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hotchnerwrites · 12 hours ago

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Hi hi hi my babyy🤍🤍

First I want to apologize for appearing until now, life has become severely difficult :( How have you been? How is everything going?🫂

So now I'm someone's controversial young girlfriend🙇🏻‍♀️(it's not as many years difference as it sounds) and that gave me an idea with my favorite man🫠

What if Hotch and the reader have this mutual desire but Hotch doesn't approach the reader because her's younger and the reader doesn't approach him because her's afraid of rejection But one night maybe they share a kiss or a light touch that makes Hotch close himself off more and discourages the reader:( and finally when they go on a case the one from the head office who is Hotch's age flirts with the reader and she reciprocates first because she is single and second because she really loves that her couples are older 😮‍💨 and Aaron gets really jealous because he 'thought he was the only one' and that tension finally falls apart when he confronts her and she simply tells him that the head of the department is some kind of distraction about her crush on Hotch 🫠

The truth is that in the end I didn't know how to develop the idea, I'm sure you can do it better, I hope it was understood. 😭🙏🏻

As always take it only if you feel comfortable (and understand it) I send you all my love, I'm excited to be here again I'm not going to lie about it!!🥹💗💗

xoxoxo

-👩🏻‍🦰

Unspoken

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x BAU!reader

Word Count: 2.6k

Warnings: SFW, jealous!hotch, mutual pining, angst, sort of happy ending, making out, no use of (y/n),

A/N: HIIII LOVELY, missed seeing you in my requests. things have been crazy on my end ngl 😭 moved cities, broke my teeth, med exams etc. god is testing me rn smhhhh. and congratulations on your new relationship!!!! so happy for you <3 (totally not jealous 😔/s) anyways, kind of went crazy on this request, LOOOOVED the idea so much. i wanted this man suffering in the fic lmaooo. anyways, here you go!!! hope you like it, and it's what you wanted!!! sending u all my love 💚

PS. Let me know if the formatting is off. It's wonky on my laptop but not my phone for whatever reasons.

My requests are open. Send me stuff! :)

There had always been something there.

Unacknowledged, simmering beneath longing glances and fleeting touches. An almost magnetic pull between you and Aaron— felt by both, acted on by neither. It existed in the quiet spaces between conversations, the way he positioned himself beside you during briefings, in the way his hand would almost touch the small of your back before withdrawing at the last second.

But that something was fated to remain unspoken. Unmentioned.

And that had been Aaron’s choice, not yours.

You never pushed him. Not when you caught his gaze lingering, not when he brought you coffee and no one else, not when he gave you his coat on cold nights without a word, not even when— after a particularly hard case— you had found yourself in the dimly lit hallway of a motel, wrapped up in his arms, listening to his uneven heartbeat like he was battling something within himself.

For a second, you had let yourself hope. This had to be it. His breaking point.

But then he had pulled away.

And the next day? He shut you out completely. He didn’t meet your eyes in the briefing. He stopped those wordless gestures you had learned to find comfort in. His usual attentiveness toward you, the way he always ensured you were comfortable… was gone. He was probably more attentive towards Reid.

So, it became obvious. You adapted like you always did. You drew the line in the sand and stuck to your side. The conversations became strictly professional, words clipped but polite. You stopped bringing him a cup of coffee if he lingered in the bullpen late at night. On long flights home, he stopped offering you the seat next to him.

Even the team noticed.

Rossi had given Hotch a Look more than once, his stare heavy with disappointment. JJ asked if you were okay, and even Morgan had thrown out a casual, “What’s going on with you two?”

You vehemently denied everything. Everything was fine. Everything was normal.

What else could you have said? That you wanted Aaron? That you had spent months convincing yourself he had wanted you, too? That, in the end, he had rejected it— no, he had denied you— not even with words, but with distance?

You knew you deserved better. You deserved someone who would be proud to love you. Someone who wasn’t scared of the possibility of a relationship.

So, you moved on.

———

Then came Baltimore.

Michael Keating was confident, charismatic, and older. He was the Chief of the Baltimore Division, respected and soft-spoken. He carried himself with ease, joked about the growing silver streak in his hair, and greeted everyone by name. He made people laugh and asked about their day.

And he noticed you.

It started small. A compliment on your profiling. Deferring to you when asked about the unsub.

You hadn’t meant to encourage it. But then again— why refuse yourself? You had spent too long pining for something that wasn’t meant to happen. You were single, and you wanted a change. And Michael was perfect.

Keating was different. He was direct in a way Hotch never was. He didn’t hesitate to place a hand on your lower back as he showed you around the precinct. He leaned in when he spoke to you, close enough that you could smell his cologne. He smelled like the ocean— sea salt and sandalwood.

But there was something about Michael that reminded you of Aaron. The little things. The way his voice softened when he said your name. The way he listened— giving you his rapt attention, something Hotch always did, but only ever with you.

Nevertheless, Keating wasn’t Hotch. And you weren’t going to let yourself draw baseless comparisons. So you let him flirt with you. It felt good to be seen. When he brought you your morning coffee, you accepted gratefully, smiling up at him. When he leaned in and said something low and teasing, you laughed.

That was when you felt it.

A prickle at the back of your neck. Someone watching.

You didn’t deign to turn, but you knew.

Aaron.

For a second you felt suffocated. But the feeling was gone as swiftly as it had come. When you finally joined your team, Hotch was talking with García, and he didn’t even spare you a glance.

For the rest of the day, you pretended that it hadn’t affected you as much as it did. You maintained your professional façade, breaking only once when Michael slid you a sticky note with a silly doodle on it. Everything went well. Or so you thought.

Hotch brushed past you with nothing more than a curt “Excuse me” as he entered the meeting room. His voice held a subtle undercurrent of knowing, but you brushed it off. It just wasn’t your problem any longer.

But when Keating pulled out your chair for you, you felt it again— the prickling.

Hotch walked out of the room.

Emily noticed.

“Whatever it is,” she muttered as you watched Hotch’s back disappear down the hallway, “you two need to sort it out before it affects the case.”

You know she’s right. But you can’t bring yourself to answer. What was there to say?

Aaron had no right to feel this way. He had his chance. If he wanted you, he should have said so. But he didn’t, instead, he turned tail and ran.

And you weren’t going to sit around waiting for him to come to.

————

The bar had emptied, the rest of the team long since in their rooms. You had stayed a bit longer, letting the bite of your drink settle into your bones. You needed it after the week you’d had. Michael had apologised profusely when you’d invited him; he had to meet with the prosecutor. After the initial sting of disappointment, you were glad that he wasn’t here. You needed some space from it all. You let your mind disconnect from the world, letting the faint hum of the music take over.

Which is why you weren’t prepared when Aaron cornered you.

“Keating?” His tone was level as if asking you about the weather. But the way his hands were clenched tight told you a different story. “That’s who you want?”

Your stomach twisted, almost painfully.

Not this. Not this conversation, not after months of silent torture, months of being ignored, months of being treated like nothing.

“What does it matter to you?” You retorted, rolling your eyes. Fatigue seeped into your voice that had nothing to do with the case. “You don’t get to ask me that, Aaron.”

Something flickered in his eyes when you said his name. Maybe it reminded him of how you used to say it with warmth.

He exhaled sharply through his nose, dragging a hand down his face. “Didn’t think he was your type.”

A short, humourless laugh escaped you. “My type?” You shook your head vigorously. “I didn’t realise I needed your opinion on that. You’ve barely acknowledged my existence this month.”

Hotch’s shoulders tensed. “That’s not—”

“Not what? Not fair?” Your eyes burned, “You pushed me away. You didn’t even ask how I felt. You chose for both of us and now you’re— what? Upset I’ve moved on?”

“That’s not what this is.”

“Enlighten me, then,” you snap, anger hiding the fact that you were begging for an answer, one you knew he’d never give.

Nothing. As expected. The silence between you stretched on. You didn’t know what you had been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this. All of a sudden, the atmosphere of the bar became a little too much. The stench of stale beer overpowered your nose and the tinny audio from the jukebox irked you. You slid off the barstool and threw a couple of crumpled bills on the counter.

Then, barely above a whisper, you heard him rasp, “I thought I was the only one.”

A punch to your chest might have hurt less.

Your breath stuttered, heart aching at the confession that settled in the space between you. He was falling apart, and you could see it—the way his brows drew together, the way his throat bobbed as he tried to force out something he wasn’t ready to say.

And for the first time, you saw the truth for what it was.

Aaron Hotchner was a man who carried too much. Who loved too hard and too quietly. Who convinced himself that his feelings were a burden he couldn’t afford, even when he was faced with the enormity of it.

But he wanted.

God, he wanted.

And it terrified him.

A bitter laugh escaped you. How could he? No, how dare he expect you to hold on to the idea that you were his when he kept you at a distance further than the rest of the team? That no one else could want you the way he did?

“You could have been, Aaron,” you responded, the weight of the world suddenly crushing you. “But you were the one who made sure you weren’t.”

Something in him shattered. You could tell. The way he flexed his hand, the way his posture stiffened like he was dealing with a blow he wasn’t ready to receive.

“Why are you doing this, to me?” Hotch’s voice was hoarse, thick with emotion— anger, regret, longing and want all tangled together.

“I’m doing this to you?” Your voice wavered, and you hated yourself for it, “Hotch, do you even hear yourself right now?”

He stepped closer, crowding your space, eyes dark with something desperate. “I tried—” He dragged a shaky hand through his hair, “ I tried to stay away. I thought it was the right thing.”

“Right thing for who? It sure as hell wasn’t right for me,” you jabbed an accusatory finger into his chest, ignoring the slight tremble, “You shut me out. You acted like nothing was there, like I had imagined everything.” Your voice cracked, “And now I get to deal with you being jealous because Michael actually sees me? Because he’s not afraid to show me wants me?”

A muscle in Aaron’s jaw fluttered as he repeated, “I told you, it’s not about that.”

“Oh, wasn’t it?” you cried, anger building, “You wanted me to wait for you? To exile myself in the dark and hope that maybe one day you’d stop being afraid of us? That’s not fair, Aaron. I can’t do that to myself. I deserve better.”

“I know.” His voice cracked on the words, and for the first time, you saw the raw emotion on his face— all of it. The weight of it, the struggle in his eyes, the way his fingers twitched like he wanted to reach for you but didn’t know if he had the right.

The anger ebbs out of you, replaced with something numb.

“Then why? Why didn’t you—”

Aaron moved then. He reached for you before he could stop himself, finger ghosting over your wrist before settling there, gripping gently. The heat of his fingers burned, like something he had been starving for but denied himself for too long.

“Because… I wanted you. Too much,” he admitted, voice grating like it pained him. His grip tightened on your wrist, thumb tracing the delicate skin. “I was afraid that if I let myself have this— you— I wouldn’t know how to stop.”

It was cruel, really. How he could unravel you with his words, make you forget about the months of pain and anger and hurt you’d endured. Even the way he looked at you like you were someone he couldn’t bear to lose.

“Aaron—”

Whatever you were about to say was swallowed up by his lips on yours.

It wasn’t anything like the countless times you’d imagined it. You had always figured he’d be gentle, taking his time.

But this wasn’t soft, nor was it careful. This was desperate.

Like he was a man at his breaking point, like someone who had wasted time denying everything, only to give in all at once. His hands cupped your face, thumbs brushing across your cheeks as he tilted your head, deepening the kiss. He was pressed flush against you, sandwiching you between the barstool and his body like he was afraid you’d slip through his fingers like sand. In the back of your mind, you faintly registered the whir of the jukebox as it changed the track.

You gasped against Aaron, and that tiny sound undid him. He groaned softly, tilting his head to chase you, to taste more, to lose himself in a way he had always wanted but never permitted.

You breathed in his scent, bourbon and coffee, fingers curling in the fabric of his shirt. You were anchoring yourself because this was everything you had been waiting for.

The kiss lingered, months of tension evaporating between you, the space that had existed suddenly gone, replaced by something breathless and real. You pushed back against him, ready to get your heart’s desire. Aaron didn’t stop; he was kissing you as if it was the last thing he would ever do. He tasted heavenly, much better than you’d ever imagined. Every thought eddied out of your mind as you let the feeling of his lips against yours wash over you. Even before the moment was over, you knew that this memory would be branded into your soul.

When Aaron finally pulled away, he didn’t go too far. You sucked in a ragged breath and squeezed your eyes closed as he rested his forehead against yours. His breathing was uneven too, and you could feel the warmth of it against your lips. Then, slowly, his hands dropped from your face. He took a step back— reluctantly— just enough to reach up and loosen his tie.

His fingers scrabbled at the knot for a moment before he wrenched it down forcefully. He then ran his hands through his hair again, mussing it in a way you’d never seen before, and let out a breathless laugh. For a split second, memories of the night when he had held you close flashed before your eyes. He had loosened his tie then, too, before enveloping you in his embrace.

“I don’t want to be the one who let you get away,” Aaron whispered, his voice bringing you back to the present.

The pain in your chest throbbed. At how broken and hopeful he sounded, all at once.

“Aaron,” you murmured, letting his name rest on your tongue for a moment too long.

“I—” he stopped, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe himself. This wasn’t where he had thought the night would go. You watched Aaron carefully, his chest still rising and falling too quickly. You reached for his hand, squeezing it once.

“Aaron,” you uttered his name again, tone firmer, hoping to bring him back to you.

He looked at you then, chocolate brown eyes hardening with resolve. He started, “This… us…”

You cut him off, then.

“Aaron,” you repeat, brushing your fingers over his jaw, “You need to choose. Me, us. Everything. You have to choose to stay.”

He glanced off to the side somewhere. Then, a slow exhale. A quiet moment of realisation.

He met your gaze again, almost bashfully this time, “If you’ll still have me.”

You laughed then, disbelieving because, of course, Aaron would say that, as if your heart hadn’t been his since the first time you saw him.

Neither of you spoke then. The past, the hurt, the hesitation— but also the possibility— swam through the charged atmosphere.

The choice.

“Okay,” you said simply.

When Aaron pulled you into his chest, you let him.

Thank you for reading! I appreciate any likes/comments/reblogs/follows. Constructive criticism is welcome. Do not plagiarise my content and/or post it anywhere without crediting me.

Dividers by @/cafekitsune

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bloodydeanwinchester · 3 days ago

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Hej |˶˙ᵕ˙ )ﾉﾞ

Can I ask a possibly dumb question about Supernatural?

You see I haven't actually watched the show, I'm just on tumblr and ao3 enjoying people ramble about the good bits of the story and one quite common theme of fix-it fics for the episode that shan't be named is Dean retiring (more or less willingly, usually with Cas) while Sam and Eileen keep hunting. And I've been wondering why is that, considering Dean is generally the hunting guy, meanwhile Sam is the one that wanted to and actually got out (twice?).

My apologies if I'm bothering you about something that should have been obvious (⁠-⁠_⁠-⁠;⁠)

Have a nice day 🌻

hi! no worries, it's not a bother at all! i always appreciate it when someone sends an ask with a question like this in a genuinely curious and nice way (rather than some i get where people just tell me how im wrong). also apologizing in advance because im pretty sure this is gonna get a little long

now having not watched the show before, i can totally see where you would have gotten this idea that dean is the one who wants to be a hunter and sam is the one who wants to get out. it's a pretty common fanon belief but im honestly not sure why so many people believe it. maybe because in the pilot dean is the one who is hunting and comes to stanford to pull sam out of his "normal" life back into hunting? or it could be because dean says at least a few times that he wants to go out in a blaze of glory? whatever the reasoning, it's simply not true!

one thing we learn over the course of the show is that dean, especially in the earlier seasons, is putting on a performance of who he thinks he supposed to be, who others expect him to be. so i think the only reason that dean is "the hunting guy" is because he has spent a lot of his life being that guy for his father and/or his brother. his dad raised him to be a weapon so dean became a weapon. he was told that his job was to protect sammy so he did everything he could to protect sammy. and as for sam wanting to have a normal life, i think there's a pretty good argument that he at least partly wanted that because it wasn't what his father wanted. and sam spent most of his life right up until john died fighting with him. not hunting and instead going to school was sam's rebellion against their father.

and there's also a lot of people who believe that "dean dragged sam back into hunting" in season 1 but if you watch the pilot you'll see dean wants sam to stay to help him look for their dad. but when sam refuses, dean brings him back to stanford. it isn't until jess is murdered and sam sets off on his quest for revenge that sam leaves stanford for good. and the only times that sam ever actually gets out of hunting after stanford was when he was grieving losing dean in season 8 and post series. i doubt sam would have stopped hunting in either of those instances had dean still been alive.

i could be wrong about this, but i'm not sure we ever see sam express a desire to get out of hunting after season 1? in season 2 he really dedicates himself to hunting out of some mixture of grief over their father's death and guilt at having spent so much of their time together fighting. and in season 4 we see sam say that he doesn't want to go back to their old lives. season 5 we see sam express that the apple pie life isn't what he wants anymore. while in the same episode dean seems to be saying that maybe he does want it (middle two gifs).

and as for dean, as early as 1x06 we see that maybe this isn't really the life he wanted after all. when the shapeshifter becomes dean (and as a result is able to see into his thoughts) he tells sam:

in contrast to sam leaning into hunting after their father dies, in season 2 we really start to see dean show that he wants to get out:

2x09 dean says he's tired of the job/life/weight on his shoulders.

2x10 dean expresses that he's sick of the job and being a hunter wasn't his destiny (because he doesn't believe in destiny).

2x20 dean's djinn dream is a world where he got to have a normal childhood and a life where he never became a hunter. and even though the dream has its issues, he ultimately only leaves because he's figured out it's all a lie:

and throughout the series there are lots of moments where dean says he wants a family/wants to get out but doesn't think he'll ever get to or where he criticizes the way their dad raised them as hunters. and in 13x23 he says that if the world was safe he would want to retire.

i have less examples that come to mind from the later seasons cause it's been a while since i've watched them, but i think there's plenty of evidence throughout the series to support the idea that post series dean would retire with cas and sam would keep hunting with eileen.

#oh fanon dean and sammy how i hate thee so #spn #i really should try to start tagging my posts better so i can find them a easier later #thank god for pk's exhaustive tagging and also tumblr search actually working #and thanks for the question anon!#jenna.ask #jenna.post

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fuumiku · 2 days ago

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Demon AU (krkb)

+ bonus Kuro

Kurokabuuu!! If Kabru gets to be naked then so does Kuro, equality for all 🔥Not to break the mystique but in that intro comic Kuro isn't flexing he's just pushing Mickbell away bc he about to be in business mode gdbdg. Was weird trying to make Kuro look more demony, did not work very well except for making him buffer but hey...! A black dog demon yeah yeah yeah...!

I have accidentally recreated Howl's Moving Castle... NOW HEAR ME OUT- The base concept for my satyr Kabru AU (the initial idea was the sketch where he has no horns haha) now turned demon AU was materializing Kabru's fear of anything monster, particularly his insecurity as a kid of being an incubus('s child and that making him a monster), and helping him work through it so he can love himself and others and the world better, but everything started clicking only after thinking about Kuro's role in the setting more. He's this feared dude with a witchy reputation and a lil rhyme about how everyone should stay away from him for their own sake etc etc, but he's not a demon just a dog dude really. The setting in this AU is much like Dunmeshi, but all monsters are called "demons" instead and tied with this concept of demonic not just monstrous, there's special generalized fear in them being kinda fundamentally evil. But they're just beasts, and sometimes just demihuman races, like Kuro. Magic does exist though, and curses, and yeah just a folk kinda vibe!

Kabru because he's become supernatural knows how to speak Kuro's tongue now too, or maybe he's always known it idk... But Kabru sought Kuro out because he's The demon guy around, thought if anyone around would know how to do anything about his having become a monster it'd be him- Mickbell is there too ig like waaa this innocent-looking (def isn't) human loves this demon and lives with him, alone but peaceful as hermits in the woods? Wah wild. Wah we can still have love?? Wah we can fall in love together and live happy monster lives even if ostracized??! Wah wait I'm not even a monster it was just my own latent magical powers cursing myself because I worried and believed myself to be a demon so intensely for so long?!! Wah we can truly have it all...... Growth feels so nice. Except Mickbell, that grown ass man is not finding inner peace yet. Still he's chill here since he's a side char not a main one

It's how Kuro's confident in himself despite everything being stacked against him, it's how he still trusts and likes himself, it's how he just wants a simple happy life and pursues what he wants, it's how he takes things simply... Self-critical Kabru always neglecting himself over obsessing about the greater good could learn from him........ Kuro is the only one after his transformation that unconditionally welcomes him and shows him compassion and it's all so confusing to him, especially since at first Kabru wouldn't even offer that same humanization to Kuro, only risked it out of necessity for his own circumstances, but he gradually becomes able to see the humanity in him despite his appearance, mannerisms, way of life and ideals, until he sees the humanity in him and himself too despite their appearances, until he finds there's nothing wrong in this routine and life of theirs in this isolated magical little place, until........... Just about accepting all of those fuzzy inbetween ways to be that are unclean and hard to understand from the outside, and growing comfortable in them and loving himself and kuro and the life they've made together.......!!!!!! What if through humanizing you I humanized myself... What if through growing a understanding for each other wevalidated ourselves, love as self-love...

I love including Rin into things, for a more plotty story it'd be neat if she tried and followed Kabru... He up and disappeared and she's a capable mage and she doesn't know what his plan was because he never tells her anything so she goes out and pursues him- Could even be the main antagonist besides just idk self-hate and townspeople lol, like she thinks Kuro is keeping him prisoner or something and also because she kinda represents the same kinda social trauma Kabru has, where she's strict about conforming and being an irreproachable undeniable human so she kind of wants to drag him back to that state he was in of anxiety over acting and being human enough...... But of course in the ultimate confrontation when she has her staff pointed at Kuro and they talk, she's hurt by him not confiding in her and thinking of her as someone who wouldn't help, but she understands and stops and yay happy ending :> And if we want them to be in this Holm and Dia may be allies I feel 🤔Like maybe they help out Kabru when they see him, help him escape their human village at one point or something, Holm is quite nice and cares for spirits and Dia's fled her home too so they kinda get it in a way, it'd contrast Rin... This isn't about the Laios party lol. Rin & Mickbell shenanigans would lowkey be fun like maybe Mickbell tricks Rin into thinking Kabru IS there against his will so she can take him away and the status quo of Mickbell not having to share Kuro with anyone is preserved, or maybe they just shittalk and grumble together. Gbdgd this is a plotline about accepting change and these two are noooot happy about it

So yeah he hates being a monster that's the schtick!! Won't a cool dog man pleaseeee turn me human again. Surely he can do that right. So he goes to live with this feared coolass magicky guy and that guy's little guy at his weird home and through making connections and self-love the curse you actually unknowingly put on yourself gradually lessens and disappears, but you don't care anymore because that's the point 😌 Which is why I call it a Howl's Moving Castle recolor gdbd

Kabru is usually the voice of reason within kurokabu so it's really fun switching the roles in that way. If you're just stumbling into this and are sooo confused first of all congrats on getting so far second I can't overstate how unironic this is + if you want more explanation about the ship I made a brainstormy manifesto here <3 Like, did you know Kuro's name is actually Yodan? He was likely called Kuro by Mickbell due to the language barrier. In this AU it's because no one's interested in him as a person so people just give him an ominous title that means black. But Kabru learning his name and Kuro willingly giving away that information and Kabru feeling the weight of it because he really thinks this'd allow him to control him (he can't actually control bc he's not a demon! No one's a demon yay! Just weirdo humans who get otherized)......

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Other vers because I 1) really like it and 2) am very indecisive. I overthink every single slight color change I stg lol

Sigh....... Like bro what if we were both so so far away from home and we knew we can't really go back and we've made our peace with that but man I miss not having been ripped away from my homeland and we are both so so isolated in our own ways in our presents and with a small yet gigantic gesture of compassion and of seeing each other we can learn and grow together with secret study dates where I teach you how to communicate the same way you're teaching me your language, we are both reaching across to each other we are both finding in one another a presence and humanity that feels so rare anywhere else. A sliver of warmth a sliver of home but also a sliver of the new, and embracing that things are changing and that we've changed and wow the animality within humanity and the humanity within animality!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey bro your humanity I am only now fully grasping and coming to terms with is so hot bro............ What if your beastly features ended up making me more comfortable in my own stinky human animal flawedness bro........ What if we could just be together reassured through each other that we're human enough no matter what and that's all we need to just be and wahhhhh aughhhhh

Kurokabu is Kuro needing to choose between Kuro and Yodan. Kurokabu is needing to feel comfortable in animality within humanity. What if we stopped repressing ourselves 🫶

#Dungeon meshi #dunmeshi au #kurokabu #kabru #kabru of utaya #kuro dm #Incubus kabru #Sort of but also not really #There's something in the marchil march sauce........ my art's thriving #I'm sick again though guys........... My household's playing hot potato #Also My Goodbye about kuro or even kabru goes kinda hard. Esp about the whole mick kuro situation n complacency idk was listening to it #One day you'll hear what I'm saying / One day you might understand / One day but not today / For after all you're Just a man #🔥This day you sever your own head🔥#Not relevant to demon au tho mickbell's just a lil rascal in this one.#I wanna write an unrelated krkb fic and then i'll prob lose steam for making krkb content for a while #OH ALSO THAT WHICH FLOWS BY AU LOWKEY....... Little tea boy Kuro and nobleman general Kabru with water trauma idk idk...#The quote “one might as well be trying to conceal the sky with their palm” from it goes so hard with them #Demon kuro looks like spiderman hm #Anyways isolation is a bog theme w them. Self-imposed for kabru n circumstances imposed for kuro. Which is why them learning #a language together is suuuch a big deal. Teaching each other their language that's sooo........#Drawing them is lowkey hard bc they're equally tall and equally buff how am I supposed to complementarily shape language this #Special shoutout to lucky-fy who is always in the dogman yaoi pit with me which i deeply appreciate & aatom87 who harasses me to commit #& finish my shit #Kabru x kuro #Kuro is so funny. 18 yo speaks like he has all the wisdom in the world. PLEASE do question your own judgement #... Which kinda parallels kabru actually hm #DON'T LAUGHHHHH runs away sobbing........

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thevoidscreams · 17 hours ago

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Lorgar being an absolute simp for his pregnant wifey but make it body worship because hot damn (for that ask u asked <333)

Day 15 Year 2: Lorgar is so baby girl I love him Highkey this is mostly just Loragr being a simp for you, his small wife. Warnings: Pregnant sex, body worship, Lorgar being Lorgar, hormonal mood swings

Word count:2326

He starts with your legs first, as the months have progressed you find that your feet got more sore and your legs ached with the added weight of the life growing inside you. So that was where Lorgar liked to start. With a bottle of oil and large inhumanly warm hands he massaged your legs, digging his fingers in at just the right places to bring relief from the pain, he never quibbled about it, finding pleasure in the act of serving you in this small way. Just one of the many acts of love he gave to you. Even before you had become pregnant, Lorgar had been a dedicated and dutiful lover. Now your husband, he only seemed more invested in seeing to your well being.

He held your legs over his as he massaged. You felt fresh and clean after a nice warm bath. He'd spent the whole time cleaning you, combing soaps and creams into your hair and skin, you were glowing from the attention and the scrubbing. Your hair was neat and orderly, not a snag or snarl to be found. He'd also had a plate of figs brought to the room to satisfy a sudden craving.

He was focused on your body as he worked the oil in with meticulous little circles, you moaned as he hit a particularly tense spot. His fingers slowed and he looked up to gauge your reaction. "Good." You told him, reassuring him that he hadn't hurt you. He nodded and returned to your thighs. You became so relaxed you nearly fell asleep.

Lorgar's hands continued to push and caress till both legs were feeling so much better. "I love you Lorgar." You mumbled sleepily, the primarch smiled and reclined next to you, kissing your forehead softly. "I love you more." He breathed. You huffed and poked his chest with one finger. "Wrong." He took your hand in his and kissed it. "Not wrong. You know it is true, give in to the universal fact." "And what fact is that?"

"That I love you more." He hummed, as he sat up and pulled you into his lap. He reached for the oil and poured a portion into his palm, slathering it over your belly. "I will have to see some writing on that, have you any peer reviewed studies?"

"I do not need studies or reviews to know. I have two hearts. And I love you with the entirety of every cell of both of them. Whereas you can only love me with one heart. And thus, I love you more." You couldn't discern why, but at his words you immediately burst into tears. Perhaps it had been the long day, or just the hormones or even the insinuation that Lorgar somehow doubted your love for him was as strong as it was.

Lorgar stopped, shocked by the sudden overwhelming display of emotion. "My love, what is wrong?" He panicked.

"You think I don't love you." You rolled out of his lap and onto the bed, not facing him as you cried. "That isn't true." He spoke, his hearts clenching with guilt as he saw how his words had affected you. And he was quick to pull you back up, though you laid limp and awkward in his arms, just because you could. And because his words nettled you.

"I was simply trying to tell you that I loved you, and was using my two hearts as emphasis while trying to make my point." He soothed but you maintained your boneless structure and he sighed setting you down on the mattress.

"My love you confound me. In all my years I have learned many things, but I fear I may never truly understand you." He smiled softly.

"Clearly, because anyone with eyes could see that I love you with two hearts as well." You told him. Lorgar was stunned into silence at your words. You were baseline, you only had one biologically.

Lorgar watched as you rolled back towards him with a bit of effort, on account of the belly. "Come here, I'll show you."

Lorgar came down to your level and you guided him so his ear would be over your bump. His eyes widened and he smiled happily. His hearing was beyond any normal humans and he could hear the tiny quiet thump-thump, of a second heart, just out of sync with yours. His eyes misted with tears of joy and love as he wrapped an arm around you to keep you close.

"I see now. I am sorry my love. I never should have doubted." He kissed your belly and you felt the baby roll to be closer to their father. "You may have come into this with two hearts to love me. But I love you so much I grew a whole extra one to show you I love you." You joked. But Lorgar felt the weight of the words and was once more struck by how deeply he loved you. How he loved what you could do that he could not. He held you gently, his cheek against your bump as he basked in the love he felt for you.

His hand stroked up and down the bump, the warmth felt so nice you just sighed and relaxed. Your body was a wonder to him, the way it was growing into a new life, a life that was half of him and half of you.

It was miraculous, as sure a sign to him that you were destined to be his anything else. He kissed the bump over and over, giving thanks for the small life.

You giggled as Lorgar kissed over a sensitive spot, your body wiggling. The sound of your laughter, even a laugh as light as that, was like the sweetest music to him. He kissed the spot over and over again making you gasp and attempt to wiggle away. "No. Not there, please."

He acquiesced and kissed lower, you gasped, finding the spot sensitive for other reasons. Lorgar raised an eyebrow, his mouth quivering with a smile. His lips continued to travel south, pressing warm kisses to your stomach, then thighs, before he settled between them and pressed a kiss directly to your clit.

If there was one thing Lorgar was always keen to do it was eat you out. Sometimes he wouldn't even allow you to touch him, just eating you out till you were begging him to give you some rest.

On more than one occasion he'd gotten so turned on while doing it he'd cum in his clothes. His mouth latched onto your clit and sucked gently, making your hips buck against his face.

Your movements only spurred him on further, his tongue lapping up between your folds to gather your sweetness. You wanted to cum, but you also wanted your husband to get off as well. He hadn't fucked you properly since your belly started to show. And while his fingers were the match to any regular man's cock in size it still wasn't the same.

"Lorgar. I need you. Please." You begged. He responded by kissing back up your body, stopping at your breasts before taking a nipple into his mouth and lavishing it with his tongue. You felt his fingers gently stroking your folds and gasped as he pushed one in, you wrapped your arms around his neck trying to tug him further up. He obliged so his face was level with yours, giving you a tender kiss as he began to work his fingers.

"Your body is perfection." He sighed. You smiled and chuckled. "Don't let Fulgrim hear that. Or he might start seeking me in his pursuit for it." Lorgar's body tensed and he buried his face in your shoulder a dark and potent emotion burned in his chest at the thought. "As if I would ever let him touch you." He growled. "You are mine."

The sudden dark and possessive shift in his mood did things to you that you weren't proud of, but you tightened around his fingers and he seemed to notice. "Such a naughty thing. Bringing up my brother to make me jealous when I have my fingers in you." He rolled the tips of his fingers against the front wall of your cunt and made you gasp as he pushed into that small section of ribbed flesh that felt so good.

He kept at it until you were coming undone on his fingers. Wetting them with your juices, he brought them up to his lips and sucked them clean. "How was that my love?" "Good.." You began but had to stop to gather your scrambled thoughts. He could tell immediately that you had more to say and pressed. "What is on your mind my love?" "Well, I know that you want to be cautious, but I really would like to have sex again, the kind where you can also get off, that is."

Lorgar shook his head. "Darling, please, I will not risk your well being." "But the apothecary said that it was okay for us to do so. He said as long as we are not overly rough."

Lorgar seemed firm. "I do not trust myself to not lose myself in your warmth and accidentally become too harsh."

You wanted to cry out in frustration, but took a deep breath instead. "Then let me handle it. If I'm on top and setting the pace then I can make sure that it is gentle enough." You looked up at him eyes pleading with him to let you. Lorgar could see how desperate you were to have him again and it tore at his hearts to see you that way. He never would allow himself to hurt you, he simply couldn't bear the thought of it. "Please, Gar, we won't be able to for weeks after I give birth, we should make the most of the time we have now." You petted his chest and kissed his cheek. "Please?" You begged again.

Lorgar couldn't say no to you when you asked him so sweetly. You were his weakness. He couldn't deny you.

"Very well. I shall allow you to be on top, but if I feel things are getting to be too much then I will put a halt to it immediately." He relented, rolling onto his back and settling you over his hips. "I understand." You wiggled happily as he lined up his cock for you. Sinking down onto it you felt properly stretched for the first time in several weeks. Lorgar's head fell back onto the pillows and he grit his teeth trying desperately not to just thrust up into you. He'd been so pressed about hurting you that he hadn't gotten off with you outside eating you out. His hand was never enough and he knew it never would be again. Not after getting to feel the bliss that was your warmth. His hands went to your hips helping you lower yourself on his shaft and rise once more. Throne take him this is what the old Terran stories of seeing the light must truly have been about. Because he'd never felt closer to heaven then when he was inside you. Your hands went to Lorgar's chest, supporting your upper half as you rode his cock. It was so good to be full again that you were sure you wouldn't last very long. "I love you, Lorgar. I love you so much." You pant as you felt his cock rubbing all the right places.

"I love you too, my sweetness." He swallows hard and watches you bounce, body softened by the changes it had undergone, but still recognizably you. Everything you did made him love you more. Many men had told him that they had not found their wives attractive after getting pregnant, but Lorgar couldn't have disagreed more. He was enamored, so much that he thought that maybe he could just keep you this way. After all he did want a large family, and he needed to set a good example for his gene sons.

He would set that example with the aid of their mother, it was what the legion had taken to calling you. Their legion mother, now the mother of his biological child, all was perfect as if it had been preordained. He reached up to touch your bump, the physical embodiment of your love was in there. It was that thought that sent him over the edge. Your body had swelled and changed to carry the life that would represent your love for one another. And you did it all because you loved him. You loved him. The words repeated in his mind as he pulled you down for a kiss, his hips thrusting up to meet yours sending you to your second orgasm of the evening.

Once you two had finished he let go and began to look you over, not letting any part of you go unobserved. "Was I too rough?" "No." "Are you hurting anywhere?" "No, Lor-" "If I was too much, please I must know, I would never forgive-" You shut him up with a kiss. "I'm not hurt, in fact I'm quite happy. I've missed that, it feels incomplete to finish without having you also there to finish alongside me."

Lorgar sighed and laid you down next to him once more. He couldn't help but worry, he loved you so dearly. He felt like his soul would catch fire and burn him to a crisp every time he looked at you.

Before he knew it you were asleep, he slipped from the bed to fetch more blankets, his mind busy with the thoughts of the evening. When he returned he found you blindly feeling for him in your sleep. His hearts fluttered at the idea that even in your sleep you sought him out. He slid back into bed, making sure you were covered and pulled you back into his chest. In the morning he'd look you over again and make you breakfast.

#warhammer 40k #warhammer #primarch x reader #my writing #warhammer 40k x reader #mating press march #primarch #lorgar x reader #lorgar aurelian #I'll touch this one up later #I was so tired while writing this

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junedenim · 2 days ago

Text

2016

beneath the boardwalk, part 14 (series masterlist)

used to be my girl

warnings: ...i don't know at this point. let it be a surprise.

word count: 8.5k

January turns me into a bitter, restless being. I feel a need to be everywhere, yet I am too cold to move. I stay under my bed covers and rot. Unlike past winters, I had a watchman to make sure I didn’t slip into complete hibernation, and though I grew my hair long and had less care for what clothes I wore under my coat, I didn’t feel the need to set my apartment on fire.

George’s look hardened in winter, but his spirit didn’t. His smile glowed like the star on top of the tree. He shovelled the snow off my apartment steps, granting me favour with neighbors I previously thought hated me.

Mr. & Mrs. Sanders, who lived below me in the grand apartment on the first floor, gifted me a peanut butter fudge. Mrs. Sanders was quite disappointed to learn George didn’t actually live there. I was terrified she would revoke the dessert. I already shoved one in my mouth and nearly moaned at the delightful taste. Thankfully, they left the dessert with me and invited George and me over for dinner.

After the mouth-watering dinner, when George and I ascended the stairs to my apartment, I told him, “I can never break up with you ‘cause I think she’ll kill me if I do.”

He kissed my cheek. “Good.”

Should I have feared losing him or Mrs. Sanders and her kitchen knives?

My New Year’s resolution was to read more. George was the kind of man who believed in those wishful things. He had everyone who worked at the bookstore write one and pin it to the wall. He pinned mine next to his and cited me as an honour member. It felt like too much pressure not to uphold, especially when he gave me free books.

I started big, so I didn’t have to worry what he thought of me for not making it through a 100-page book. So, I cracked War & Peace open on the 10th.

I was two pages in when Alex called me.

“David Bowie died,” he told me.

It felt like every piece of news we exchanged that year was wrapped in somber tones. It wasn’t intentional. These were somber years. It was like god had died. We had to discuss everything. Nothing felt real until I knew what he thought about it and vice versa, I suspect. Unfortunately, Bowie was the first of these phone calls.

When I told Alex about my reading, he uttered, “Fuck. Are you trying to kill yourself?”

“If I accidentally drop the book, it could take off my foot.” The nearly 1,500 pages weighed around a newborn baby. “If I start now, I might be finished by the time I’m in a nursing home.”

He laughed at me. “Why didn’t you start with something lighter?”

I stood to grab a snack from the kitchen. My stomach rumbled. We’d been on the phone for a while. “Because I’m trying to be impressive. I might Anna Karenina myself.”

“See,” he said, “you’re already a Russian lit expert. When did you read Anna Karenina?”

George was due to come over in less than a half hour after work. He was making me a Greek chicken with cucumber-feta salad for dinner. I don’t know a single person who is healthier than George. I suppose none of them live in New York and smoke cigarettes like all my friends do. I snacked on a bag of chips. “I watched the movie.”

I could picture his smile. “I think War & Peace has a movie if you feel like giving up.”

“It’s alternative viewing, not giving up,” I reasoned. He was amused by that too. “Is it warm there? It’s freezing here.” I never named LA; it was simply there for me. New York was here.

“15 degrees or something,” he told me. No one I knew spoke in Celsius. It felt like order was restored. “The sky is crying a little. Been inside all day.”

I sat on the edge of my bed and placed the throw blanket over me. “It’s below freezing here. It’s crazy how different it can be when we’re in the same country.” Things were different when we were in the same city. I don’t know why a whole country between us would be any different.

“It was above 30 on me birthday.”

I stilled. “Shit.”

“It’s okay.” He laughed, but I wasn’t finding humour in the situation. I didn’t call him. No text. No “Happy Birthday.”

I clutched my hand over my head. “No, it’s not. I feel awful! I’ve barely been able to keep track of what day it is. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t care, Jane. I got to avoid your relentless jokes.” Alex last cared about a birthday around 18. I guess after that birthdays matter less and less.

“Oh, my god!” I pained myself. “I had a boatload of 30-year-old jokes. I even wrote them down.”

“Skipping your mocking was birthday present enough. It gives me a chance to come up with some for your birthday.”

I pouted. “That’s not very generous.”

“Boo woo. I’ll give you In Search of Lost Time for your birthday.” 3,200 pages. I’ll be reading it in the grave.

George and I followed a screening of Brooklyn with lunch at his favourite delicatessen where he ate a huge hoagie and I had a bagel. “When she goes back to Ireland it makes me miss England,” I confessed to him. “You forgot how much you miss it until you’re back.”

“I couldn’t imagine being that far from home.” His parents lived an hour away in Yonkers. He visited one weekend a month. His family was close in a way I had never seen with any other family. He didn’t have the happiest of childhoods, yet he still adored his parents.

“It hasn’t been home for a while. I’ve been in the States for almost a decade. It’s weird to think about.”

“Do you think you’ll live here forever?”

I said, “I think so,” but I didn’t really. I couldn’t imagine having children who have American accents. It’s a grim thought.

Womb launched on Valentine’s Day because Opal thought it would be cute and an excuse to say she had plans for the day as a single woman. We had a small party at George’s bookstore and on the tispy walk back to my apartment, Alex called me. I picked up the phone and squeezed George’s hand.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hey. I like your Womb.”

I snorted uglily. “You’ve been waiting to say. I can tell.”

“Low-hanging fruit,” he conceded. “But I do like it.”

(For the briefest of moments, I thought he meant my actual womb. I was a little slow from the wine.) “Really?”

“Yeah. How could I not? I like everything you write.” He was always sincere in the practice. He never strayed.

We were stopped on a street corner. “I don’t know. It means a lot coming from you. You know that.”

“You never fail to impress me,” he said. “You know that.”

I ducked my head down and hoped from the icy air to chill my burning red cheeks. I hoped to turn them pink from the wind and hide this secret of mine. “Thank you,” I whispered. Too pure to acknowledge above a whisper.

We listened to each other’s breathing. Then, the moment passed. “Well, I’ve got to head out.”

“Valentine’s Day plans?”

“Yeah. Just a nice dinner.”

“Have fun.”

“You too. Night, Janie.”

I put my phone back in my purse and laughed. I thought of how we both had wished one another to have a good lay. Oh, how far we’ve come.

“Was that Alex?” George interrupted my giggles.

The light turned green and we began to cross. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

He looked straight ahead. “You always talk different when you’re on the phone with him.”

“How so?” I crossed my brows, but I wasn’t confused by what he was saying. I knew how I talked. I knew how my tone toward Alex could be ever since Stacey teased me about it in our youth.

George shrugged. “I can’t decode it, but I can tell.” He put a smile on and looked at me. “Should we stop for dessert?”

I had a rubbish 30th birthday. I found another decade to be disagreeable. I didn’t think turning the big 3-0 would affect me so deeply and I don’t believe it really did. Really, the better part of three vodka martinis (it felt like an adult drink, okay!) and the aged rotten thought that I was too old to still be having nights like this was what ruined 30 for me.

On the morning of my 30th—a Saturday, the best day of the week to have a birthday—I indulged in the pleasures of a cigarette indoors. It was my gift to myself. George had a late night at the bookstore and decided to stay there, but we had plans for the afternoon into the night.

Stacey called me while I nursed a cup of coffee and I laughed at all her jokes about me being a sorry old cunt now. She was living in London with her boyfriend. She had a job as an actuarial analyst, not that I really knew what that was (or is). She had always been above my head in smarts, let alone in maths. When she laughed, I felt like a riptide had pulled me away from her. My joints ached in the non-arthritis way, and part of my soul cried, but I laughed instead because she has the most infectious laugh. You just have to hear it to feel it.

I decided to treat myself to a pastry from the corner cafe. My birthday was reserved for plump sugar delights that I would later find regrettable, but they tasted so sweet going down. While finishing off a cinnamon roll, I unlocked my mailbox.

I think one of the best parts of your birthday is getting mail that isn’t bills. Of course, there was still some mixed in with the handwritten notes. I had already received most of the cards early and they lined the shelf by the front door.

Fennel and Kaka had sent me one. Like most gifts from them, it was too much—a beautiful card I would get framed and $100. When I (lackadaisically) tried to refuse it, they insisted I keep and said sweet things about me being their surrogate daughter and then I cried because I was 30 and drunk.

With sticky fingers, I came across a blue envelope with that scrawl I knew too well. I waited until I was sitting on the middle of my bed to open it. I was delicate with it until I spotted 100 in big, bold red letters. The card’s print read, “At 100, you're still playing with a full deck, you just shuffle slower.”

I laid back with a giggle and no longer felt so painfully old. On the inside, he wrote, “Saw this and thought of you. I’m afraid we need a gin rummy rematch. My record is in dire need of repair. I hope to recover before we’re 31. Happy birthday, Janie. I think you’ll find 30 to suit you. Love, Alex.” In different penmanship right below was “& Taylor & Scooter.” She wrote it in a red pen, which I found mildly offensive from my days of failed tests and edited manuscripts, but the gesture was nice considering I had no clue when her birthday was or how old she even was.

Scooter was her dog, which now seemed to be their dog, and to the untrained eye, it could seem like a family. I placed the card on my chest right beside my heart. I waited for the beating to calm or at least to get used to this uneven breathing.

I didn’t place the card on my shelf. I stuffed it into the bottom of my bedside drawer like it was a bad omen. The card would appear more guilty in my drawer, and yet I felt that’s the only place it could be placed. I didn’t want to toss it, for some reason, but I couldn't bear to stare at it.

Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.

It sounded itself every time my heart pounded against my ribcage.

I called George. He sang “Happy Birthday!” I placed my phone down on the bed while he did it. I waited until the faint sound of his singing voice had finished. “So,” he said, “how’s it feel?”

“30, flirty, and thriving,” I sighed.

He began to talk about our plans for later in the day, but I could only hear the beating of my heart. He was still talking when I said, “I’d like to get a turtle.”

“A turtle?”

“Yeah.” I grabbed my laptop for further research. “I would like a turtle for 30. I’ve always wanted one, and now I want to have what I want.”

“Alright, Veruca,” he declared.

I met George on Atlantic Ave where we grabbed lunch at French Louie’s, which is really just American food pretending to be French. There was a PetSmart down the street where I picked up Louie, my turtle.

Louie became my best friend in an instant. Turtles don’t tend to be viewed in the same light as dogs or cats. They aren’t affectionate figures, but that’s what I like. Louie felt like me. He swam around his tank and bit everyone’s finger except mine. I ate when Louie ate. Louie deserved everything, and I believe Louie thinks I deserve everything. He became a tracking device for me to take care of myself adequately.

But first, we had to set up the tank with the basking lights and filtered water. I had no issues doing this, but then again, George was the one who had to carry the tank up the stairs because I was in charge of Louie. When Louie was away swimming, I kissed George for all my thankfulness.

Admittedly, it was irresponsible to leave Louie alone on his first night in a tank and I would not repeat this behaviour, but for his first night, he was left with plenty of care and the lights on. Louie doesn’t need me to take care of him. He’s always been a self-sufficient creature.

The plan was to have a rocking night. George had a friend who owned a bar in DUMBO and he sectioned off a corner of it for my birthday gathering. It wasn’t very many people because I was over spectacle but I still loved the thought of getting a shit pile of gifts for simply making through another year.

Nonetheless, all my friends were considerate with their gift giving and Opal had a friend who baked these delightful cakes because she has a friend for every occupation. It was a strawberry lemonade cake with a scattering of sliced strawberries on the top. I was spared of numbered candles, instead, there were just five candles on the cake because my birthday is on the 5th. I don’t recall what I wished for, but I hope it came true.

I sat in a corner wooden booth with Opal and Kaka. George and Fennel were talking to his bar owner friend, likely about the architecture of the building, you know, support beams and load-bearing walls, man stuff. The three of us sat with drinks in our hands and laughed at them.

My phone buzzed. It was a text from Alex that read, “Has your back gone yet?”

I wrote back, “No, but I’ve only had two drinks and I already have a headache.”

A minute later, he pinged back, “Just wait until tomorrow and the day after and after that. You’ll feel normal in about a week.”

I nearly wrote back what I perceived to be a witty comment on mixing drugs and alcohol but I was distracted by Mina taking a picture of us and I never wrote Alex back, which is probably for the best. The text wasn’t so funny in the morning.

On the walk back to my apartment, I dragged my feet and laid my head on George’s arm. He was too tall for me to lay it on his shoulder. He was taller than any guy I had ever dated and I was still adjusting to how he towered over me.

I was tired and it was only around midnight. I hadn’t slept well the night before—pre-thirty jitters. I was hoping to get an Uber or taxi back to my apartment since there were no subway lines from the bar to my apartment but George insisted it wasn’t very far and a walk would do me good. He wasn’t wearing heels.

I was tempted to ask him to carry me. He was my strongest boyfriend and I believe he could have sustained the eleven-block walk with me on his back. I didn’t because I was wearing a short dress and worried my underwear would show when he lifted me.

“I’m sorry for hanging all over you,” I said to him.

He squeezed my side. “You’re fine. You’re a lightweight.”

I laughed at the inaccuracy. “Just tired. You should have seen me in college. I drank more than anyone you’ve ever met.”

“You were a party girl?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Well, yeah, sort of. Aren’t I still?”

He shrugged. “I guess. Galas are different than house parties.”

I stood up straight. My hand lowered off his shoulders to his upper back. “Yeah. I was queen of the kegger.”

He looked elated by this, laughing with fervor. “Guess it’s the Brit in you.”

I took my shoes off the moment we entered my apartment. I tossed my body on my bed and felt like maybe my back had gone out on the walk home. “What did you do for your 30th birthday?” I asked George.

He was still by the door, taking off his shoes. “I went to Disney.”

I shot up in bed. “You went to Disney?!”

“Yeah. My girlfriend had family in Florida and my family flew down. We spent a couple of days there.”

“And did what?”

He was bemused. He filled up a glass of water for himself. “Went to Disney.”

“For a couple of days?”

“Yeah. It’s pretty big. We should go. I mean, we could even go to the one in California so you can see all your friends.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“I mean, you talk about Alex all—”

“No, go to Disney. Why would I do that?”

“‘Cause it’s fun.”

“But it’s overrun with people and cheesy and I’m the most impatient person you know.”

He chuckled disingenuously. “Relax. I didn’t book any trips yet.”

“I’m tired,” I complained. I stood and looked at Louie swimming around his tank. I wondered if he was tired too. I wish I could swim. It was too cold in New York.

I wanted to go to England. I’m not sure where in England. Probably London with Stacey. My father was in Bath. My mother was between places. I know she briefly stayed at Greg’s house in Birmingham. Maybe I’d do a tour of England, everyone was so separated. Harper lived in Leeds. She had a baby in February, her fourth, a girl named Asha, who I had yet to meet.

I was cold. We went to bed within the hour and I woke up the next morning with a migraine and that was 30.

I had little connection with Everything You’ve Come to Expect. I listened to it when it came out and I complimented Alex and Miles on it in a shared text. My favourite song is “Miracle Aligner” but maybe that’s because of Alexandra Savior and my fear of admitting I liked “Sweet Dreams, TN” or a deep relatability to “The Bourne Identity.” Both were too personal to Alex for us to discuss.

So, later that month, when he called me to tell me Prince died. I said I liked “Miracle Aligner.”

It might be the only song from the album we ever discussed. When the music video came out about a month later, I told him I found it funny and asked why he was so tan, and that was that.

Baseball is boring. I don’t know much about any sport, but I know that’s true about baseball because even baseball fans say it’s boring. Not that I know many baseball fans. George liked baseball. He rooted for the Mets, which I thought was weird because I figured New Yorkers rooted for the Yankees but I don’t know much about baseball and I probably don’t know much about New York—the state.

We went to Citi Field for their first home game of the 2016 season. George, three of his friends, one of his friends’ girlfriend, and me. The friend’s girlfriend, Rachel, was 22 and finishing her last year at NYU. This friend was 12 years her senior and I found this to be quite Leonardo DiCaprio predatory, but she was nice and didn’t know anything about baseball either.

I sat between her and George, who attempted to teach me baseball, but I don’t like men explaining sports to you because it never makes sense and they always seem to have a way of explaining it in a misogynistic way. Besides, I’ve seen A League of Their Own.

George spilled his beer on me when a double hitter occurred. The sun was out but the day was cold and it left a chilly splash on the front of my shirt. I left to clean myself up and grab a hot dog. It was awful. I texted Alex, “Hot dogs at Mets game suck. Isn’t that baseball games’ thing?”

I went back to my seat and talked to Rachel for the rest of the game. I didn’t see any of George’s friends again but Rachel and I are still friends. To quote an immature man, “She keeps me young.”

When The Last Shadow Puppets came through New York, George and I went to the concert. After the show, we chatted with the Puppets and company, but we didn’t hang around for long. They were playing Coachella that weekend, so I don’t believe they hung around in the city for an endless bout of time. In the time they did, they spent with one another. The city had been where Taylor and Alex both once lived, so they went to all of their old spots. Either way, I got the feeling George didn’t want to hang around with them for hours and hours, so we said our goodbyes. The show was mighty lovely though.

Rome is beautiful in June. When I was 14, my family spent a month in Italy and San Marino, the latter for its casino. Our first week was spent in Rome, where I dreamed of falling in love with an Italian boy and moving to Italy. I didn’t find any Italian boys and a move to Italy doesn’t seem likely, but I did fall in love with Rome.

Villa Borghese is where I first felt struck and connected to nature. I sat on a fountain and wished I was able to draw something beautiful enough to capture the sight of the floral and fauna. I didn’t own a camera and my drawing skills were as bad then as they are now, but the sight has been committed to memory.

George and I revisited it on our first day in Rome. I took pictures this time and while it was still as beautiful as I remembered, I don’t believe the photos captured what my mind has. It was something only the divinity of the seeing eye can behold.

We did all the other touristy things too. George had never been to Rome because his family spent holidays going to places like Disney World. I guess I’m not one to talk. My family spent holidays going to booze-filled casinos but we did fit in a historical sight every once and a while. Plus, I got a nice tan. George said he always got sunburnt at Disney.

We were in Rome for a wedding. It was Matt and Breana’s, and while destination weddings are a lot of work to attend, they are the most beautiful to witness. I’m quite jealous of theirs because the venue was a near-beauty to that of Villa Borghese. But Matt and Breana did always have a keen eye in their photography, so wedding planning, especially with a nice amount of funds, isn’t hard to imagine.

I wore a nice pink dress and it was one of the few times I have been immensely thankful to be a woman because I didn’t have to sweat in a suit. George complained of the heat the whole wedding ceremony. I reminded him I told him to dress light and to shave before we travelled, but he did neither, which is fine by me because I was proven right in the end, as always.

I met their baby, Amelia, for the first time. She had this cute little dress on and these booties and I wish I could wear her outfit and get fussy in the middle of the ceremony too, but alas, that’s inappropriate for a 30-year-old. I thought age was just a number.

The reception was a nice big hall where my heels clicked on the tiled floor. Each table had flower arrangements as centerpieces that I would’ve stolen from if I knew the flowers wouldn’t die on the way home. The food was divine and others at our table were nice but kept to themselves, leaving me to mainly talk with George through dinner.

After dinner, I went to have a smoke and George accompanied me out into the gardens. I felt sorry for polluting the smell of the air but craving, digestion, and all the rest. He stood with his hands in his pockets as I flicked away. “It’s a lovely wedding,” he said.

I smiled. “Without a doubt. Thanks for coming with me.”

He threw his hands up like it was no big deal. “Who could pass up a trip to Rome?” He bought his own plane ticket, something I felt tried to insist against, but he said we’d make a vacation out of it. He’d never met Matt or Breana, but I had told him stories of my college days with Matt and how sweet, gorgeous, and funny Breana was.

A smattering of people occupied the pavilion, and the sun was still out, though setting, when Alex and Taylor popped out with fancy glasses in one hand and holding each other’s hand with their other hand. They chatted with a few others before approaching us. Alex knew far more people here than I did and the way he moved through the crowd would give off the impression that he was the host. That he was the groom with his bride.

He stopped in his tracks and tilted his head back when he saw us as if we were in a Western and I was the villain and he was Clint Eastwood. He cocked a smile slowly, almost deviously. “What are you doing here? Popping out for a smoke?”

I laughed, though I didn’t know what I found funny. It was a vague impersonation of some television character I had no idea about; I knew that much. Alex has a tendency to pick the obscure. I felt he was referencing an inside joke I had been shut out of. Maybe because Taylor laughed vocally.

“Digestion,” I replied. George breathed a laugh. Alex and Taylor hugged us both.

Taylor and I shared a look when George and Alex “bro hugged.” It was the epitome of girls sharing a secret language. We were passing a note to one another that women had done for centuries. Men are childish fools, and we girls, though on different sides of the exchange, are forever bonded by standing in the same position. I think Taylor and I would’ve been good friends had I met her before she met Alex. Or maybe it was our fate to stand on different sides of the exchange, sending secret messages with our eyes. A different language than the male one of bro hugs and dabbing each other up.

“You both look great,” George said. “Taylor, your…” he gestured to the top of his head. Taylor had cut her hair short. It was a little pixie cut, like I imagine a fairy’s hair might be. A Tinker Bell for the modern age.

George had a typical male response, as if maybe her hair isn’t something he, as a man, should address. He sounded like my father after Harper had gotten a nose ring (her one act of rebellion). He asked her if she had something stuck in her nose, a joke she never laughed at no matter how many times it was told.

I stepped in, the woman explaining her man’s faux paus. “I like it a lot. I’ve always wanted to shave my head.”

“You should totally do it,” Taylor encouraged. “It’s quite freeing and so much more manageable.”

“I didn’t know you wanted to shave your head,” George said. He had only known me with long hair, the kind that fell delicately on my chest in loose curls.

Alex knew. “Yeah, she wanted to be like Sinéad O’Connor.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know if I’ll ever do it. I think I’d miss my long hair too much. Maybe I’ll dye it blue or something. It’s pretty dull.”

“Ugh, are you kidding?” Taylor gushed, “I’d kill for your hair.” I didn’t find it to be all that special compared to hers. I’m a brunette with eyes that have been trained to admire bright blonde hair, Taylor’s natural gift. I’ll be envious of blondes until the day I die, but I’d look ugly with blonde hair. I’m sure of this due to my mother’s phase of blonde hair when I was 12. She looked like Kate Gosselin.

An awkward silence fell over the group. I puffed away at my cigarette and waited for someone else to speak. I felt eyes on me but stared at the ground at the way my pink heels looked on the cobblestone ground. I decided to blurt out, “I still haven’t finished War & Peace.”

I was greeted with stares. Taylor, obviously, had no idea, George had no idea why I brought it up, and, slowly, Alex cracked a smile before he laughed. “Have you even finished the first page?” He quipped.

I bolded my eyes at him. “Yes. I didn’t bring it on the plane ‘cause I feared it would set me over the weight limit.”

His face was warm. I imagine somewhere back in his lineage, you would find the Sun. He was one-half star and it came out best in the first few days of summer when the sky shined in just the right way upon his face. “Are you guys heading back to New York after this?”

“No,” I sighed. “We’re paying a visit to my family in Bath. Stacey is coming in for the weekend and my parents have agreed to tolerate one another for one meal together. Oh,” I realized, “they’re getting divorced. I forgot to tell you.”

His face was split because the news was shocking…but was it really that shocking? It was the inevitable that neither of my parents had the guts to say it out loud. “Wow,” he voiced. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

“Kind of wish they did it earlier. Better late than never, I suppose.” We hadn’t included George and Taylor in the conversation for several minutes now. I turned to Taylor. “Back on the road after this?”

“We were in Florence before this,” she said. “I miss it already and then there’s Glastonbury in about a week.”

I nodded and I was pretty sure George wasn’t listening by this point. “Glastonbury is fun.” I almost brought up memories of when I was there in 2007, but it was too personal and too long ago to utter. I finished my cigarette and it was enough conversing for the rest of the night.

“You guys heading out?” Alex asked. He was alone and so was I. The hallway was mostly empty with the exception of a few people at the other end. He was headed to the bathroom and I was leaving it. There were many jokes I could’ve made about being in this position again but all were flirtations. Things that would get us naked.

“I think so. We’re both pretty tired and our flight is tomorrow.”

He nodded. His eyes were fixed on the floor. He felt so far away. A rift set in the middle. He took a step toward me and looked up. “Well, good luck with your parents. Tell Stacey a hello from me.”

I agreed to but never did. I think Stacey would have made fun of me relentlessly for any mention of Alex. She was a grown-up but will forever be an immature little sister. “Good luck on tour.”

“Thanks,” he muttered. We moved closer and hugged in jolted, jagged-end movements.

I had walked several paces before he called out, “Janie.” I turned and he stood right outside the men’s bathroom—a hesitation in leaving. “Take it for a ride. For me.”

It’s a miracle the beetle wasn’t broken down dead. I think my mother drove it to the grocery store sometimes but it mostly sat idle in the garage. My father barely knew of the presence of the car, and if he did, I’m sure he would have gotten rid of it. He didn’t care for things taking up space.

The inside of the car was barely changed from the 2000s. CDs were still filed in the center console, all of them belonging to my teenage tastes. While I drove around Bath, George looked through the collection. “Why don’t you just toss these? You could probably get a few dollars for them.”

“I like having CDs.”

“But these have been collecting dust in here. Who are Sugababes?”

I chuckled but didn’t tell him all the memories that would explain why. “It’s the same as you having all those picture books in your childhood bedroom.”

“But I’m gonna give those to my kids.”

“Well, I’ll give these to my kids.”

He put the CDs back and closed the console, leaning back in his seat. “CDs are obsolete now.”

“People said it about vinyl and now it’s back and when CDs come back, I could probably be a millionaire.”

He chuckled. “I don’t think you’ll be a millionaire with your cracked Britney Spears CD.”

“You never know. I bought it on the day it was released. It could be a special edition.”

He shook his head, guying me. He began to search the glove compartment, filled with old napkins and the old car manual. “What’s this?”

It was a paper that looked like it had been folded up a hundred times. It was wrinkled and looked like it was a blow of the wind away from being torn in half. The ink on it had endured water damage. The entirety of the paper was covered with pen markings, making it impossible to discern what it was without taking the paper close to your eye.

I pulled over to have a look at it. I laughed at the first notes I spotted.

J A 275 195

“It’s gin rummy scores,” I told him, though there was much more to it. “Alex and I used to play all the time. This must be from the winter of 2005 or something. An ancient artifact.”

The paper was covered in words that I had never seen before. They were explicit and things I couldn’t utter aloud to George. I found two that were suitable for the situation and read them to him. “‘Sometimes, though, angels smoke-in their sleeves. But when the archangel goes by, they throw their cigarettes away: This is what falling stars are.’” I was beyond impressed with the words and taken aback by the carelessness. “I wonder why he threw it away in here. I might steal it. Doubt he remembers it.”

“Don’t,” George said.

I looked up at him with a giggle. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to actually plagiarize him. Not that he’d care.”

He chuckled at me. “I’m sure he wouldn’t care. He didn’t write it. It’s Nabokov.”

My mouth formed the letter ‘o’. “That makes more sense.”

George, as a member of the literati, nodded. “Letters to Véra. Good taste.”

I looked back at the smudged-up page, recalling back to the books of years past. I folded up the page to act uncaring and stuffed it back in the glove compartment. “I’ll have to see if he wants it. I guarantee he doesn’t remember it, but maybe it has some secret code on it.”

We continued our drive. I showed him the sights I knew and we walked around a little. It was nice weather and we sat outside for lunch. We returned home a bit before dinner with my family, which was shockingly boring.

Later that night, when we were ready for bed, I claimed to have forgotten something in the car. I sat in the passenger seat and took the page out.

On one corner of the page, in tiny writing, he penned “Jane” like that was all he needed to state.

I was taken back to the icy feeling of January in Sheffield, parked beside Charlton Brook and thinking that was the whole world. The words on the paper imprinted onto the walls of my heart, etched themselves in the marrow of my bones, and tasted sweet in my mouth as I chewed away at them. “It's cold today, but in a spring way, and I love you.”

“I am a very boring and unpleasant man, drowned in literature... But I love you.”

I wondered if he still had the book and if these parts were underlined, accompanied by words and thoughts that associated him with me. If there was a possibility every time he saw this book he thought of the winter he spent reading it beside me. If he saw Nabokov on the spines on his bookshelf and thought Janie. It was toe-curling madness, but I read on.

“The thought that you exist is so divinely blissful in itself that it is ridiculous to talk about the everyday sadness of separation—a week's, ten days'—what does it matter? Since my whole life belongs to you.”

“I love you, my sun, my life, I love your eyes-closed—all the little tails of your thoughts, your stretchy vowels, your whole soul from head to heels.”

“Without you I wouldn’t have moved this way, to speak the language of flowers.”

“Kisses, my love, deep ones, to the point of fainting.”

And the one that struck me the most that had me lying awake that night: “I will love you tonight, and tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and still many more, so very many more tomorrows.”

Awfully, befitting for this book and for me.

Then came a line that I knew was his creation (or stolen from an old joke book with a title like Witty Remarks for Intellectual Conversations): “Why did Shakespeare only write in pen? Pencils confused him: 2B or not 2B?”

I felt like crying, but instead, I was overcome by laughter and the overwhelming memory of that distant time. I still felt it, still sore in my muscles. I felt him all around. The memories felt so close to me that I couldn’t quite believe how long ago they had occurred. They felt as recent and vivid as yesterday’s venture.

On the other side of the page, there was more writing with lines scratched out so harshly it almost ripped a hole through the page. It was nearly all unreadable, besides a handful of words that were written out, “My mouth hasn’t shut up about you since you kissed it. The idea that you may kiss it again is stuck in my brain, which hasn’t stopped thinking about you since well before any kiss.” The rest was more nonsense for me to pine over. Silently.

I only seem to like the beginnings of things. The thought of that has terrified me to an unbelievable degree for most of my life. The start of the school year would seem so sweet, but then around October, I felt like dropping out. Every idea felt like a form of genius at the first line, but by the second page, I was a failure, a fraud, and a phony.

I cherished the getting-to-know-you stage. I like mastering each nook and cranny of a person and then I discovered the petrifying knowledge that they were getting to know me too. When I was younger, this made me change into a mysterious being, or at least try to.

Most people didn’t care to pull back the layers anymore. The rare person came along, and when they saw the center of me, it felt impossible to let them go because then I would have to expose myself to someone else to fill the void they left, the center they scooped out like a ball of cantaloupe.

I believe you invent people in your head. Everything is perspective and I will never be viewed under the same light that I view myself. For some occasions, I am thankful for this, but I know I don’t get to control the narrative, no matter how much I write and spew my own view of things out into the world.

One night, on an early September night, I was struggling to write. I had to contribute a piece to Womb. I had neglected it for most of the summer and needed to have a piece of work in the September issuing. Opal comes from the fashion world, where Vogue’s September Issue is the Bible you swear upon.

It was still hot in the city. I cracked open a window and allowed the midnight breeze to try and penetrate the sweat. The cursor blinked at me and I felt like my brain was being cooked. When I had previously had these rots, I called Opal, but she had already heard from me that night, and we were in the middle of a spat where she was right and I was wrong, so I didn’t want to get another whiplashing from her or to ruin her night anymore.

George was at a friend’s bachelor party at a billiards club, which I thought was old-fashioned guy stuff. I thought about writing about that, but it was a stupid idea. I barely know anything about pool.

I won’t delay further like I was trying to delay the inevitable that evening. I called Alex.

The tour had finished about a week before and I hadn’t seen him since the wedding. I wouldn’t say I was avoiding him (though I did notably choose to go out of town the weekend they played Terminal 5), but I didn’t confront the matter either. We texted him about the Olympics and I called him when Gene Wilder died and we quoted Young Frankenstein insistently to one another.

That evening, he didn’t pick up when I initially called him. I considered the night awash for writing and decided to go to bed, but then he called me back before I could brush my teeth. “Who died?” He greeted me.

I slumped back in my desk chair. “No one. Do I have to kill someone to talk to you?”

“No, it just worries me like Pavlov’s dog or something. You’re the bell that beckons death.”

I snorted. “Well, don’t go on associating me with the Grim Reaper.”

He could hear his smile in the quiet hum of his voice. “What’s up?”

All roads lead back to Rome and I’m stuck on the wishful thinking path. It’s filled with the autopsies of conversations from years ago. It took me too long to muster a reply and when I did I sheepishly said it like I had been caught doing something I shouldn’t, which probably was true. “I can’t think of anything to write and I’m a step away from throwing myself out the window.”

“Don’t do that,” he chuckled. “You’ll probably only break your legs.”

“I think my brain is fried and I wouldn’t care so much, except I’m letting Opal down by not writing anything. It wouldn’t be the first time but I’m trying not to be such an arsehole friend anymore.”

He sighed and whatever weight he was taking off by doing it was shoved onto me. I felt burdensome and the phone felt too heavy in my hand. “I wouldn’t be much help,” he said. “I’ve got nothing to write about either.”

I groaned. “Lame.”

“Call it empathic.”

I scoffed. “Men aren’t supposed to know about that.”

“You’re very difficult; you know that,” he joked. “You could always read War & Peace. Find some inspiration there.”

I looked at the tome gathering dust on the floor beside my bed. “The only thing it’ll provide me is strained muscles.” My eyes trailed up to my bedside table and I thought on the other book hidden away, the one I hadn’t told anyone about. “I’m reading Letters to Véra now. You read that years ago, right?”

“Yeah. It’s good.”

“When we were in Bath, George found a sheet you wrote all these quotes from the book on. It’s been sitting in the glove compartment for a decade.” The confession felt like sacrilege. I had brought another man into holy ground.

It’s hard to predict Alex’s responses to these discoveries. I was timid and resisted revealing it to him for months. I figured he’d escape the notion of it too, instead, he breathed out, “Jesus. I forgot about that. There’s probably all kinds of shite like that tucked away somewhere. Whoever lives in your old bedroom now is finding scraps all over the place.” The knowledge that there was other scripture like this just lying around somewhere made me even hotter. Like he had just scattered his love around like Hansel and Gretel through the years, waiting for me to find my way back.

“Well, I have this one, if you want it,” I offered.

“You keep it,” he told me. I wanted to see his face. It was hard for me to read the situation. “It was supposed to be for you anyway.”

It made my head spin. I was almost certain I had to have taken some drug before this conversation. I felt dizzy and faint. “It had gin rummy scores on it too.”

His laugh sliced through the silence. “I’m sure you kicked my ass.”

I wish he could see my smug smile. “Up by nearly 100.”

“You should write about that,” he suggested.

“Gin rummy?”

“All those little things. I find that writing about Sheffield can be a good palate cleanser. Returning to the days of youth.” He hesitated, still trying to work out the thoughts that ping-ponged in his mind. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“I know what you mean,” I reassured him. “I know.”

I wrote a piece and stuffed it away in a drawer. It was about college, Alex, and smoking. It’s the first section of this book.

The following morning, after sleeping on my sullied writing, I decided to reach back further in the days of Wakefield. It was about a trip to the shopping centre I took with my mother when I was 11. We were looking for a dress for my year 6 leavers ceremony and she made me try on all these different dresses until I found one I fell in love with, but she didn’t like it so she ended up picking this scratchy old dress. It might be small, but I still think about that dress. I thought about it long enough that I couldn’t stop writing, and thus, I began my next book.

Christmas was coming. The first snow fell halfway through December, but it didn’t stick, just leaving an ice fog. George had spent the night at my place. We stayed huddled in bed and decided it was best for him to stay simply because it was too cold.

He cooked bacon while I showered. I had a towel wrapped in my hair when he handed me my coffee and a plate of cooked pig belly with some berries on the side. We ate at my tiny kitchen table and talked about the weather. Then he said, “It would probably just be easier to live together at this point.”

“Yeah,” I thoughtlessly said while chewing away.

“And my place has more room and is right above the store. It’s in Manhattan too, which seems more your scene than Brooklyn.”

“Yeah. I think so.” It was going over my head. The bacon was really good.

“We could do it in the New Year.”

I squinted. “Do what?” He stared at me. “Move in together?”

“Yeah.” He smiled.

“Oh.” I hate myself. “But I like my place.”

“It’s nice, but you’re always complaining how you wish you had more space and—”

“How would I have more space living with you?”

“I at least have a wall between my bed and kitchen.”

“But I would be sharing all that with you now.” It was a pointed comment. It was obvious my concern wasn’t over having a new roommate but who that roommate would be.

He began looking crossed. “What’s wrong with sharing?”

“I like having my own space,” I reasoned with a half-truth.

“Well, we could make space for you at my place.”

“Your place.”

“Our place,” he corrected.

“What’s wrong with my place?”

He laughed at me. “Nothing’s wrong with your place. But, come on, let’s pull the trigger.”

I rolled my eyes like a bitch. “How affectionate.”

“Jane.” He was scolding me.

“Let me think about it.”

He nodded, and we went back to eating, but this time in silence. He finished his coffee and decided for us. “You’re not gonna move in with me, are you?”

“I don’t know.”

He sighed. “Don’t kid me, Jane. At least give me that.”

“I just like having something of my own.”

“Okay.” He looked around. I feared he was X-raying the apartment and seeing all the things I was hiding. Then he stared at me so strongly I thought he’d burn a hole through me. “We’re never gonna go to the next step with me.”

“I’ll allowed to think about it.”

“No, I mean like we’re not going to live together or get married. All those dreams you told me about with the garden and your husband cooking you dinner, that’s not me, is it?”

I didn’t know what to say. “It could be.”

He shook his head. “It’s not.” He was soft and he broke my heart because I knew I was breaking his. “It’s okay.”

We finished breakfast and we talked about our individual plans for Christmas. When our plates were empty, he stood up and kissed my cheek. “I hope you come do an event for your new book.”

I nodded, and then he left. I cleared the table and did the dishes.

a/n: i'll try and figure out how to include pickles in the next part. it might be a bit before the next part because a) it'll be longer, b) i want to try and write something else in the time being to clear out my long list of in progress works, and c) there's not that many years left of this and we must cherish every second. thanks :)

#alex turner #alex turner fic #alex turner x oc #alex turner x fem!reader #alex turner x reader #alex turner x you #alex turner x y/n #alex turner smut #junedenim #beneath the boardwalk

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thewardenapostate · 3 days ago

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Idealism, and a Soft Heart in a Cruel World

I was recently rewatching clips from Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022), and this quote in particular reminded me a lot of a discussion to be had regarding Alistair and his idealism.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that I believe there are areas of growth for him as a character— his idealism being one of them. And it’s not so much that having idealism is inherently wrong, but rather part of maturing is learning to balance both your ideals with your pragmatism.

However, when thinking about this quote, it sort of helped contexualize part of the reasons why I feel Alistair is so idealistic— and in turn, made me see a different perspective.

One of the first things I noticed about Alistair was how highly he spoke of three specific things: Arl Eamon, The Grey Wardens, and by extension Duncan.

As a player who is privy to meta-gaming knowledge, I found it interesting that Alistair would continually justify his treatment at the hands of Arl Eamon, and even go so far as to say how good of a man he was. This was directly contradictory to what we learn of how Alistair was treated, as well as comments made by characters regarding the Arl.

In addition, we see Alistair holding Duncan and the Grey Wardens up as paragons of virtue; this, however, is more understandable simply because they provided Alistair his first sense of belonging.

In Dragon Age Inquisition, we see a Warden Alistair defending the Grey Wardens up until the very end— even when they’ve essentially banished him from the Order because he dissented against the use of Blood Magic. When it’s revealed that the Grey Wardens had a direct hand in the Divine’s death, Alistair insists that it was just a mistake— so much that Hawke calls him out on it.

Why would Alistair go to such great lengths to seemingly justify behaviors by those around him? Is he really just naive and foolish?

I’d argue that instead of it being because Alistair is foolish, it’s more that his way of thinking was born as a means of survival. Hope, and the hope that others can change, is a tangible thing that can motivate us to persevere. Alistair’s soft heart has made him vulnerable at times, and yet it’s been the way in which he has been able to navigate the challenges of this world.

And there’s the rub, isn’t it? We see someone like Loghain, who abandoned idealism and hardened his heart in favor of pragmatism— and while that made him strong in some ways, it also made him unable to exist in a changing world.

The reality is, we all have different ways of approaching life— especially when it is cruel and unfair. And while no one way is inherently correct, there is something pretty powerful about being able to maintain a sense of hope and optimism despite everything.

#dragon age origins #dragon age #alistair theirin #Alistair meta #dragon age meta #character analysis #Alistair #alistair dao

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kukuandkookie · 1 day ago

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You know, I somehow followed you and have been seeing your posts without ever realizing you loved The Myth so much and it’s one of the dramas I absolutely cherish because I watched it as it was airing around 2010 with my family MGNSKFHS.

Unfortunately it’s been so long and because I was a child without a good grasp of Chinese or the Internet and it wasn’t like dramas were easily accessible back then, I only remember bits and pieces of this one, including some of the romance stuff, a major betrayal, and part of the ending, etc…

But I’ll definitely have to rewatch it someday. 😭

I’m honestly still shook though that you like The Myth so much (to the point it’s like your favourite time travel drama?) because it’s not like you ever see anyone talking about this show in the west, and that I simply had no idea despite following you for so long!

Anyway I can’t offer anything of value about the show right now because it and Beauty’s Rival in Palace are shows I remember watching as a child, but I do want to say…I’m glad to hear this one holds up so well and that it wasn’t just my nostalgia—and to hear it made you cry so hard you threw up is really crazy but impressive to hear… I remember you also liked the novel Erha, and that made me cry so hard I was almost wailing at one point, so man, imagining how this drama might fuck me up again, especially considering all my nostalgic fondness for it…oof ahaha.

Call it masochistic, but I look forward to it when I find the time to indulge in it again. 🫡

PS: Also maybe this is sacrilegious and likely because I’m biased from nostalgia but I genuinely liked the drama’s version of “Endless Love” more than the movie!:

youtube

PPS: As a fun fact I recently learned, there was this super amazing statuette made of porcelain of the princess in the National Museum of China, and it was based on the cdrama version!:

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You know, I really really wanted to get emotionally fucked up.

So, here we go, The Myth (2010), the sole drama where I cried so hard I threw up.

Xiao Chuan (Hu Ge) is a modern day freelance photographer who ends in in Qin Dynasty China. Not as a transmigrator or anything, no he is just plopped down in the middle of the execution in progress. From there on, for 50 episodes he proceeds to have his soul, heart and body taken apart. By the time the drama ended, in one of the most horrifyingly bleak endings from anywhere I've ever seen, I was just numb.

The first few eps (until the plague hits, it's this kind of drama), are actually rather funny and can lure the unwary into thinking this will be a fun romp. Or do they? Here we are at ep 1, long before the slide into grinding, inexorable destruction of everything Xiao Chuan holds to except his integrity and we get a giant sign of what this is going to be like if only we paid attention.

He's in the middle of an execution of some enemies, real or imaginary, of the Qin Dynasty, and the befuddled officials not only immediately jump to the conclusion he's there to interfere, a bad guy etc etc, but they breathe past the questions of how he got there and who he is (and even what he is), to "we should execute him, whoever he is, because we get paid more for each supposed traitor." I mean, think about it - they wonder if he's a god or demon and then decide it doesn't matter, they will just add him to the kill tally for prizes. This is an arbitrary, bloodthirsty theater of cruelty, controlled by nothing by power and greed - the good guys (insofar as there are any, they are few and far between) do not win. A lot of evil is not done out of a grand design or plans to rule the world but petty greed or just boredom or lack of care. The government is portrayed as made in the monstrous image of the monstrous Qin Emperor and inscrutable in anything but bloodthirstiness and self-interest.

The censors would never let any of this fly now - this drama really is a criticism of absolutism as much as anything else (corrupt officials do not get punished; they get rewarded) - but oh God, what a masterpiece it was.

#cdrama #the myth #kuku rambles #Youtube #also I have no idea why my Tumblr app glitched and didn’t let me post but then when I force-quit the app #it turned out it did post multiple times despite not responding to my touch 🙃

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lordofmelancholy · 2 days ago

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Arcane: Silent Frontiers: Mylo and Ekko

It’s a personal thing cause I don't really like his character, but I often HC that Ekko actually doesn’t like Mylo all that much. And it shows greatly in Silent Frontiers.

The reason i don't care for Mylo too much. . . is because he reminds me too much of people I went to School with. The mean comments and everything. And the thing about the fandom is they often say that he’s just a kid and too cut him slack. Except when you get bullied a lot growing up, you learn that kids like Mylo never tend to actually ever stop on their own. They just keep going and they keep going until they FINALLY stop but usually that’s because someone makes them stop.

Growing up, Mylo always had a need to impress people, but this often manifested in the typical behavior of a older individual ragging on the smaller and weaker then you sort. Growing up this behavior was usually directed at not only Jinx but Ekko as well. But when it came to Ekko alone it was often to a much lesser extent because Little Man knows about potential jobs and scores him the occasional deal at Benzo's. However, unlike Powder, Ekko most certainly did not take as much of the jabs as Powder had done, absolutely biting back and having his own quips to Mylo way more often than Powder ever did at that age. However growing up Ekko became protective of Jinx, which means he probably also had grown up hearing what Mylo and others had to say about Jinx but because Jinx is Jinx, she’s probably also told him to just forget it and he has for her sake only. But sometimes he hears things and they make him mad

And we all know Ekko has a temper

In the weeks following Isha’s death, Ekko and Jinx had cut themselves off from everything and everyone. No one saw them. No one heard from them. And the only people who ever really knew that they were actually still alive were Benzo and Scar. They went into a period of mourning so strong that people don't see them for DAYS or even weeks. They hibernated so far from eyesight, hid so well that even the creatures in the Zone couldn’t even find them

Now in Silent Frontiers, in a effort to boost moral amongst those in the Lane Zone, the firelights, Ekko and Jinx (Mostly Ekko and Scar) took over what would have probably been the Last Drop, which in the end became like their little getaway. Because the one thing about Jinx and Ekko is that they have a LOT of "hideaway" spots scattered throughout the Lane Zone that's essentially their way of getting AWAY from people. When the social battery is drained, they're insanely good at hiding away to recharge and chill with one another.

When they don't have time for people at all, they don't let people have any of their time

When the time came and they finally did reemerge who knows how long after their period of mourning, the first place they went was to the last drop, to the VIP section in the back where the two of them could just relax and stretch their legs without anyone bothering them

After all, they had just lost their baby. They lost their world. It only made sense that they didn't want anyone else to come close when the sky itself was collapsing right on top of them whilst they try and figure out what their next move was.

But most importantly going to the last drop was simply just a way for them to enjoy each other’s company in a sense of vague normality. To try and march through the day's as if nothing had changed.

However, with normality often comes other things. And one of the major ones is the fact that if you want things to be normal, then you have to deal with certain things that are common place.

One thing such being, is that certain people can’t keep their fucking mouth shut even when everyone else around them tells them too.

When Ekko and Jinx went to the last drop, Mylo had already been there with Claggor and a few other "friends" of theirs and was already on his way on being under the table. While everyone else gave Ekko and Jinx a wide berth when they had randomly shown up one night, unable to bring themselves to bother the pair, Mylo on the other hand is antsy, loud, boisterous a down right nuisance. But Ekko and Jinx are used to that. Mylo often has even less of a filter when he’s drunk and it's nothing they haven't dealt with before, so it's easy to ignore for the time being. They've done it plenty of times before after all.

But when Ekko walks out of the VIP lounge for a second to head to the bar, it’s noticeable that Mylo is flapping his jaws in a way that obviously is turning everyone's mood sour.

And that’s when Ekko finds out why.

Because Mylo is making digs at Jinx once again, at least that’s what Ekko think's he hears. He doesn’t really hear much, all he see’s is the sour faces of everyone, the roar of music playing on a stereo system and Mylo drunkenly swaying about, making wise-cracks to anyone who would listen and it’s very obvious whatever he’s saying no one wants too hear.

Even Claggor, so often used to this behavior, seems like he's trying his best at curbing his friends antics, often throwing uneasy watchful glances at Ekko as he comes by and Ekko for a moment doesn't know why even Claggor seems so unnerved. If Mylo is making cracks at Jinx again it's nothing that Ekko probably hasn't heard already. Same if the cracks are presented against himself. And if they are then he doesn't really care at the moment what Mylo has to say.

At least that's what he thinks. If that was all Mylo had to say then he would have indeed have left it alone. Had left Mylo to stew in his juices and booze until he got tired out like he always did. After all, Ekko did never throw him out all the other times this had happened What was family for after all. . .

But then. . .Mylo says something.

Whatever it was. Whatever it is. Ekko did not know for sure at first, did not hear it clearly but the faces around them, even Claggor's suddenly looked shocked and appalled by whatever it was that Mylo had to say. And they all suddenly turned to look at Ekko when it finally registers what Mylo had said And it’s the utterance of Isha's name from slurred, alcohol tainted lips that makes the world around him dark.

He hears voices, hears his name, people calling for him, trying in vain to convince him to just calm down, to just relax, that Mylo is simply just drunk and just flapping his lips and that he shouldn't hold it against him. But Ekko had always grown up hearing that.

He’s just a kid

He doesn’t mean any harm

They're just jokes

All excuses for his behavior. Everyone giving him an easy pass to say whatever he wanted.

But Ekko doesn’t hear excuses. Not any more

All he hears is one thing

CRUNCH

and something soft collapsing under his fist.

When the world finally stops being dark, someone’s holding him up from under his arms trying to pull him back, someone else is shouting at him to stop because He’ll kill him if he doesn’t

(Ekko Stop it!)

(You idiot are you trying to kill him!)

But then the struggling is over and he calmly looks around. For a moment, he doesn't seem to understand where he is. He looks up. All the people in the bar are staring at him. They’re all quiet.

Seemingly suddenly afraid of him.

And that's when Ekko looks down at his hand, clenched in a fist. And his knuckles are bloody, the skin is torn and raw, and blurry just outside of his peripheral, he notices that Mylo’s on the floor not that far from him; the barstool he was on tipped over and his face around his cheek and nose all bloody. He's holding his face as blood blooms between his fingers, spilling in between the gaps of his hand in quick, hot drops.

The fight in Ekko stops for just a moment. He’s panting. He test wiggles his fingers. Trying to check and see if they’re broken or anything. And there’s a sting under his skin but they’re fine. Nothing seems broken. Same can’t be said about Mylo though, who while still drunk, curses sniffly at Ekko from where he lays on the floor about what the fuck is his problem. Ekko goes to hit him again, but Claggor and Scar step in between them, trying to keep the situation from escalating any further

And thats when Ekko realizes. . .that Mylo looks scared of him almost, despite the slurring and cursing and sniffling. In fact. . .everyone does. .

Everyone knew Ekko had a temper. Everyone also knew however that Ekko was protective and did his best to keep his temper in check. But they just never realized just how far he was willing to go to protect what was his.

Even if it means harming one of his own. Something he never did before.

He had never rose a hand against family. . .until now. Ekko had scared him, solely because Mylo had never expected this

excepted retaliation where there use to be none

But Ekko doesn't say anything. He doesn’t offer apologies, doesn't try to placate the situation. What he says instead is simple:

Mylo is not allowed at the bar anymore. Ekko is officially banning him from the premises. And in doing so, Ekko also states that if he ever hears either Jinx or Isha's name come out of Mylo's mouth again that he'll blind him first and deal with the consequences of doin so later.

And its a threat said so clearly. . .so icy calm despite the absolute blackout-out of body experience that Ekko just had, that it actually scares Mylo into silence for just a moment, finally forces the loud-mouth to quiet and forces him to turn his bloody face down like a scolded dog. Just long enough for Claggor to pick his idiot friend up off the floor and drag him out before Ekko could loose his temper again when Mylo tries to interject for just a second.

When things quiet down, Everyone's staring at Ekko (afraid). Wondering what he'll do now. But despite everything. Despite the blood on his knuckles dripping on to the floor, Ekkos smart under pressure, and he's quick on his feet, and states Free Drinks for the rest of the night if no one utters a word about what had just happened.

And thats enough to turn the attention else where. And when that happens Ekko is quick to spin on a heel, despite Scar calling for him and head back to the VIP lounge.

He hears Jinx's voice when he opens the door, and she's questioning him over what had just happened

But Ekko doesn't respond. . .

He instead just notices that his hands are shaking.

Jinx doesn't have to ask again. Doesn't have to do anything more beyond look at him, truly look her lover up and down. See the shake of his hands, the trembling in his shoulders. The thousand yard stare within his eyes speaking far more vividly than any word he could say, if he could say.

Jinx doesn't wait for him to respond. Doesn't have too. Her own heart aches, her own throat tightens despite the gulp she attempts to give it. There's no softness in her posture, no affectionate warmth in her pursed lips. She is as tense as he is shaking, yet her eyes are knowing and sad and they are entirely on him.

Stiff as she is, when she finally approaches, she does not ask him again. Does not attempt to say anything, to scowl at him for hitting Mylo, to soothe and coo at him to ease the shakes.

Nay, Jinx walks right on up in front of him. Looks him directly in the eye. And then wraps him in the tightest cling of a hug she can.

As they both lament quietly about their situation.

_ _ _ There's never any easy way to cope with loss. To cope well.

Losing a kid is hard enough. Losing your kid is almost impossible to take well, in any sense, in any capacity. But losing your kid the way that they did… they're doing well enough to even go near anyone. Yet how sad it is, that they finally show back up around something close to civilization, and immediately there's just the urge to go right back into the wilds. . .

_ _ _ @dreamyrainland

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heroesrest64 · 14 hours ago

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Not My Place

(A Hyrule Warriors Link x Reader that I just HAD to write today after listening to ‘Against The Kitchen Floor’ by Will Wood. I don’t know guys, the song just fit him really well. He isn’t even my favorite help-)

You and Link met on the field. It wasn’t a kismet moment, no bolt of lightning when your eyes met or a feeling that you just had to get to know the man. He was just another face in a sea of injured soldiers. The two of you didn’t even talk that first day, too busy leading injured soldiers into the medical tents to even acknowledge the other.

While you may not have truly gotten to know eachother that day, it was still notable. You still remembered his face, sculpted as if the goddess herself had molded it, eyes like sapphires and lips chapped from the dry weather. You remembered him, and it seems he remembered you, too.

“You’re part of the medical team?” The man whose name you have yet to learn asks as you slip into the main medical tent, tired eyes flicking to where the blonde man sits. He has a split lip and a bandage wrapping his wrist up to his elbow. You almost walk away upon assessing he’s been treated, but something stops you.

“Do I look like a soldier to you?” You ask, deadpan, one eyebrow quirking up in genuine curiosity. The man’s cheeks flush, and he rubs the back of his neck nervously.

“Heh, kinda? You were lifting soldiers like they were sacks of flour last time we met.” He grins, shifting in his cot, creating just enough space for you to sit comfortably. You hesitate. There are so many things for you to attend to, but…

You haven’t taken a break since you woke up this morning. Surely a couple minutes shouldn’t set you back by too much.

“If I’m being honest, I thought you were part of the medical team. You were surprisingly good with the patients.” You feel your mouth tick upwards just a little bit, delicately sitting beside the man and letting your shoulders drop their tension as the man goes to explain the emergency training all soldiers are supposed to receive before stepping onto the field.

That was the first time you talked to Link. You don’t know if you caught his name during that conversation, but it was hard to not learn his name through the grapevine over the next couple weeks. It’s not even like you were particularly trying to catch information about him. He had become a celebrity seemingly overnight- Impa announcing him as the Hero Apparent in Princess Zelda’s absence. The whole thing was a ploy, or so you thought. A way to rally morale. Set a pretty face in front of the people, have him say a few pretty words, and he’ll have them eating out of the palm of his hand until the princess returns.

It wasn’t your place to say anything, though, so you kept your mouth shut and continued your work. Link would visit you every now and then, and as time passed, you found yourself softening, the hard edges caused by the war smoothing. That only made the stress and tension in Link’s shoulders stand out all the more to you.

“If I really am the hero… Does that mean this war is my fault?” Link asks you after a raid one day. He was hit on the head pretty hard, according to Impa, and had refused to be treated by anyone other than you. He was making such a fuss that Shiek had demanded he be given a private setup, away from the rest of the soldiers. Seeing him now, though, you’re pretty sure he was acting that way on purpose, in an attempt to talk to you and get a straight answer rather than the harsh verdict Impa would lay out for him or the fluffy words Lana would try to puff him up with.

“War is rarely ever a single person’s fault. The blame falls on the instigators shoulders, and you simply do not have the power to make that call. While I do not feel it is my place to assign blame, the fault for this war would never fall on your shoulders in my mind.” You hum, pressing a cotton swab to the scratch on his head. He flinches as the alcohol stings at the cut, but knows better than to pull away.

“But the others,” Link starts, only to stall when you place your free hand over his clenched fists. He whips his head to look up at you, absolute surprise coloring his face.

“Do the opinions of people you’ve never met matter so much to you? If that’s the case, maybe you should talk to them instead of me.” You smile, running your thumb over his knuckles before withdrawing, taking the cotton swab with you and placing it in a disposal bin just as there’s a knock at the door. Lana steps inside just a moment later, immediately moving to fuss over Link while you move to clean up the space. Link's eyes follow you as you go, but it probably wasn’t your place to point it out.

After that day, your meetings became more frequent, each charged with a certain level of intimacy that was hard to describe. Link always acted as though something was chasing him, even in the quiet evenings the two of you had off. You learned that compliments of a romantic nature were met with stony expressions and uncomprehending eyes. For some reason, he didn’t mind any sort of intimate touch. Almost as though the contact was easier for him to process than any sort of word that might leave your mouth.

It was like a careful dance, one that you had to learn the steps to with a silent wall as a partner. Link’s role in the war haunted him in a way that was impossible to soothe, and the obsessive nature of it seemed to have created a block in the man that you couldn't see yourself getting around.

Regardless, you stayed. Link was worth it. Because despite everything, he kept trying. He couldn’t voice it, but you could tell through his actions.

After the war, you retired from the army and set up a clinic in Castle Town. Link had looked like a wounded dog the entire time, like you had betrayed him to an absurd degree, like you were doing it on purpose to spite him.

You probably could have stayed. You wouldn’t have minded, a couple more years in the army wouldn’t have been so bad. But something was telling you that it was time to move on.

You finally discovered what that something was when Link stepped into your clinic one day and asked if he could spend the night.

While you were in the army, there was never a place to really settle down. No truly safe place that you could call your own, that you could dress up and protect.

Now, though, you have a clinic to call your own. A safe place for you to fill with all of the worldly comforts you can fit in it. A place that you would do anything to protect, and a place where you can decide who’s allowed to enter and who isn’t.

For a week the clinic is closed, and for a week, the Hero of Hyrule does not report for duty.

For a week, you and Link stay in a pillow fort up in your loft, taking turns grabbing food from your stocked up kitchen, playing pranks on eachother, preforming weightlifting competitions and sleeping in until the sun is high in the sky.

For a week, the two of you are lovers.

It was while you were reading a book aloud to him while he worked on (very sloppily) painting a portrait of you that he said it.

It wasn't some big proclamation. In fact, he’d asked the same thing every day for the past week. But when you glanced away from the words on the page in front of you and found him clumsily adding another streak to his painting, you couldn’t help but smile.

It certainly wasn’t your place to tell the Hero of Hyrule that you loved him, but maybe this was your place to tell Link that you wouldn’t mind spending one more day in with him, either.

#linked universe x reader #fanfic #Hyrule warriors link x reader #hw link #hw link x reader

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shini--chan · 2 days ago

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Yandere l x fem reader fic? Would love to see your writing in action with this prompt! Thanks!! Xx

Yandere L Lawliet - Archilies Heel

Word count: ~ 3,5k Synopsis: Everybody has a weakness. Even Achilles who was said to be invulnerable proved to have a weak spot where the waters of the Styx didn’t touch his skin. If you were a better person, you wouldn’t manipulate Mr. Wammy into letting you go and perhaps you would even accept your place by L’s side, but you are not.

Trigger warnings: kidnapping, manipulation, guilt tripping, discussions of abuse

Grey eyes considered every one of the options. While he contemplated his judgment, L lightly bit into the tip of thumb; from where you were standing, you could also see how he was wriggling with his toes. He had been lost in thought for so long that you were becoming nervous yourself. You had linked your hands together behind your back. Fingers tightened around each other as you managed your anxiety - you had learned to express your emotions primarily through your hands and feet instead of face. It was a trait that you had picked up from your captor.

“Hmmm… you sure have made this difficult. No mercy on my poor soul?”, he asked. Knowing him, you could decipher a hint of teasing in his steady tone.

At that, you rifled through your mental wardrobe of emotions and spiels and tugged playfulness out of its place. You slipped into it, and it moulded itself to the contours of your emotional state like a second skin. The superficial emotion filled your belly and chest, a sweet poison that coated the apprehension that you wanted to hide. You focused on the feeling you had taken out of storage and allowed it to ease the line of your shoulders and loosen the muscles around your lungs.

When you leaned forward to him, you placed your hands on the table and pulled your lips to a small while, and also made the skin around your eyes crinkle.

“Why should I ever make something like this easy?”, you challenged him. You aimed for a light tone, even as the muscles in your calves clenched in preparation to bolt. Not that running would help; it never did and especially wouldn't now.

Now, you were on the cusp of wringing a concession from him and the prospect of his rejection set you on edge. Academically, you knew that he couldn't be aware of all your intentions, because what person fully knew them self, let alone somebody else? Emotionally though, the absolutist stance that he knew everything and that there was nothing you could hide from him. It made you want to jump out of your skin and flee the scene.

At that, L gave you a tiny smile. It was nothing more than a slight upwards twitch of the corners of his mouth, yet it was enough to ease some of your ruffled feathers. You breathed deeply and exhaled slowly, in order to disguise that you were letting out a sigh of relief.

Quick as a whip, L’s hand shot out and claimed the hazelnut nougat that you placed in a neat glass bowel and pulled it closer to him. He forwent the cake fork that you had set out for him and picked up one cube after the other with his finger tips. Due to the abruptness of the movements, it took you a few moments to process what was really happening. When your brain finally caught up to your eyes, you let out a nervous laugh.

“What was that about?”, L asked you when you snorted. He did so with his mouth half-full and with owl eyes fixed on you.

“You simply surprised me, that is all”, you countered as you watched him chew and swallow. He didn’t even wait before shoving the next piece in; pale fingers had brown smears on the tips of them and bits of nut stuck between the depressions between his teeth.

The man before you hummed in consideration and stared you directly in the eye as he considered what to say. Finally, he told you: “All of them are good, I just like the tired and tested recipe best. You have made more than you’ve already served, haven’t you?”

Shaking your head, you laugh under your breath and reach for the glass bowels that contain samples of the nougat variations that you made and gathered them towards you. “Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins, you know.”

“I wasn’t aware that you had turned to religion”, he evaded and pulled the next two nearest bowls towards him. Greedy git, and you had thought for a moment that he was capable of moderation. On the other hand, your role as his captee was a testimony to his inability to moderate himself completely.

“Darling, you could drive a monk to drink, a king to his knees and me to organised religion.”

He cocked his head at that. “Is that a no to having more hazelnut nougat?”

Your blood started to simmer with repressed anger. L was commonly like this - he knew the answers to his own questions but he still posed them anyway to make you answer him, and in order to enmesh you in social interaction with him.

When you shook your head again, you looked down at the table and the bowls. Copying him by staring into the other’s eyes the whole time was extremely unnerving to you. In contrast to him and his psychopathology, you retained your human element.

“This was just a trail run to see what worked and what didn’t”, you explained to him. “I decided to try as many things as possible to not waste ingredients on making something that might turn out to be inedible. So, no tray loads of nougat are awaiting you back in the kitchen. What you see, is what you got.”

Eyebrows furrowed. The two of you stared at each other in silence for a few minutes. Finally, he relented: “What do you want? You better not say that you want to talk with your friends again.”

You smiled at him, wide and genuine. As much as he loved to push you to direct words with layers upon layers of subilities and intentions beneath them, he still caught on to non-verbal communication when pressed.

“I thought you would never ask. A couple of hours down in the next best Olympic sized swimming pool would be nice. I’m starting to become depressed due to lack of movement.”

The scent of chloride was a nice change of pace. It was evening, and there was nobody else in the swimming hall other than you and Wammy. The elderly man placed a bag with towels and your swim stuff on a deck chair and settled into one himself. The low lights of the room reflected off the surface of the mosaics on the walls and off the water surface. There was the lingering smell of soap underneath the chloride and when you slipped out of your slippers, the tiles beneath your bare feet were warm and dry. The cleaning crew had done a thorough job just a few hours before, and it showed.

You glanced at the old man behind you, and weighed your options. Of course, you might have to use every second available to reel Wammy to your side and extract the help you needed from him. On the other hand, one L Lawliet was extremely astute, especially when it came to you. From what you knew about him, you wouldn’t put it past him to notice if you had really used to pool by checking your swim suit for traces of chloride or soap. Best actually go along with your own requests.

You made quick work of the loose linen clothing, and folded it together yourself so that your companion didn’t have to do anything. Wammy took a book out of his own bag and busied himself with it, though you noticed how he occasionally glanced over the top of the pages to check on you. There was nothing too pressing at hand, and he wouldn’t harm a hair on your head. There was nothing malicious or petty about him, so you decided to leave him to his own activities.

The lycra of the swimsuit was tight against your skin, and after so long wearing clean, soft fabrics like silk and high quality cotton and refined linen, it felt rough. When you entered the pool via a metal ladder on the side, you shuddered from the cold upon placing your feet in the water. You pushed by doubts and apprehensions aside and took the plunge.

The next hour or so you spent doing laps up and down the pool. Freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke - it was exhausting and just one lap was enough to make you feel out of breath, even as you used the different swim styles you knew interchangeably so as not to exhaust yourself too fast. Nevertheless, physical exertion was meditative and allowed you to push away your nervousness and fear and think clearly for the first time in weeks.

It helped that L wasn’t here, that he wasn’t perched on a chair and tracking your every movement like a hungry vulture. No, he was up in the hotel room spending his time and energy on a case. Or he was sulky, or doing both - he was apt at multitasking after all.

While he had granted your request for a grand total of two hours in the hotel pool, he had only done it begrudgingly and after much haggling. His spirits had lightened a bit after you had put on a small fashion show with the swim wear that your shared caretaker had obtained for you, and he had spent a lot of the time biting on his lower lip as he openly leered at you. Still it meant that the distance between the two of you was bigger than ten metres and that automatically made him waspish. He would make his bad mood your problem in the coming days, and already had in the span of time between your request and you leaving the hotel room. When L wanted to make your life uncomfortable he wasn’t above anything. Yet it was a sacrifice you were ready to make, considering what you had to gain from it.

You needed time alone with a more reasonable person. L’s aversion to interacting with people outside of tightly controlled circumstances came to use here, as well as some basic quid pro quo. Delving into confectionery and feeding him the results had been more side of the deal, and had therefore granted your wish with some grumbling. Of course, he had pulled some strings to have the pool open for you after hours, and you had been led down after midnight when almost all the other guests were in their rooms.

What you needed was sport after sitting in hotel rooms and apartments for so long and watching your muscles atrophy. Your heart pounded in your ears after the third lap and you had to take a break to catch your breath. You continued, and the world was a rush of water once more.

What you needed was an out. It was not like you had asked him to spirit you away into a world of his own creation. The constant moving, the mind games, the constant feeling of being nothing more than a subject on a dissection table were not to your liking. You had your own wants and needs, and both categories had been severely reduced thanks to your kidnapper. Reasoning with him was out of the question, since he didn’t care about any moral arguments or legal reasoning you brought forth. Sometimes he humoured you in order to show off his intellect and to revel in the frustration you felt when he gutted your arguments. So you would just have to opt for the next best thing.

Upon exiting the pool, you pointedly kept your eyes off the clock. You knew that you hadn’t spent much time in the water and that your stamina had tanked. What you didn’t want was for the numbers on the clock to drive the extent of your weakness home.

You made your way over to the deck chairs and accepted the towel that Wammy offered with a small thank you. Since the coming conversation would be nerve-wrecking as it was, you decided that you would just have to ensure that you were as comfortable as possible. You took your time drying yourself off and mulled over your arguments in your head.

When you sat down, you looked at him from the corners of your eyes. How to start such a conversation? Were there any good starters in such a case? You had just decided to go directly for the throat and had chosen your opening statement when he posed an inquiry himself:

“Would you also like a book to read?”

“No thank you, but thank you for the offer.” There was tense silence as you contemplated what to do. “I would like to ask you about something, if you don’t mind”, you finally settled on saying.

There was the rustle of paper when the book was closed and put away. He was always so flawlessly polite, even in the face of rudeness. You were sure that he hadn’t imagined his retirement consisting of babysitting a man-child and enduring all his emotional whims and strange idiosyncrasies. The least you could do was to afford him the same grace he gave you, so you turned to fully face him. You concluded that there was no good way to really approach this, though you still tried to land this as gently as possible.

“I guess you have noticed that while I do my best to be civil and corporate, I'm still very … dissatisfied with my circumstances”, you started. You paused and looked at him.

“Please, continue.”

A shame. You had hoped that he would contribute to the conversation in why that you could build up upon. This was going to be awkward.

“Considering everything, I think it would be best that I be … removed … from L's life. I'm evidently not good for him”, you clumsily rounded off.

Wammy raised a silver eyebrow at you. “I digress on that. He has never been better since you entered his life. And that isn't something I say lightly.”

Now it was your turn to raise an eyebrow. “Excluding the part where he kidnapped me and has been holding me prisoner.”

A stray facial muscle twitched in the old man's face. You had struck a nerve. “I trust his judgment. While I might question his actions at times, at the end of the day, I have his back. His choices haven't failed to bear fruit and as his caretaker, I only want the best for him.”

“Surely you don’t sanction him kidnapping another human being? He has dedicated himself to catching criminals!”, you exclaimed. Anger was mounting and making you lose sight of decorum. That wasn’t good, especially since you had the shorter end of the stick.

It was shortly evident that Mr. Wammy didn’t like your choice of words. He reprimanded you:

“I do not do that. I, like anybody else were they aware of this matter, am deeply troubled by this development. While raising him proved to be a challenge and his upbringing was unorthodox in every aspect, I did do my best to instill moral values in him. My actions aren’t without foresight, nor are they done lightly.”

What he said made you realise that you had overreached. People always had ways of justifying their actions. The old man before you wasn’t stupid; quite the contrary even. As such, he was even more resolute in his beliefs due to how he could justify them to himself. That being said, the whole fiasco that L called a romantic relationship couldn’t sit well with him.

“Sorry for being so .. brazen. I am at my wits end and frustration has made me rude. Being kidnapped and then treated like a pet hasn’t been easy for me. I want to return to a normal life; I want it so badly. Again, I am sorry for insinuating you being alright with everything he does”, you apologised and tears welled up in your eyes as your emotions spilled over.

This was your life and wellbeing at stake, so you could be forgiven for becoming emotional. Mr. Wammy regarded you with a lost expression and he forlornly gave you a handkerchief so that you would dry your tears.

In an uncharacteristic moment of discomposure, he sighed and ran his hand through his hair. The promenade from the morning was wearing off and thus the strands of hair separated more easily.

“L is a selfish man, a very selfish man. He was maladjusted from the very beginning, having suffered through the trauma he did. That combined with his already stellar intellect ensured that he could never live a normal life. I did imagine my pension being different from this, yet when he came to my orphanage I was presented with a choice. Either be selfish and step back. L would have wreaked havoc, perhaps even turned to organised crime to stay entertained and stimulated once he would have gouged himself on the orphanage. In the very end, he would have gone down in a blaze and dragged countless others down with him. I could have distanced myself from that all - I had the money and the means to do so.��

“Or, I could manage him and his skills so that they would be utilised for the good of humanity. It would mean that I would give up the comfortable retirement I had planned and might even have to sacrifice some of my dignity and morals in order to ensure he went along with my plans.

“I choose the latter, and you should choose to be selfless as well. Don’t be mistaken, he has infringed on your dignity and ruined your life, and for that, I’ll be eternally sorry. That being said, this is not just about you and him, it is about the situation of crime around the world. There is far more at stake than the wellbeing of either of you. As it stands, he is far more efficient when you are at his disposal. Removing you now would be detrimental as well. I presume I don’t have to explain why”, he explained.

His words bounced around your head and once they settled, you turned each of them over. If you were a good person, you would see the wisdom in his words and heed them. Great things only come through sacrifice and Wammy had managed to push L into serving humanity through setting aside his own needs and playing butler. If you were a good person, you would be inspired to follow his example.

But you weren’t a good person and you were close to breaking. If you were good and moral, then you wouldn’t be here guilting and manipulating him into helping you escape. Perhaps if you weren’t so selfish, then his arguments would have fallen on fertile soil. On second thought, maybe this wasn’t about you being a good or a bad person and rather about you being sickened by the injustice committed by the person who was regarded as the personification of justice in some circles.

“If I were of similar character to you, I would accept what you told me and ask you to not tell L about our conversation. But I’m not, and I fear what is to come. If people already turn a blind eye to misdemeanors on his part as they are, then he’ll get used to always having his way. My worries are that he’ll continue to push the envelope until he’ll fully turn into the sort of monster that he claims to fight against”, you said.

It was laid out carefully and slowly and you allowed your true emotions to saturate your words. The truth was your sharpest blade in this situation and you had to make full use of it.

“You want me to put my foot down, is that what you are saying?”, he inquired after pondering your words for some time.

“Yes, I do.”

Minutes passed and in the damning silence of the swimming hall, your breaths were loud. He crossed his arms over his chest and focused on a spot of the wall behind you. Gloved fingers drummed against his elbow as he thought. You had to force yourself to sit still.

“Your words do have merit to them, and I can see the tragedy that you refer to all too clearly. Something can be done about it I guess. I would need your help though”, he conceded. It wasn’t much, but for you it was enough. There was finally light at the end of the tunnel.

#yandere death note #yandere l lawliet #x you #x reader #yandere x reader #yandere

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