour, dating show, social media, Victor might be a little OOC because I’ve written him differently, some making out in the next part hence the rating, no smut though, my sense of humour

A/n: as always, I’m here to clown around. I tried something a lil new (for me) in this one 👉👈 something I picked up quite recently from works I adored, so I hope you like it! It got longer than I intended so I had to split it into 2 parts ;.; Victor said: keep writing, hoe.

ALSO!!! Yours by Ella Henderson is. THE Victor/MC song for me. I felt it in my bones when I listened to it again after all these years. brb crying

It’s the incessant buzzing of your phone that lures you out of the warm cocoon of your blanket.

You don’t really want to come out of your haven. Not after the week you’ve had, and because you know what awaits you. But as Anna had told you, there’s no way you can avoid this. They had finished editing the episode on Thursday, and Jason had already texted you last night to let you know it would be ready to be uploaded at 7:00 pm today.

Reaching listlessly for your phone, you squint at the bright screen through bleary eyes; it’s 9:00 pm already, and you’ve managed to sleep most of your Sunday away. It’s been a whole week since you filmed the episode, and while you were able to keep your thoughts at bay through it, it’s finally caught up to you.

After all, this is the episode you’re going to be in.

Pulling your laptop towards you, you open the tab that has the streaming site open. Your heart begins its anxious thump against its cage, a beat all too familiar to you by now. As the video begins playing, the memories of that day rise up to the forefront of your mind, refusing to be outdone by this meticulously edited version.

It started with a plan. A very well-thought-out plan.

“He called me a bitch. How can you still expect me to shoot with this jerk?”

Things were not going according to the very well-thought-out plan.

From your place next to Homer, the camera guy, you watched with mounting apprehension as Hollow resisted the AD’s attempts to placate her. But she did seem calmer, the scalding rage of her glare simmering down as he continued to reason with her.

And then her partner for the episode walked back onto the set.

“She said my songs are predictable! You want me to work with a hater?” Kai protested loudly, and Hollow turned back to him in a fury. The AD looked back at you in dismay, the rest of the staff watching with varying levels of exasperation.

“This is supposed to be a cheesy, ultra-romantic show,” Kiki whispered from her place at your side.

“This is what the reality is. All that sappy crap is for the camera,” Willow snorted, shaking her head in disenchanted disappointment.

There may be more than a kernel of truth in that. Hopefully, Yours was your company’s latest project; the second season, the first one having been produced by a different group. It’s a romantic web-series that featured different couples going on dates around town. The couples featured ranged from non-celebrities to people who are household names. So far, there hadn’t been too many issues with the participants—so you really should have expected this.

“Not always!” you cut in, fiddling nervously with your planner. “Some of the couples have gone on to date for real. Raymond and Liliana got married!” A lovely couple from an episode that aired last year. They’d been in the news recently too.

“They’re getting divorced,” Homer piped up in response. You hoped the look on your face let him know how unhelpful that was and turned back to the clashing couple. The AD looked harrowed and harassed as things turn increasingly hostile.

“Willow, do we have a backup couple?” you asked after a long moment of watching them spit insults. “Or just one person to replace either of them. What about Carlson?”

“He won’t be in town until tomorrow.”

‘Can I leave town?’ You wondered in a fit of desperate, wishful thinking.

“And we’ve got everyone here, with everything set up. Can we really waste time?” Kiki wondered out loud.

“No, we can’t,” answered a strained voice from behind you. All four of you turn to see Anna striding towards you, her hassled expression sending a frisson of worry through your stomach. “___, we’ve got guests.”

“Guests?” you repeated numbly. “What guests?” From the look on her face, it couldn’t be good news.

Anna held your gaze for a second, looking vaguely apologetic, before stepping to the side, allowing you to get a look at who Jason, the director, had rushed off to greet. You felt the ground shift beneath you, throat drying rapidly and the surrounding noise dimming as you focused on the new arrivals—your friend, your boss if you insist on the technicalities, and the star of most of your daydreams. LFG’s very own CEO, Victor, and his loyal secretary, Goldman.

In other words, people you hadn’t expected to see today.

“Why?” you whimpered, mostly panicked, but distantly amused by how enthusiastically he’s being greeted. It gave you a few moments to get it together, a familiar buzz coming to life underneath your skin.

This is terrible. Surely, this is karmic retribution for some misdeed committed by you.

“Boss, get it together,” Kiki hissed in an echo of your thoughts, and you realized you had half-fallen back into her and Willow’s arms, their hands steady on your shoulders.

“This is really bad timing. Like, really bad,” Willow pointed out unnecessarily as you straightened up, running a quick hand through your hair.

“Goldman said they just dropped in to see how it’s coming along. I don’t really understand why, this is not at all Victor’s cup of tea, but he’d been hesitant about the show, so...” With a sympathetic smile, Anna placed a hand on your elbow, squeezing lightly. The comfort it brought is chased away almost immediately by a furious screech.

“That is it. I’m done!”

Turning just in time to watch Hollow stalk off the set, you tried to restart your thought process. You just needed to solve this.

“How do we solve this?” Kiki asked in a low voice, and Willow shook her head helplessly.

With no answer for her, you could only watch as Jason led Victor and Goldman towards the set. You knew the exact moment he saw you; there was no smile, but a slow blink. It was still early in the afternoon, and his patrician features were alight with a soft glow in the golden sunlight, the curve of his lip relaxed and his clever gaze taking in you and everything happening around you in seconds. You’re not sure what he saw in your face but it made the corners of his mouth pull downwards.

Your stomach plummeted, seized by a sudden urge to flee.

But with his long strides, he reached you before you could take a step back. Kiki and Willow retreated silently, greeting him like newly registered soldiers coming face to face with their general and leaving you at his mercy. You would have felt miffed, but the way the sunlight softened his features was a little distracting. His lips moved, and you’re certain he said something, but couldn’t quite hear him over the sound of your heart drumming in your ears.

Homer coughed loudly, popping the bubble.

“Good morning, Victor!” Certain your lack of actual delight was obvious, you tried to inject as much enthusiasm into your voice as you could while your project went up in flames behind you. Not that you weren’t happy to see him, as the sudden thrill twisting through insisted on reminding you, but the prospect of disappointing him was one you would rather not face.

There was no visible reaction from Victor, but Homer looked a bit disturbed by the attempt. Goldman just looked like he pitied you, while Jason looked oddly contemplative. This was probably his first time seeing you this…dazzled.

“Good morning,” Victor replied evenly. His eyes, a constant, focused storm and his silken hair falling artfully over his forehead form a picture so lovely, almost beyond words. It’s never stopped you from waxing poetic about them, or his long list of admirable personality traits, but he had a way of knowing when you’re not paying attention. “Looks like I picked a bad time to check in.”

You couldn’t quite pin down the inflexion in his tone, but your immediate guess was that he was either severely disappointed or was low-key mocking you.

With how quickly things derailed, it’s understandable.

“Haha,” you laughed—an unfortunate coping mechanism that seems to flare up most often in his presence. Also, because Victor looked unfairly gorgeous, as always and you were a fool with a worryingly erratic pulse. “Just a few bumps. Nothing we can’t fix.”

Behind you, Kai declared his intent to leave as well. There’s a contract, so they would have to look into this, but that would take time. At that moment, Victor was eyeing the singer leaving the set and your nervous smile with his brows steadily climbing higher.

“Right. Anything I can do to help?” he offered, and the shame that elicited is so fierce you felt like you’d shrunk. This was supposed to be a casual visit, for him to see how the filming was going and instead you made him feel the need to step in and clean up the mess.

“No,” you said, firm, immediate, vehement. He frowned down at you. “We’ll come up with something. Why don’t you two take a seat, we’ll get you some drinks and Anna can go over the ratings and numbers with you.”

Victor seemed to hesitate, still frowning at you, but relented when you mustered up a small but convincing smile for him. “Alright. Let me know if you need anything,” he insisted, because he’s nice like that, before following Goldman and Anna into the small room you’ve converted into an office. You have a small but closed set for the first meeting of the couples, before the crew moves to whatever location has been picked out for the date.

“He’s nicer than he looks,” Homer observed as the two of you watched him leave.

“He’s lovely,” you said miserably. Who would have thought there’d be a day when you said that about Victor? He was still an evil capitalist, but he’s a kind man.

Homer didn’t get the chance to reply as Jason rushed up to you.

“Okay, so we’re gonna have to sit those two down for a talk, but we don’t have time for that today. We need substitutes,” Jason said, not nearly as panicked as you would expect from a director who had no one to direct. It was admirable, this ability to keep his head even when he hits what looks like a dead end.

“I’ll make some calls.” Reaching into your pocket, your mind ram through your options as your hand closed around your phone.

“I want you to do it,” Jason declared.

It took you a few seconds to realize you hadn’t misheard. He looked back at you steadily, already resolute in his decision. You looked around, expecting protests, but the staff members only looked eager.

“…I don’t like this joke,” you said, slowly.

“Good thing it wasn’t one!” Jason returned cheerfully. “Before you turn it down, let me say—please? And don’t go off with the ‘I’m nobody!’ thing. People know who you are.”

“Um.” You really, really didn’t know what to say to him.

“My brother thinks you’re hot,” Homer offered, and Jason beamed at him.

“Okay, we’ll do this. You’re the producer of one of the oldest and most popular shows. You’ve gained more media presence over the last two years. You’re also friends with Kiro and Professor Lucien, so people have been quite curious about you for a while! This is just a fun little thing. Please?” Jason pleaded.

In the spirit of fairness, you took a minute to think about it. It would solve half the problem. And today’s location was a local fair, where the couple got to try out anything they want to, with all the expenses covered by the company. The very thought of stepping in front of the camera left your cheeks flushed, but you couldn’t deny the bud of excitement that seemed to have taken root.

In the end, your stomach made the choice for you.

“If you think it’ll be fine, then sure,” you acceded, thoughts filled with stir-fried noodles and holding hands with a faceless person. “But what about the other person?”

“Hmm,” Jason looked in the direction of the office, reminding you that you don’t have all day to decide.

“I could call Gavin and ask if he’s free,” you suggested. People adore him. “Or Lucien?”

Jason nodded as if truly considering it, his gaze sharp on you. “Good choices. What about Victor?”

“Yeah, no. That is a bad idea,” you said at once, without giving it a moment’s thought. This was a dating show, where people go on cute dates and act adorable on camera. The very thought of Victor doing that at all, let alone with you…was something you couldn’t think of because it was ridiculous. And bad for your poor heart.

“It is an excellent idea,” Jason disagreed. You hated to be the bearer of bad news, but this was necessary. You’ve known Victor for a while now, and felt responsible for Jason’s well-being that would inevitably be threatened if he embarks on this particular path.

“He’d never agree to it,” you told him solemnly. The man barely agrees to do interviews; a show like this? Out of the question. “You know who he is, right? He doesn’t have time for this.”

“Why don’t you leave that to me, and go get ready. I’ll go get your man,” Jason said, loud and bright, shooing you in the direction of the dressing rooms. You stood there for another minute, dazed and afraid. What if Victor thought it was your idea?

The horror.

The terror.

“I’m still texting Lucien!” you called after him, voice pitched high in your alarm. Before you could follow Jason to make sure Victor knows you would never suggest this, an arm slid around your shoulder.

“Darling,” Arnold, the head stylist, cooed at you. “I heard the good news.”

“How?” It had been two minutes. People shouldn’t be spreading this without the director’s confirmation.

“Forget the hows. This is your time to shine. Come, we’re going to make that CEO drool,” he proclaimed, shepherding you towards the dressing rooms. “And I can finally do something about this hair!”

“He’s not going to agree.” You were absolutely certain of that, even as your mind continued to conjure cutesy images of you sharing cotton candy with the reticent man.

Taking a seat at the vanity, you reached for your phone over the cotton pads, watching Arnold’s reflection in the large mirror as he flitted about the small room, picking out different outfits. You hadn’t gotten a chance to check it for a while, and scrolled through your texts swiftly, pausing on a few in particular.

‎

Victor [9:00]: Hello. I’ve got some time off today.

Victor [9:02]: Is it alright if we drop by the set? What time is your lunch break?

Victor [9:20]: You must be busy. I spoke to Anna. I’ll see you later.

Victor [9:25]: Also, good morning.

‎

Oh.

He had actually let you know he’d be dropping in. Taciturn and domineering he may be, but Victor’s quiet consideration often left you glowing with warmth. In comparison, your own clumsiness often left you embarrassed. In this instance, it made you feel doubly determined to do this right.

‎

Y/N [12: 05]: Hi, sorry I missed these. Don’t worry, I’ll get us back on track.

‎

Closing Victor’s chat, you took a moment to consider your options before making your choice.

‎

Y/N [12:07]: Lucien! Are you free?

Lucien [12:15]: Hello. Just wrapped up a lecture. I thought you were going to be shooting today?

Y/N [12:16]: I am. Actually, I had a favour to ask.

‎

You stared down at the screen of your phone, shoulders relaxing as one of the assistants fussed with your hair. Should you wait for Jason before asking him? You knew what the outcome will be, regardless of what you wanted. You’ve always known, always kept your thoughts safe behind a barrier, never letting them spill out in Victor’s presence.

You thought back to his disappointment, and something fragile in your chest tightened.

Your phone buzzed in your hand, and you prayed to all the powers above that this works out.

‎

Victor [12:18]: Dummy. I’m not worried.

‎

There was a knock at the door as you opened the chat, thrown off but pleased by Victor’s confidence.

“Guys, can I come in?”

It was Jason.

With trembling fingers curling tight, you sat up straighter as he was let in. Your pulse quickens, your emotions jumbling together until your can’t tell them apart. You kept your expectations low. You knew what the answer would be. It couldn’t hurt if you expected it.

You just hoped it wouldn’t change anything. It wasn’t your idea.

“He agreed!” Jason announced with a flourish, and your heart halted its despondent march. “His secretary’s picking up his outfit, they said it won’t take too long. We’ll do his hair and mak—uh, are you okay?”

You swallowed your heart back down. “He said yes.”

“Yeah,” he confirmed, stretching out his answer, nodding as Arnold thrust an outfit at him.

“And he…knows it’s with…me?” you asked carefully.

Jason’s brows climbed a notch higher. “Yes, of course.” His eyes gleamed with something you couldn’t quite read.

“Right, right. That’s great! Fantastic. Wonderful,” you said admittedly weakly, turning your gaze back to your reflection. The colour seemed to have drained from your skin, and you ignored the concerned glance exchanged by Jason and Arnold.

“___, hey,” Jason began gently, coming up to stand behind your chair. “Are you okay with this?”

You studied his worried expression, thoughts turning inward. You shifted aside the panic, the disbelief, the prickling nerves, and shushed the sparks of excitement.

A date with Victor.

It sounded wonderful. But the problem was never about you not wanting it. It was that you’ve wanted it for so long and so badly. Could you really have this?

“It’s okay to say no. It’s just…I don’t think it’ll be as awful as you think,” Jason said. His brow furrowed as the lines of your face smoothed out.

Oh.

“It’s for the camera,” you remembered, and Jason hummed thoughtfully. Regardless of what he may think of you, Victor wouldn’t let it show on the screen. You knew he was aware of what the show entails. So, perhaps, you could have this. It was for work. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s okay.”

Your breath evened out from its shallow state, and you smiled up at Jason, who still looked concerned.

“It’ll be okay.” Your phone buzzed again, and you gathered yourself once more.

‎

Lucien [12: 23]: What can I do for you?

Victor [12:24]: And I look forward to working with you.

‎

It wouldn’t be real.

Telling yourself it wouldn’t be real was easy.

Sitting next to Victor, your high stools positioned close together as you tried to keep your thoughts away from dangerous paths, was not easy. But the light notes of his scent, sandalwood and myrrh if your nose hadn’t led you astray, threatened to lull you into a state of near-intoxication.

Jason had wanted to film the ‘first meeting’ and, for the sake of authenticity, decided to have Victor wait in front of the camera while you got to be the one to walk in. Which meant it was straight from the dressing room to the set. While you were thankful you wouldn’t be filmed drooling on camera, it still meant you wouldn’t get a chance to talk to him until after, or in between takes.

You were a lot more grateful for the arrangement when you did walk to the set, because the sight of Victor—clad in a slim-fit black shirt, paired with a dark grey jacket and black pants that stretched deliciously over his muscled thighs—stopped you dead in your tracks, your thoughts wiped blissfully clean.

The look on his face, bright under the studio lights, had been unreadable, but it didn’t look like his usual unimpressed poker face, so you decided to take it as not quite a win, but not a loss either. Then the small upturn of the corners of his lips, however, threatened to overload your system, prompting you to avert your gaze slightly as you walked to him, for fear of losing yourself.

Your hi had been shyer than intended, but his hello had been the gentlest you had ever heard it.

And then he handed you a bouquet of red, fragrant roses and you felt yourself grow weak.

It was a short take, where you both introduced yourselves, and discussed where you’d be going for the date.

“Do you like fairs?” he’d asked, gaze intent as if your answer was of the utmost importance.

“I love them,” you’d answered, meaning it completely, and he’d looked glad.

Even through the wild beating of your heart, you had managed to feel impressed. He was doing wonderfully already. Who knew Victor had these acting skills? Hopefully, he thought the same of you. You weren’t acting, though, and this, you were quickly realizing, could be a wonderful way to lift the lid off the pot just a little, and let your real feelings shine through.

You would be filming the individual, interview type scenes last, after the date.

With the first meeting done, with Jason going over the take to make sure he had everything he needed, you would be moving to the location soon. But first-

You looked around quickly, covering your mic and making sure nobody was paying too much attention to you, before turning to Victor—only to nearly jump in fright when you met his eyes. How he’d known you wanted to talk, you’d never know. His own eyes had widened when you’d turned around all of a sudden, the tips of his ears reddening slightly. He had probably been startled by your reaction.

“Hi,” you whispered, grinning up at him, and his lips twitched as he covered his mic.

“You’re doing well,” Victor told you, giving you a firm nod, and you couldn’t quite keep from beaming at him.

“Thanks, you too. I never knew you were hiding such a skilled actor in there!” You really meant it, but your words gave him pause, mouth opening and closing as he considered his response. Strange, as modesty was something he didn’t often bother with. Not to say he’s arrogant, just that he knew his strengths.

“…thank you,” he finally said. “You too. I didn’t know you could…act.”

Because you weren’t acting. The blushing, the shy giggling, the warmth buzzing through you, they were painfully real.

You shrugged, smiling slightly, and he looked away.

“Just…thank you, Victor,” you murmured. “I know this isn’t really your thing. But I promise I’ll do my best to make it enjoyable.”

The light, airy sound that escaped his mouth could almost be a laugh. He did shoot you a small smirk, facing you once more. “Well, you’re not wrong. But it can’t be too bad. I’ve heard they’ve got good street food.”

“Good street food,” you repeated blankly. Wasn’t he taking this acting thing too far? This was bordering on alarming, coming from the man who used to look down on you for eating instant noodles.

“Yes.” He looks at you as if daring you to argue, and, well, who are you to argue with an actor’s method?

His smile faded slightly as yours widened, eyes fixating on yours, your voice pitching higher in your excitement. “I know, yeah, great food. Literally the only reason I agreed to do this!”

Victor’s face shutters at that, his lips pressing tightly together. “Hm.” He turned back to face the camera, leaving you confused, before realisation dawned.

“Hey, don’t worry! I won’t be too much of a glutton, we’ll be on camera, after all,” you told him, as reassuringly as possible because you and good food were a dangerous combo.

He arched a sharp brow at you. “We’ll see about that. I may spend most of my time in kitchen, but Mr Mills has much to tell me about some of your reactions.”

It was only through the sheer power of your offence that you were able to scowl at him even with the heat flaring up in your cheeks. “Well, there’s no way the food there will be as good as the one in Souvenir, so we have nothing to worry about.”

You resisted the urge to cross your arms, keeping your hands neatly folded in your lap as you turned away from him. But when he said nothing for a whole minute, you couldn’t resist the urge to sneak a peek, only to be left with your jaw slack.

Victor was still facing forward, but the corners of his mouth seemed to be curling up despite the effort he was clearly putting into keeping them neutral, his tiny smile still managing to spill through the seams. It enraptured you, a willing captive to the sight of him so pleased, and you wondered if you could make it through this with your heart intact.

But then, you told yourself through your daze, any chef would be happy to receive such praise for their food.

[video]

hopefully, yours, episode 3, part 1: Introductions (Victor and Y/n)

450,569 views • Feb 8th, 2020

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JTV ✓

1.19M subscribers

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51,509 comments

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Jason P ✓

pinned comment

This is a special one guys ♡

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needwater 45 minutes ego

AM I HALLUCINATING OR IS VICTOR LI ACTUALLY ON A DATING SHOW?

view 50 replies

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somsom 23 minutes ago

omg it’s y/n! We rarely get to see her on TV. She’s so cute!!!!

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orangeismycolour 16 minutes ago

!!!! Victor and Y/n!!! Omg ever since I saw them attend the Loveland gala together last year, I knew there was something there!!

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tooktiktook 8 minutes ago

um. isn’t this kind of an odd combo?

cheribb 5 minutes ago

@tooktiktok I thought so too but they look pretty cute together. I mean…he totally blushed when he saw her! And his eyes went so soft!

tooktiktok 4 minutes ago

@cheribb Well, she seems sweet but I think he was just being nice.

By the time you were shuffled into a van and driven to the site of the fair, your nerves had mostly settled.

Of course, that may have had something to do with the pudding cup Victor had handed you once you were in your seats. Goldman had brought over a paper bag, with Victor plucking two cups from it like a magician with a hat. With that said, while it’s a trick you’ve seen many a time, it never fails to bring a sparkle to your eye.

With Arnold’s permission, you were more than happy to dig right in. Your makeup would have to be retouched once you got there even if you didn’t eat.

It was easy to relax in the steady familiarity of Victor’s presence. A dangerous notion, your unwavering faith in Victor, that dictated everything would be okay if he was there because he would either make it so, or you, with confidence half-drawn from him, would make sure of it yourself.

It was only once you were halfway through the treat, humming and wiggling in your joy, that you realized Victor hadn’t started on his. Rather, his eyes were fixed firmly on you, intent in observing your devouring of the pudding.

The next bite went down a little heavier as you turned to him.

“Is something wrong?” Your enthusiasm surely couldn’t have come as a surprise.

He hesitated, seemingly on the verge of saying something, before clearing his throat and looking out he the window at the slow-moving traffic.

“No. Just…eat slowly,” he muttered, refusing to look at you. You squint at him, at the pink creeping up the back of his neck, sucking on the spoon thoughtfully. “There’s no need to rush.”

“Sorry. I got a little too excited.” Your laugh is a little hollow, and you muffle it with another mouthful of the soft, sweet dessert, missing his quick glance back at you.

He sighed, sudden and a little ragged.

“No, I meant that you should take your time and savour it,” he told you, looking at you out of the corner of his eye. “I can make it for you anytime, so there will be many more chances in the future.”

The next spoonful remained frozen by your mouth as you struggled to process his words. Warm fingers came to rest against the back of your hand, guiding it, and the spoon, to your lips. Your skin tingled, but what was more damning was the way he held your gaze as your lips parted, the metal spoon warm against your tongue as you tasted the sweet delicacy.

It felt all the more sweeter, however, because of the little smile dancing across Victor’s lips.

You were rescued from attempting to respond to that by the van slowing to a stop, with Jason and Homer climbing in before they got moving again. Homer would be the one following you around the fair, as they only needed to get a few takes of you indulging in various activities.

“We absolutely need one with the ferris wheel, of course. A little cliched, but still damn cute. Maybe we can fix a camera in the cabin…” Jason trailed off, turning to Homer for his input. “If you think it’ll be better without you there.”

‘How would it be better without Homer there?’ you wanted to protest. ‘I’ll screw it up if left to my own devices! Professional environment aside, that’s a little too romantic!’

Something prickled at the back of your neck, and you realized Victor seemed to be trying to get your attention, albeit in a very silent way you probably wouldn’t have caught on to if you hadn’t spent so much time studying him.

He said nothing even when you met his gaze, but a reassuring warmth calmed you all the same. I’ll be there, he seemed to say. Trust me.

You were worried about the romantic atmosphere getting to your head, but surely Victor, the ultimate voice of reason, wouldn’t let you get carried away?

“Okay, we won’t crowd you guys too much, but remember to avoid turning away from the camera!”

That had been the last thing Jason said to you both before he retreated to his place behind Homer, who was ready with the camera propped over his shoulder. Your mics were affixed to your clothes, and people were already beginning to shoot curious looks your way. It wasn’t an uncommon sight; many vloggers and people working for food channels could often be found in places like these, flitting about with their cameras out as they partook in the activities available.

While being around cameras was nothing new, it was a little strange to be on the other side of them. Nervousness weighing on your chest, you reminded yourself over and over: be natural, don’t act like a lovesick fool, don’t stare at Victor for too long. Turning to the man himself as Homer adjusted the camera settings, hoping to draw inspiration from his steadfast composure, you could only stare in confusion at the intent way in which he was staring at the entrance to the fair.

Following the trajectory of his gaze, you squinted, hoping to see what had caught his attention. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary, with people milling about, the welcoming sign high above their heads bright and welcoming.

“Victor?”

“Hm?”

“Is everything okay?” you asked hesitantly, and he nodded, almost distracted.

“Are we ready?” he asked Homer, who gave him a thumbs up.

Jason grinned at you, winking in what he seemed to think was a discreet manner. “Have fun, you two.”

You couldn’t quite pretend there were no cameras, not with Homer keeping up with you as you began to walk through the entrance arch. Looking at Victor was easier, just to block out the awareness of your companions, of course.

Catching your nervous glances, he inclined his head towards you and made an abortive movement, hand rising and falling midway. His jaw clenched, and then he offered you his arm, elbow bent.

As your hand curled around his arm, you focused on your vibrant surroundings. A task made more difficult when, after a short pause, you felt him tuck his elbow into his side, the broad span of his shoulders relaxing when you tightened your grip.

“I’ve been meaning to come here for years, but never really got the chance to,” you told Victor, your voice still edged with nervousness. But Victor nodded at you again, the usual stern line of his mouth quirking up, and your mind stuttered, committing itself to memorizing the precious curve of his mouth.

“In that case I’m glad we got to come here together,” he told you, and it took a good deal of effort not to gape at him. “It’s a first for both of us.”

You nodded, stunned by this unforeseen acting prowess. Seemed like you’ve discovered another one of his many talents.

“Hopefully, it’s the first of many,” he added, a smug lilt to his voice, and this time, you did gape.

“Y-yeah,” you answered, face heating up as you turned away for the sake of your dignity. “Hopefully.”

bandanaman @headaccs

are we all seeing this?? he’s such a gentleman!! I was not expecting this man to be smooth. #HopefullyYours

mintmadness @mintsallover

@headaccs HAVE YOU SEEN HIM? He doesn’t even need words, one look and I would be on my knees. #HopefullyYours #VictorLi

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srirachafire @hotsauce

@mintsallover calm yo thirsty ass down lmao

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raspberrydream @berryberry

“the first of many” omg what does he mean???? #HopefullyYours

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freshasnow @crystalmoon

Yeah, I’m not really feeling this. I thought we were going to get Kai and Hollow this week? #HopefullyYours

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teatime ✓ @spillit

For those of you asking, yes, we knew Victor Li and Y/n were going to be on Hopefully, Yours. Don’t worry darlings, we’ll have some quality tea for you soon! #HopefullyYours

Spotting the first of the food vendors, you both headed over to it, peering at the fresh dumplings. The vendor straightened up at the sight of the camera, a benign smile spreading across his face when you asked him for permission to film, nodding and plating plump, steaming dumplings with the utmost grace.

Gordon, as he introduced himself, was more than happy to talk about his family business, their two restaurants in Loveland, while Homer took close-ups of the dumpling that Victor broke apart for a better look.

“My daughter comes here every year with me, insisting she can handle things by herself, but honestly, I just enjoy coming here,” he chortled, before fixing the two of you with a knowing look. “It’s a completely different atmosphere from the restaurant! And it’s always nice to see sweet young couples such as yourselves. Reminds me of my own fair dates with my wife…”

You couldn’t stop sneaking glances at Victor, who seemed content to chew on his snack. He caught your eyes, before his flickered over your head towards Homer and Jason. Inexplicably, his ears began to tint a deep crimson, as he swallowed with some effort and stepped closer to you.

It began to make sense when he lifted the other half of the dumpling to your lips, Gordon gasping an oh my! in the background, and even as your heart began to race, your eyes widening, you felt…bad. Jason had obviously asked him to do this, and you felt terrible about him having to embarrass himself like this. But he did it, and so you took a small bite of the dumpling, the juicy filling suddenly tasteless on your tongue.

And then there was a soft sensation on your chin, your eyes lifting to see Victor dabbing at your skin with a napkin, the little motion taking all his concentration until he stepped back with a satisfied glint in his eyes, which seemed to linger around your mouth.

When you were unable to do anything more than flush deeply and try to stammer out a thank you, Jason ended the shot.

The glint in Victor’s eyes didn’t fade, and something within you quivered.

raspberrydream @berryberry

he looks like he wants to eat HER #HopefullyYours

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bandanaman @headaccs

@berryberry I CAN’T BREATHE. I thought he was going to kiss her LOL. And she looked so nervous and then he just wiped her chin THIS IS TOO SOFT I CANT #HopefullyYours

mintmadness @mintsallover

god I wish that were me #HopefullyYours

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only4food @bananabread

Okay I HAVE TO go to this place. I NEED TO EAT EVERYTHING. Who’s in??

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midnightmachine @musiclover

Gordon knows what’s up. We stan a hard-working man. #HopefullyYours

Things continued in much the same direction. With no signs of reluctance, Victor rolled up his sleeves and dived into the bustle of the fair. And with his hand curled around your wrist, you couldn’t bring yourself to doubt him. You’ve learned to read the signs of his displeasure, subtle and obvious, and they were nowhere to be found. He looked relaxed, trying out mini doughnuts, accompanying you to any shops you want to browse, frowning when you looked longingly at the ring toss.

“Let’s go,” he said, guiding you over to the booth. Well, you were supposed to try out the games too, but you hadn’t thought Victor would agree to play them. It seemed a little too childish for him.

“I haven’t come here in years either,” he told you when you looked at him curiously, the two of you standing in line with Homer right next to you. “I love my job, but I admit it takes up most of my time. I rarely have time to indulge like this.” He paused, as if wanting to say more, but his eyes flicked towards Homer and he ended it there.

While a part of you was startled in by his words, another softened at his truthful admission.

Victor seemed to have thought of something else, giving you a meaningful look. “But, of course, I always make time for the people in my life.”

You blinked, a little taken aback by sudden turn in direction.

“Even if they want to come to places like these, I don’t mind.” Victor seemed to be hinting heavily at something, and you smiled at that, almost excessively fond. Because it’s true that Victor makes time for the people in his life, especially his family. And even for you—he’s there for you, no matter how small the matter might be; huffing and puffing and going out of his way to help you.

Falling for someone like that, someone who effuses such stoic confidence and noble compassion in equal measure, it was all too easy.

“Then we’ll make sure to come again,” you told him, a wide grin blooming across your face at the thought. It was unlikely that it would actually happen, but it was nice to think about. You stepped up to the cashier, greeting him politely.

You finally got your turns after fifteen minutes, with Homer and Jason taking a quick snack break while you waited. You’d run a quick eye over the prizes available, quickly drawn to two pusheen cat plushies, a soft grey and a dark ebony. You didn’t think he’d judge you on camera, but would it really be okay to admit that’s what you want? The hair pin would be a more sophisticated pick, something more to his tastes.

Silently despairing over your proclivity for soft cute things, you turned to Victor for his choice.

Only to realize he seemed to have taken his jacket off while you were preoccupied and handed it over to Jason, his thin black t-shirt fitting him like a glove—and your words died a swift death at the back of your throat, shrivelling in the sudden dryness of your mouth. Silhouetted against the light of the late afternoon sun, his features seemed sharper, his gaze keener as he twirled the ring in his hands carefully.

As Homer began to roll the camera, and Victor prepared to toss the ring, you panicked with the realization that he didn’t ask you which prize you wanted like Jason had asked him to.

The ring landed around a bottle with a loud clink, and you hoped the surprise you felt wasn’t clear in your loud cheer. With the look he gave you, you knew he caught it even if others wouldn’t.

And then he handed you the dark pusheen plushy, which you took with trembling fingers and a sheepish smile. “Oh, thank you.” It was exquisitely soft to the touch. “This is the one I wanted.”

“Hm.”

“It looks like you.”

“What-” His head snapped toward you as you laughed, clutching the toy to your chest. Whatever outraged retort he’d been about to spit out was held back as he saw you hugging it contentedly, your eyes twinkling at him. “…I suppose.”

You handed him the toy, rolling your shoulders as you were given the ring. “Which one do you want?”

“I’m fine with anything,” he said, eyes locked on the grey pusheen plushy, the other half of the pair. So it was with a laugh, helpless in the face of his clear yet unspoken demand, that you tossed the ring. You got it on the second try, handing the toy to Victor with a triumphant grin, who took it primly and tucked it into his side.

“Thank you.”

“Isn’t this too childish by your standards?” you teased, unable to help it, but he only smirked down at you, stealing your breath with devastating ease.

“It is. But childish is…nice, sometimes,” he admitted carefully.

Your mind helpfully supplied you with all the instances of him calling you childish. “Oh?”

He shrugged, elegant, one shoulder lifting as he looked back down at the toy, before looking back up at you through dark, half-lidded eyes. “It’s grown on me.”

Kiro ✓ @kiromusic

Wow! This seems like so much fun, I kinda wish I got to go there too! :D @miracley/n invite me next time!! #HopefullyYours

Savin @agents

@kiromusic You just want to eat junk. And...well, I guess we can make an exception for today.

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bandanaman @headaccs

Before I proceed to scream over the clip, I just wanted to let y’all know I did some digging and apparently, they are friends! They’ve been spotted together in public many times, including the Loveland Gala last year. You know what this means. #HopefullyYours

bandanaman @headaccs

THE PUSHEEN TOYS. They won each other toys!! Y/n’s right, that does look like him with the dark fur lmao. BUT. Look at Victor’s heart eyes!! And she looked so happy omg T_T

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raspberrydream @berryberry

@headaccs NO WONDER. It seems like they already like each other but it seemed too soon!! They’re so cute omg please date!! #HopefullyYours

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bandanaman @headaccs

@berryberry With how they look at each other? I smell pining ;) I’ve compiled a list of all their public appearances. He even took her to Souvenir! How are they not dating????

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raspberrydream @berryberry

@headaccs DM ME!!!!

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srirachafire @hotsauce

@headaccs I feel like that’s a bit of a reach. They certainly seem comfortable with each other, but that could easily just be friendship, which is nice too. I feel like we should allow people to be friends instead of just shipping them.

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mintmadness @mintsallover

@hotsauce they’re on a dating show, though.

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srirachafire @hotsauce

@mintsallover yeah but plenty of other ‘couples’ were just friends or went on to be good friends. I just think these two are comfortable with each other, which is probably a good thing because Victor doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who can have fun with just anyone, you know?

You ended up having a lot more fun than you thought you would. Victor was always great company, but you could tell he’d tried his best to relax for the show and you didn’t know how to thank him for it. The warm gratitude bubbled up at the base of your throat, your heart sinking deeper into the ocean of affection you already held for him.

He’s so kind. His aloof demeanour, his nagging, his precise instructions and advice were things you’ve come to appreciate. But beyond those lies a heart so caring, so considerate, it made you yearn so deeply, to find yourself a place in it. But Victor had come to treat you as a friend and you could never ruin that because of your own feelings. It was precious, his friendship, and you wanted to treat it as such.

The line you’d drawn with so much care seemed to be straining, however, ever since you found out you would be riding the ferris wheel together, without Homer.

“The people in charge told us if we could just wait until closing time, they could keep things going until we’re done shooting!” Jason had told you as he briefed everyone. A bunch of the crew had left after packing up, as this would be the last take for the day. “That way Homer can fix the lighting and equipment in the cabin and won’t need to join you two! Give you some privacy, yeah?”

‘For what,’ you’d screamed internally, nodding along with a smile on the outside.

Looking to Victor for his opinion had been futile, because he seemed to have withdrawn into his own head, looking up at the ferris wheel absently. You were supposed to shoot the individual parts, but with how late it had gotten, Jason had asked the two of you to drop by the studio the next day. Only, you had a free slot in the morning while Victor would only be able to make it sometime during the late afternoon.

So you wouldn’t get to see what Victor said about you. That was perfectly fine. Things had gone well, and Victor wasn’t the sort to badmouth someone anyway.

It was supposed to be his day off. And he gave it up to participate in a show that was, for all intents and purposes, pointless for him. You felt terrible, heart aching at the thought that once again you had made him waste his time.

How on earth did Jason even get him to agree to this?

“You’re thinking something ridiculous,” came a low voice, and Victor seemed to have come back from his mental journey.

“I’m sorry,” you blurted out, the guilt getting to you.

“For what?” He seemed genuinely baffled, and it made you feel worse.

“For this entire day. You just came for a visit and now it’s after 8 pm and your day off is gone and you rarely get free time…” your shameful rambling tapered off as the furrow between his brows appeared to grow deeper and deeper.

His response was interrupted by a staff member, who came to let you know the ride was ready for you two. Walking together in complete silence, you wondered what he was about to say.

“Do you regret it?”

You arrived at the ride, and Victor had stopped in front of the open door. “What?”

“Do you regret it?” he repeated patiently, holding his hand out to you. “This entire day. Our date.”

Our date.

It was silly, how him calling it a date, with no cameras in sight, seemed to affect you so deeply. It was ridiculous but it was so real, how your heart fluttered and hope unfurled in the garden where you’ve buried your affection.

“Because I’m not sorry,” he added when you failed to do anything other than flush horribly. There was a question in his gaze, one you didn’t know how to answer, so with a deep breath, you focused on the one he’d asked out loud.

“No,” you said softly, your hand coming to rest over his as he helped you into the cabin. “I don’t regret it.”

How could you, when he was everything you wanted?

You settled on the plastic bench, watching Homer fiddle with the settings and light, making sure the camera’s fixed in place, basking in the heat emanating from Victor.

“Alright, that should work. You guys ready?” he asked.

“Yeah!”

“Yes.”

Homer stepped back to let Jason poke his head through the door. “We’re all set guys. Just call us if there are any problems. Be yourselves, don’t worry about the take. And remember, make sure to make it as romantic as possible!”

As the door closed behind him, with the camera rolling, silence rose to take the place of the sounds now cut off, the rest of the world falling away as the ride began and you began to ascend.

Outside the window, the stars shone in a twinkling blanket across the night sky, and Victor’s arm pressed into yours. Meeting his eyes was difficult, astoundingly so after the entire day you spent together.

This close, it would be so easy to let the words tumble from your lips. You didn’t know what your eyes could give away right now, and you were just as afraid of the softness in his gaze.

It looked too real.

“I’m glad we finally got some peace,” he muttered, and just like that a bright laugh broke out through your fear.

“This was not your kind of place at all, was it?” you said, snickering at the look he threw your way, because it’s so easy to make him huff like that.

“It was…lively,” he said, glaring at you as you stifle your smile behind your hand. “Exactly the kind of place you enjoy.”

“That’s true.”

“Then that’s that.” He shifted a little, trying to face you, his knee knocking into yours. “As long as you had fun, we’ll come again.”

Despite your warnings, your heart skipped a beat.

You tried to laugh it off, changing the subject to your childhoods, swapping lighter stories and carefully avoiding the heartbreaks. Your hands moved somewhere in between, in the dim lights, and your fingers had found each other’s. Make it romantic, Jason had said. That was the only reason. You talked about work, about Miracle Finder, about his public projects, how your busy lives don’t give you the chance to find love.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Victor cut in, still looking at you in that quietly dangerous away, his gaze a heated cloak over your skin.

You stilled. “You wouldn’t?” There was a tremor in your voice, one you hoped went unnoticed.

“I think, regardless of how busy we are, however reluctant…love finds us when it has to,” he said, his voice deep, unwavering, and you forgot how to breathe. Somehow, despite doing your best to avoid it, you had wound up on the proverbial cliff’s edge.

And it was time to take a leap.

“Victor...have you ever been in love?” you asked, part of you ready for his outrage, for him to brush it off with a roll of his eyes, and the other curling up in fear at the thought of the answer he might really give you.

He hummed, tightening his grip on your hand when you tried to tug it back, searching your face. His thumb swept over your knuckles, rubbing gently, and you wondered if he was preparing you for heartbreak.

“Yes. I have.”

Kiki @kikiki

@smilingwillow WHAT THE FUCK

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Anna @miracletv

@kikiki Language.

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Kiki @kikiki

‎@miracletv did you see the episode?? im going to collapse WHERE IS BOSS @miracley/n

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raspberrydream @berryberry

DID HE JUST???? OH MY GOD @headaccs DID YOU SEE THIS? ARE YOU OKAY? #HopefullyYours

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bandanaman @headaccs

THIS MAD LAD ACTUALLY DID IT. @berryberry I will never recover from this #HopefullyYours

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srirachafire @hotsauce

@headaccs @berryberry He just said he’s been in love before. He didn’t say he’s in love with her lol

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raspberrydream @berryberry

@hotsauce what will it take for you to finally see the light

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mintmadness @mintsallover

I could listen to this man talk all day. Y/n, you’re one lucky girl <3 #HopefullyYours

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cocoloco @chocolatedelite

I’m late to the party but lmao at everyone freaking out. Uhhh honestly I’m not sure. These things are usually scripted. They could just be faking it. #HopefullyYours

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srirachafire @hotsauce

@chocolatedelite Thank you!!!!

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victorshoe @mrsli

My heart is broken but their cuteness has mended it. I’ll give them my blessings. #HopefullyYours

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bandanaman @headaccs

oh thank god they just uploaded the individual bits!!! THANK YOU @jtv

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bandanaman @headaccs

...wait