#obligatory song pick for this month

[liesonthefloordramatically]

And I remember when you used to be mine

[bonny-kookoo]

Yoongi

Remember to Forget [Intro]

He praises your work, he boosts your name in the charts, he asks for a song together with you. It would all be perfect; if he wasn't what you feared most.

Tags/Warnings: androphobia (fear of men), mentions of past emotional and physical abuse, medication, panic attacks, insecurities, miscommunication, eventual romance, soloist!Yoongi

!! This work is the rewritten version of an old intro I had. I wasn't happy with it however, so here's the 'new' version. All past warnings for potentially upsetting content still apply, however.

Length: 1.5k words

-----------------------------------------------------

Music hasn't ever been your first choice when it came to your future career. And even now, five years in, you don't necessarily think of yourself as a musician at all. It's just a hobby on the side for you- and it will stay that way, considering you can't really ever give concerts, no matter how many people would visit it.

So you'll continue your life like this- working from home as technical support for a company that doesn't mind your issues with human interaction, earn your regular salary each month, work on music as a hobby on the side, earn a little from that, and take care of the occasional foster dog here and there.

It's a quiet, uneventful life. And you like it like that.

But it doesn't seem like you'll continue on this path, as your phone keeps buzzing, loudly announcing message after message while you're under the shower, unaware until your phone inevitably falls from the side of the sink into it, clattering loudly as it moves around. As soon as you get out and dry yourself, you spot it where it's still occasionally buzzing- and after unlocking it, it's clear what's happened.

Your blood runs cold. Agust D had not only posted a simple Instagram story- but he's mentioned and tagged you in a screenshot of him listening to your most recent song on Spotify?

Of course that would blow up as it does right now- follower count rising on all social medias, good and bad comments flooding in. It's scary how quickly that flood is waving over your existence on the internet, like water through a sieve there's no holding back at all. And it gets worse once you notice the first messages come in- one of them from his account personally. It's a simple message. Obligatory compliments about your work, mentioned surprise of your lack of fame in the industry, and the question to possibly work together on a project in the very near future.

You're not sure what to say about that.

Agust D had been quiet for a little while, but that hadn't impacted his career at all- he was a massive name after all, able to produce the perfect song for people far away out of his own comfort zone. There was nothing he'd touch that would ever truly 'flop'. But watching him on videos, shorts on tiktok, clips of his past concerts and behind the scenes content he'd upload occasionally, you just know there was no way to work with him. He is a man that needed to get to know the people he'd work with at least by meeting them once. He is a guy who got most of his inspiration from meeting people. He's a man that-

He's a man. And that alone makes you too anxious to reply to his message.

And far away from you, in his own apartment, Yoongi re-reads the messages he'd sent, over and over trying to figure out what he might've worded wrongly. He'd messaged the right account- you had no company you worked under, after all, no management because it was truly only you and no one else. You handled your entire career, so there was no one else he could talk to in regards to his offer- or more so request- to work with you on his newest project.

Usually, he gets a reply instantly, no matter from whom he'd message- but its been days by now since he'd sent it to you, and he just knows you must've seen it, considering how the news outlets online had been picking apart the simple short instagram story he'd posted. Like vultures with the chance of new prey they had dug up anything they could about you, frustration evident in not only the reporters but also fans and others curious about you, because there really wasn't much to find. And he'd cleared up on a livestream he'd done recently that he also didn't joke about genuinely enjoying your music, despite the rather contrasting genres. He'd also taken the chance to tell his fans to stop the rather impolite digging in your backyard, so to speak. If you didn't want certain information out, you'd have your reasons.

Maybe you just didn't want to work with him? He sighs to himself, leaning back in his office chair, crossing his arms.

Of course that's a possibility, and he doesn't usually beg for anything. He doesn't have to- he can find someone else of similar quality, probably, and just work with that person. But there's something about your work that just captured him at this point, every little track you'd uploaded on various platforms making your passion for the art of music pretty clear to him. Even the ones he'd call rather low quality still held something precious in them. Honesty, something raw and unique, perfectly imperfect.

He really wants to work with you- you seem perfect for what he's got in mind.

So he tries again, a little less formal in an attempt to maybe be seen as a bit more gentle than he appears to most people. He knows how intimidating this all must be for you- from what he's gathered, you're not a full-time musician like he is, you're rather doing it as a hobby on the side for reasons unclear. You've got the clear potential to make it big. You've got fans, people who'd happily pay for even just a tiny concert in a basement somewhere, just like he'd started years and years ago. But you don't really do that- you decline any venue offering to host you, and he doesn't know why.

Well, some people don't want the fame. Maybe you're one of those.

'I'm sorry, but I can't.'

So he adds another message.

'I can simply keep you as a ghost-writer or something on the track. Or tracks- I'm not sure yet.'

he writes you, sighs before he types another message. But before he can, you've finally replied- and it's not quite what he hoped you'd send him.

And for some reason, that just makes him all the more curious. Because you wrote that you can't- not that you don't want. So what's holding you back?

'Can I ask why not?'

he wonders, and it takes a good little while until you reply again.

But it's nothing like that, as you finally answer.

'It's going to come out at some point either way now.'

you write, and he's biting his own lip as he can't help but let his mind run to reasons you might not be able to work with other artists, or why you need to stay anonymous this badly. Are you a criminal? Wanted murderer? Or have you done other things in the past that would make you turn out to be a bad person?

'I'm scared of men.'

'I'm sorry.'

you write.

'Diagnosed androphobia from a past relationship gone south.'

You dryly reveal, and for some reason, that's even worse to him. Because now he worries he might've made you uncomfortable with his pressure- even though he didn't know what you were going through up to this point. It explains a lot, now that he thinks about it- why you don't do concerts, why you tend to stay out of the media, why you don't really post any pictures of yourself. If you're this scared of men, you must be absolutely terrified now that he's put you on the inevitable pedestal to be gawked at by thousands.

he writes because of that.

'I didn't know- if I had, I wouldn't have put you into a situation like that.'

he regretfully lets you know, but you answer a bit quicker now.

'It's fine.'

you tell him.

'like you said, you didn't know. There's no undoing that now anyways.'

You write, before you give him another message.

'I appreciate the compliments though :) '

you offer, and his chest feels a bit lighter.

'Of course'

he sends you.

'we can always just work together remotely. Is that okay for you?'

he asks hopeful, and it takes quite a while before you respond again.

'But you don't work like that'

you tell him back.

'And truth be told, I should maybe work on my fear anyways.'

you write.

'Would you like me to help?'

he sends without thinking. And before he can even take back his words, you've replied already.

'no one can really help me with that..'

you text him, before another one is received quickly after.

'but judging from the way you write, you might be my best bet'

'what do I write like?'

he asks with a questioning emoji to lift the mood, and you laugh on the other end in your apartment, unbeknownst to him.

'like a guy I could trust.'

you text him back.

Unaware of what those simple written words mean to him.

[lewkwoodnco]

and I hope it gets to you on some Pacific wind - Lockwood x Reader

will you love me like you loved me in the January rain? will you love me like you loved me and I'll never ask for more.

and I never minded being on my own, then something broke in me and I wanted to go home to be where you are but even closer to you, you seem so very far and now I'm reaching out with every note I sing and I hope it gets to you on some Pacific wind wraps itself around you and whispers in your ear tells you that I miss you and I wish that you were here

I didn't choose this town. I dream of getting out. There's just one who could make me stay...all my days.

MASTERLIST | TAGLIST part 1: I Can See You

a/n: WOOOO almost a month since my last fic (tl;dr got terribly sick, got my a level results, scholarship apps, trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life until I remembered, oh, right, I hate doing that, so now its back to fic writing) anywaysss watched miss peregrines home for peculiar children while i was sick and omg. the end credits song??? deCEASED. anyways heres a fic inspired by that song which you should definitely listen to and i definitely wont cry if you dont cbnjvfkjva bye going to get chocolate cakee

warnings/tropes: reader (unexpectedly) missing lockwood desperately after moving away, pining for someone w every fiber of your being, handling grief (NO major character death tho), angst, no happy ending :/// but some snippets of humour!

word count: 6.3k! (my longest fic yet!)

"You won't believe what they're doing at Fittes."

 She slid into a seat at Portland Row's kitchen table, oblivious to the fact that she had just stolen George's seat. George glared at Lockwood for a minute, who looked appropriately sympathetic yet slightly distracted, before picking another seat.

"Hi Y/N, how nice to see you. Again. For the third time this week. Please, make yourself at home."

"Oh, Georgie, you're so sweet." She was too distraught to pick up on George's sarcastic tone or his eye roll, though Lockwood spared him an apologetic glance. She slammed a letter onto the table, upsetting the salt and pepper shakers, which Lockwood started curiously scanning. "Unlike my daft supervisors."

There was always a flurry of activity whenever she visited Portland Row. She somehow always had so much to say, and she had to say it within the first five minutes of her being there. That usually meant Portland Row's own activities would come to a brief halt, but her news was more often than not too entertaining to incite many grievances from the inhabitants.

After their joint case involving Winkman, Lucy and George had felt the air shift between them, in a way they couldn't quite put their finger on. Something had obviously happened, especially since she had started stopping by Portland Row. They'd exchange a few obligatory insults, share the highlights of their week, and somehow not bite each other's faces off. Over time, the insults faded into the background, but they still threw in the occasional jab when things started seeming too friendly. Why they were still pretending to get into tiffs when Lockwood had slipped her a spare key was completely lost on George and Lucy. 

One unfortunate consequence was they became stuck in this weird limbo. Neither friends nor enemies, but something more rather than in between. And yet, some part of them always hesitated, and so they remained as the two singular, lonely entities they had always been. That wasn't to say they didn't have it in their hearts to feel appropriately outraged for the other when the circumstances called for it.

"Layoffs?”

"Layoffs!"

"What the hell are they laying you off for?"

"Exactly! Never mind that my team has the lowest mortality rate, or that we've never caused destruction worth any more than 500 pounds - no offence, Lockwood."

"Er, yes. At least they're giving you a decent severance package."

Apparently, that wasn't the right thing to say, and this time the egg cups went down as well.

"Overrated ass agency with fuck ass headquarters in the middle of London that I never wanted to spend the rest of my career at anyway, fuck Fittes bitch fucking Rotwell's wannabe-“

"What about Kipps?"

Her face twisted and the others braced for impact a third time. "If they don't put his head on the chopping block, I will-"

After a few cups of tea and a few more rounds of nonsensically excessive swearing, she had finally gotten her disappointment under control.

"Maybe a little rapier practice will take your mind off things?"

She pulled a face. "But my shoulder's so tired."

"Your shoulder's been tired for three weeks now. If your break goes on any longer you'll forget everything I've taught you about grips."

"Aw. Oh no."

"Yes, yes, you're very funny."

"What a tragedy."

"You could at least try to pretend like you care."

"I care! I so care. Of course I care. I've got the hottest instructor this side of the Thames."

"Only on this side of the Thames?"

"Yeah, 'cause he's also a dork ass loser who wears confetti-coloured socks."

Still, she joined him in the basement for a little bit of practice, just to refresh her memory. After that, they tried to venture into some basic lunges, which was where things started going downhill again.

"It's no use." She drove her rapier into the stand and started pulling her wrist brace off, despite Lockwood's deflating encouragement. She sat propped up against the wall, frustratedly combing through her sticky hair. "I'm hopeless at this. Maybe Fittes did know what they were doing when they laid me off."

Lockwood sighed. He put away his own rapier and joined her on the floor. "You're not the only employee they've dismissed. You just got...unlucky."

"Now I feel worse."

"My point is, things will start looking up once you move on." He fiddled with her wrist brace. hesitating. "You do know what to do next, don't you?"

She sighed. "I'll start sending out applications tomorrow. There's this agency in Canterbury I've worked with before. Maybe they'll consider having me full-time."

If she notices Lockwood being mildly taken aback, she doesn't remark on it. He manages some strangled response of approval, and their rapier practice session ends there. It's too late for her to return home by then, so they wash up and get ready for bed. It's clear the day has taken a sizeable chunk out of her when she almost immediately falls half-asleep. Lockwood worries over their conversation in the basement. He glances at her relaxed face. Yeah, she was probably still awake.

"Y/N. Y/N."

"Mm."

"You awake?"

"Mhm."

"I just wanted to tell you that...I was perfectly serious that time. When I said you could come work for me. In case you were wondering. Y/N?"

She doesn't respond, and after a few minutes, her breathing evens out again. He isn't sure if she's heard her, and is even less sure why she's doing everything in her power to stay away from Lockwood & Co.

One cold, January morning, she had been at the Archives with Lockwood & Co. where they were doing some research on their latest joint case. By the time that January morning had turned into a chilly January afternoon, George was telling Lockwood off for leaving one of the maps behind at Portland Row. Naturally, Lockwood was sent to fetch the missing materials, who, not-so-naturally, enlisted her help. 

As reluctant as she may have appeared to join Lockwood on this errand, she rested her buzzing head against the soothing, cold glass of the cab gratefully. She had been a little distracted all morning; working at a slower pace, fiddling with the large volumes disinterestedly, staring off into space. She was simultaneously irritated and relieved that Lockwood had noticed. She stared out at the foggy streets of London with her own foggy eyes, trying to make sense of the day.

She had decided to wait on their front porch while Lockwood nipped in to get the papers. While waiting, a sharp rap on their tin awning startled her. Peering up at the sky, she watched the first raindrops of that January shower land in Portland Row's garden. Soon enough, it started to pour generously. The delicate, almost curious winter daffodils drooped their heads under the violent force that was the rain coming down in sheets. In the grey of the clouds and the streets, their yellow petals made her dream of something half-happy.

Tentatively, she walked down the path and stepped into the garden. And then another step. And then another. She was frolicking in the rain for the first time in her life, and there was no one around to stop her.

She felt the rain pause, and turned to see Lockwood holding an umbrella over the two of them. She wrapped her fingers around his on the handle and, with a bit of difficulty, closed the umbrella over their heads. It was only a matter of seconds before the heavy raindrops started weighing his coat down and flattening his otherwise perfectly coiffed hair. She watched the hues of curiosity and amusement shift in his eyes, all of them tinged with the mauve of love. She watched him love her wholly, unabashedly, asking for nothing.

She felt sorry for ruining Lockwood's nice clothes only for a moment, before throwing her arms around his neck, clutching him a little stronger than what was strictly necessary. Papers forgotten, rain soaken, daffodils smitten…she never wanted it to end.

And that was when her life started to fall apart. Being laid off by Fittes had drastically changed their dynamic, and hardly for the better. It was no longer banter from one agent to another - it was one agent and the bad habit he had picked up over the months, one he didn't seem too keen on kicking anytime soon. She didn't ask to stay, and he didn't ask her to leave. And so she spent the rest of her days of unemployment at Portland Row, helping out however she could, filling out and mailing her applications.

Which brought her to her next problem - letters of recommendation.

She was sitting at the kitchen table, reading through the advertisements in the newspaper while nervously shredding its bottom corner. She didn't even look up when Lockwood placed her mug of tea in front of her. He shifted it right on top of the ad she was picking apart.

"Oh. Thanks."

"How's the job search going?"

"Not good." She sighed. "A lot of them require a letter of recommendation."

He slid into the seat next to hers, resting his chin on the back of the chair. "I'll write you a letter of recommendation."

"From my previous employer."

"So? Go over to Fittes and ask for one."

"I don't know," she said, disintegrating the final scraps of newspaper. "Seems a little awkward to go back there after they laid me off."

Lockwood took a look at his watch. "I've got a client meeting at 2, so we should leave after breakfast."

He was already climbing out of his chair and talking to George about the stove misbehaving again by the time her brain caught up. "Hang on, we?" 

Lockwood seemed to very conveniently not hear her. "Y/N, if you're not going to drink your tea, we should leave now."

She crammed the last of her toast into her mouth while shrugging her coat on, and joined him outside where he was counting out some coins in his hand.

"Should be just enough for the two of us."

"Just enough for what?"

"The bus. Lovely day, isn't it?"

The trip to Fittes was one of the worst she'd had in her life. She almost felt ashamed for getting laid off and was driving herself crazy obsessing over it. Halfway through she felt a warmth settle over her hand, and glanced down to see Lockwood's palm covering her own. He was looking out the window as if nothing had even happened, and she was looking at him. She couldn't quite tear her eyes away from the sight.

When they reached, she went up to the customer service counter while Lockwood hung back. He looked around the first-floor lobby languidly, watching everyone hurry about their da- hang on, was that Barnes coming out of a conference room? 

Lockwood smiled at him while Barnes averted his gaze and started walking out a little faster. Yes, that was most definitely Barnes. He started walking towards him and was just about to call out when he was interrupted by a slightly heated voice coming from the customer service counter.

"What do you mean you don't offer letters of recommendation?!"

A few days after they were almost-but-not-really kicked out of the Fittes headquarters, she and Lockwood were in the library reshelving some books a little before lunchtime. George and Lucy were in the kitchen, so for a while all that could be heard was the smooth sounds of books being pulled off and being put onto the shelves. Lockwood glanced at her and cleared his throat, forcefully injecting a certain nonchalance into his voice.

"I was talking to Barnes the other day."

"Hmm?"

"I think I managed to convince him that we're a big enough agency now to need health insurance."

"Health insurance? Well, don't tell George, or he'll fling himself off the roof at the first chance."

Lockwood stifled a laugh, turning it into a cough though his voice was still comically strained. "Don't go giving him any ideas, now." 

They continued rearranging the books in silence until he steeled himself enough to pick up the conversation again.

"So, what I wanted to say was...if you wanted to join Lockwood & Co... you wouldn't have to worry about your mother. Not anymore."

She paused her shelving and frowned at him. "Why do you want me to join Lockwood & Co. so badly?"

"I think you'd be...a valuable member of our team."

So close, yet so far from the few words she wanted to hear. Please join us, Y/N. Forget about all these other agencies. I'd miss you more than I could bear if you left. Go on. Say it.

"Is that all?"

"I...I suppose."

She turned back to their task, disappointed. "I've been wanting to leave London for a while now. To get out, explore...see what's out there."

He stilled for a moment, before bowing his head regretfully. "I see."

 Ask me to stay. Please.

They were sitting cross-legged in the garden on Lockwood's coat, the winter daffodils now resting their tired heads on their knees. She squinted up at the sky, now that the rain had come down to a light drizzle.

"My mum never let me go out in the rain." She smiled bitterly at him. "The rest of my friends would go out into the street in their...raincoats...wellingtons...and I'd watch them from the kitchen window. She always said I'd fall sick. And I'd always think...how terrible would it really be if I did?" 

She stared at the ground and tried very hard not to cry. "I was a kid. I just...I just wanted a bit of fun." She pressed a shaky hand to her eyes, then dragged it up to her forehead. "And now, all I want..." 

The silence filled in for the words she didn't say.

"I never thought I'd miss that."

She glanced at his face anxiously, trying to gauge his reaction. In a way, she mused, Lockwood, and whatever this was, was not all that dissimilar from the rain. It was some wish for a sickness for a fleeting moment of peace. A fleeting moment of being wanted.

He blinked away the raindrops weighing on his eyelashes. "You won't have to. She'll be alright."

"How do you know?"

He stared at a limp daffodil, whose head was being cradled by the bend of his knee, and sighed. "I don't. But some things you just have to...believe."

"I'm sick of believing."

"Then I'll believe for you."

She never knew what it was like to have someone hold onto faith when she couldn't. To have someone hold her up when her knees were buckling under her, to do what she wasn't strong enough to do herself. She cleared her throat, suddenly embarrassed. 

"You don't have to do that."

"Someone's got to do it. I'll do it for you."

It was around this point that Lockwood suddenly started getting a lot busier. He somehow never had the time to stay in the same room as her for longer than a minute, and any short passing conversations they shared felt stunted. Other than a cursory smile when they passed each other in the hallways, Lockwood seemed further to her than ever, with his cool demeanour that was somehow forever occupied with matters greater and more important than her.

After a few days of struggling with her applications on her own, Lucy suggested that she pay a visit to DEPRAC for a letter of recommendation. Thankfully, her request for the letter was successful, but her joy was short-lived, barely lasting the bus ride home.

She watched the hopelessly in love couples on the bus whisper to each other, hold hands or even just enjoy each other's company in silence. There was a guy with his hair styled in an unnervingly familiar way. It triggered a sick image of Lockwood sitting on this very bus, next to a girl with lazily attractive eyes and hair prettier than hers could ever be. It made her feel nauseous.

When she returned to Portland Row, she walked around the seemingly empty house, perplexed, until she finally found the three of them pouring over a large book in the library. Lockwood was fiddling with the shirt sleeves folded at his elbows and was the first to glance up as she gently pushed the door open.

"Hey," she smiled at them faintly, avoiding Lockwood's gaze, trying to keep the worry gnawing at her synapses at bay. She stepped inside, 

leaning over the huge book, tracing the letters with her eyes interestedly. 

"Is that the -" 

Lockwood slammed the book shut, cutting her off and sending Lucy into a coughing fit over the dust it released.

"Y/N! Find your way to DEPRAC alright?"

 It was a heavy book, she kept repeating to herself, of course it was going to take quite an effort to close it. However, from the way his forearms flexed aggressively as he stuffed the book back into its cloth cover, she wasn't entirely convinced.

"...yes. I took the bus."

"Lovely weather we're having, isn't it?" The three of them exchanged a look while Lockwood firmly tucked the book in. The grey skies peeking through the curtains looked hardly lovely. George finally caved, glaring at Lockwood.

"We were just finalising our plan for next week's case."

"I used to draw up mission plans for my team at Fittes. Maybe I could -"

"I think we're fine." Lockwood crossed his arms, his expression unnaturally surly and his jaw set in a way that gave her a sinking feeling. George threw the book at him, who only barely managed to catch it at the last second. 

"Told you we should have waited for her."

Unfortunately, matters refused to ease up over the next week. And so she somehow learned to live without him. One morning, she decided to get an early start to the day since she was going to be accompanying Lucy to the DEPRAC headquarters to submit some company paperwork. She paused at the foot of the stairs when she heard a bit of a ruckus in the kitchen, followed by some soft swearing. She crept towards the kitchen to see Lockwood scrambling to gather up an upturned first aid kit while a dark red patch swelled on his socks, still in the same attire as when he left for a solo case the previous evening.

He looked at her furiously, trying to hide his injured ankle behind the kitchen table. He seemed to become further incensed by her helping to set the first aid kit right. "Leave it. I can do it on my own."

"I'm only trying to help! Don't look at me like that, you got yourself hurt in the first place."

He spoke emphatically through gritted teeth. "I don't need your help."

"Lockwood, your sock is nearly soaked through with blood. So shut up."

Maybe the blood loss was starting to catch up to him, but for once, Lockwood did as he was told. He certainly wasn't happy about it, but he allowed her to peel back his sock and wince at the sight of the wound. As she cleaned and dressed the injury, she couldn't help but be reminded of old times when they would snap at each other, her more than him, whenever they were within ten feet of the other. It was almost nostalgic but slightly worrying to be back to square one.

When he could hold himself back no longer, he pried the bandage roll out of her hands with an unexpected gentleness, shakily winding it messily around his ankle. When he was done, she put it away with the first aid kit, and when she returned, his nose was buried in the day's paper, once again as distant as an island.

Soon after that, George and Lucy joined them for breakfast, and George almost immediately picked up on 

"Lucy, George won't leave me alone!"

"Lockwood's a pent-up git that never says what he feels!"

Lucy gave them a sidelong glance. "...right. Y/N, ready to -?"

Eyes watering, she chugged the last of her tea and clambered out of her chair, but Lockwood beat her to it. He folded the newspaper sharply, and straightened from his seat, albeit a tad unsteadily.

"No need. I'll come with you, Luce." She and Lucy exchanged a glance, and she slowly sunk back down into her seat. Lucy took in the ectoplasm on his trainers, his slightly charred shirt and the purple under his eyes.

"Are you sure? You look a little...tired."

"I've been out all night. One more trip isn't going to kill me." He patted Lucy firmly on the shoulder, his grip looking a little painful as he swayed imperceptibly, voice trailing off as he started shuffling towards the door.

His limp was unmistakable now, but the three of them knew better than to question him when he was in a mood like this, with his uneven voice and rough words dangerously close to becoming slurred. "Come now," he was saying, "let's not bother Y/N with Lockwood & Co. matters." His shifty eyes finally settled on her for the first time that morning, but she didn't like the brooding spite behind them. "Not when she has all these important applications to fill out."

The silence that followed prickled uncomfortably. Lucy scoffed and stepped out, Lockwood following her determinedly. There was some muffled argument in the hallway, then the sound of the front door opening and closing, and then silence once more. She stared at the dregs of her tea stonily, hating the way her face burned with shame. When she finally looked up, George had left, but there was a sympathy jammy dodger within reach.

It was getting dangerously close to half an hour in the rain, yet still the heavens beat down on them ruthlessly. They had retired to the front steps just outside the awning, now almost completely drenched. She shuffled her feet nervously, trying to scrounge up some warmth, while the rain flowed down Lockwood's nose freely. He was staring at the rich dark earth at his feet, like he had forgotten where he was, his coat long forgotten. She stood up and jabbed him between the shoulder blades sharply, making him snap his head up.

"It's getting cold. I'm going inside." Lockwood blinked, raindrops decorating an eyelash or two, and nodded after a moment. She sighed impatiently.

"Don't you want to come inside too?"

"...I'm not cold."

"No, but you'll fall sick if you stay out any longer."

He rubbed his face wearily, his back muscles shifting mechanically under his translucent shirt. "I'll be alright."

She bristled instinctively. The raindrops somehow got even louder as they pelted the tin awning. "I'm serious, Lockwood."

"So am I."

"Then come inside before you catch something awful."

"I'll come inside when I want to."

The torrential downpour continued unabated, viciously attacking their home's exterior. The rapping of the raindrops against the tin rung in her ears like anger.

"Why must you be so stubborn?"

He finally looked up to meet her eyes, his own filled with a despair she had rarely seen. "I want to be alone."

It was the night of the big case that Lockwood & Co. had been preparing for for a week now, but two of its three members had come down with the most awful stomach bug she had seen. Apparently, there was something off with Arif's doughnuts that day, and now Lucy and George were down with food poisoning. She was in her room, listening to Lockwood wear down the floorboards outside her room with all his pacing. Finally, he stopped in front of her door, and after a moment, gave a short knock.

"Come in."

He opened the door to reveal a fully decked-out Lockwood extensively decorated with flares and lavender. She raised her eyebrows.

"Wow. That is...wow."

"George and Lucy are down with food poisoning," he began impatiently, "and I could really use an extra pair of eyes." He softened his stance at the critical look in her eye, taking on a more apologetic demeanour. "...please."

"But I don't even know how to use a rapier."

"Not much room for one, anyway. It's a two-room cottage."

She toyed with the idea of saying no. The idea of watching the hope in his eyes flicker out, of watching him go do the job...alone...without anyone's help...without anyone to help him if he got injured, or worse-

"Fine. I'll meet you downstairs in two minutes."

The cab was waiting for them by the time she was hurrying down the stairs, and she flipped through the summarised research report on the way there. She winced at the circled deduction that the Visitor was likely a Fetch, which Lockwood picked up on.

"Is something wrong?"

"...no." With some difficulty, she tore her eyes away from the report and closed the file. In all her years of experience, Fetches were the one Visitor that she still struggled with. It didn't help that her encounters with them had been few and far between. She glanced at Lockwood, who was staring out the window coolly as if barely nonplussed by the anticipation of coming face-to-face with one of the most dangerous Visitor types.

The taxi driver was quite a bit intimidated by Lockwood's superfluous attire, and so refused to go any further than the foot of the hill at the top of which the cottage was located. As they lugged their equipment up the hill, she felt her frustration towards Lockwood swell and swell until it finally reached a breaking point. She dropped the duffel bag she was carrying with a clatter, making Lockwood stop and turn around to face her.

"What's wrong?"

"Why have you been so off lately?"

His features hardened and his jaw set like it had so many times before. "It's nothing."

"It's not nothing. Obviously."

He stared at her hard, before dropping his own duffel bag. The tension over the past two weeks had clearly come to a head and it was happening right there on the hill in near-darkness. "I thought we were a team."

"We are."

"Well, it sure as hell doesn't feel like it."

"I just want to be independent."

"No, you don’t. You want to be alone."

“That's not true!” She hesitated. "That's not fair." At that moment, she felt so terribly small and insignificant, in a way she hadn't felt since having a particularly cruel supervisor in her first year of being an agent. Her eyes prickled unpleasantly, and she was suddenly engulfed with memories about that January shower. Oh, no, she thought. He was never going to hold her like that again. 

She shook her head as if trying to shake some sense into herself. "I don't...I don't want to be a burden. I can do this on my own."

"You want to do this on your own."

"How could you possibly think that?"

“All I see is someone too scared to stick their neck out for something real for once in their life."

“What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't think you know what you're running from!"

She looked around in despair as if searching for some way to make him understand. "I'm not running from anything."

He stepped closer to her, and it was all she could manage to not burst into tears with his face twisted something ugly with hurt.

"You're running from me."

I'm not, she wants to say, but the words get caught in her throat. The silence rings out harshly between the two of them until Lockwood picks up his bag and resumes the trek uphill. After a moment or two, she follows him.

When they reach inside, they go through the motions of setting up their chains and investigating the areas of the Visitor's appearance, the way they've done hundreds of times before. Eventually, they split up and pace their corresponding rooms, the malaise growing stronger in the air by the minute.

After an hour or so, she felt it. A prickling in the hairs at the back of her neck. Waves of nausea washed over her and she felt paralysed by fear. She knew that when she turned, she'd be faced with something too terrible to comprehend. But she's too weak to brave seeing something so terrible, and so she doesn't turn. At that moment, she unravelled, and covered her eyes with her hands like a child, gasping with sobs that she struggled to suppress.

Suddenly, the cold breathing down her neck was replaced by intense heat as the hiss of a flare eating through a Visitor filled her ears. She felt rough hands desperately clutching her wrists and peeked through her fingers to meet Lockwood's panic-stricken gaze. Panic-stricken over her. His eyes shifted to the Visitor behind her and lobbed another flare at it in the nick of time. 

She started creeping along the walls, running her hands over every nook and cranny until she came across a picture frame radiating strong feelings of anxiety. She scrambled for the iron still folded in her pocket and threw it over the frame. The Visitor instantly evaporated, leaving Lockwood staring at the corner it had just been occupying with a haunted look in his eyes. When he had regained proper control of his senses, he turned to her.

"I didn't know-"

"I thought I'd be able to manage it, okay?" She avoided his gaze. "I'm sorry. Can we just go h- go back now?"

The ride back was somehow even quieter than the ride there, both of them burdened by thoughts that would clearly never see the light of day. He paused at the hat stand near the front door while she shrugged her coat off.

"Y/N-"

"I think I'll go to bed now. Goodnight, Lockwood."

She cut past him brusquely, heading straight for her room, though it would be many hours before the buzzing in her head quieted enough for her to fall asleep. As she got undressed, her mind drifted back to when Lockwood was standing right in front of her, holding her wrists with a long-forgotten gentleness, and the close shave with the Fetch. Too close of a shave. Tonight could never happen again. She had to make sure of it.

Over the next few days, their relationship returned to being suspiciously amicable. Perhaps it wasn't as glaringly obvious to the others with the distraction of their stomach bug, but George's squint at her when she handed him a glass of water was enough to see that he was onto them.

She had been in the basement polishing their iron chains when Lockwood knocked on the door. She put the chains down for a moment as he pulled out a minimalistic envelope.

"This just came for you in the mail."

It had the address of one of the agencies she had applied to written on it. She nervously ripped it open and started scanning the contents before she remembered where she was. She looked at Lockwood, who had a cool expression of polite curiosity.

"So? Did you get it?"

"They want me to start next week." Lockwood's lips curved into a half-smile, and it was the first smile he'd given her in weeks that reached his eyes.

"That's...that's amazing. You deserve it. That is, if you're going to accept it."

"It's a rather decent offer. Think it would be quite a shame to pass it up. Don't you?"

He gave a slight pause. "Of course. Yes."

"...but?"

He shook his head and gave a short laugh. "It's...it's silly." He was staring at a patch of grease on the floor which he was very focused on rubbing out with his shoe. "I've known you for...for as long as Lockwood & Co.'s been around." He looked up from the floor to meet her gaze, his eyes open and honest. 

"I don't know if I can do this without you."

She looks into his flighty brown eyes and drinks in as much as she can of him. Next week, she'll be in a different town, at a new job, meeting new people until he becomes just a distant memory, some dream she had once upon a time, and she'd be freed from her shackles of longing. But now, in his eyes she sees the two of them spinning round and round, forever together in a January shower in some universe.

"I should start packing."

Her goodbyes were fairly uneventful. They exchanged promises to write, to keep in touch. Lucy and George waved her off from their front door. Lockwood didn't come down from his room. Now she was in her new home, miles away from any feelings that may have tethered her from Portland Row, and all that was left to do was sit and wait and try to forget.

Except. Except.

Here she was, lying on her bed with an all too familiar weight on her chest. Those feelings she had promised to bury with the winter daffodils were here - travelled miles to plague her mind with restless thoughts of which nothing could ever come. How was it that all this distance only made her crave Lockwood even more? He stained her mind and hung from her lips like a broken promise, like an unheard prayer. It was there when she woke up, it was there when she went to sleep, it laid next to her and embraced her like a lover till she couldn't breathe.

Three months later, she still hasn't moved on and has almost entirely given up on any hope for sleep. She replays her memories of him like a tired VCR, and every night the image grows fainter and fainter. What, exactly, did his voice sound like? Did he have dimples? He had a scar on his collarbone, she was fairly sure. But how did he get it? She waits for the sky to light up for those few short hours after her work for the day, but be it day or night, the sadness remains.

For years she had been so strong, so tough, so ready to do anything and to do it alone. Too independent to even work properly with his agency. But after meeting Lockwood, it all felt like a farce, like she had just been pretending and hoping and closing her eyes through as many horrors as she could handle until she finally reached her breaking point. Something had snapped in her soul - some ill-gotten desire to fasten herself to him from the moment she had kissed him after Winkman's. To have him be her home.

Even so, she still had a job to do, so she carried these feelings around with her. There was this one particular case where her team was tasked by the city council to clear out an old, abandoned mansion of any Visitors. She had been creeping through the third floor when she saw him standing there, in the shard of moonlight peeking through the rafters. Lockwood was standing mere feet in front of her, sleeves rolled up to his elbows without his coat, whole and uninjured.

"Lockwood!" She closed the distance between them. "What are you doing here?"

He turned to face her, smiling mildly as if she had done nothing more than greet her. Y/N, he was saying. His voice reverberated differently than what she was used to, but she put it down to the weird acoustics of the mansion. 

Why did you leave me?

"...what?"

Why did you go away? You've made me sick with worry.

"I...I have?"

Day in, day out, you're all I think about.

"No...no, that can't be right. That's me, not you."

Are you sure? Think harder. What do you remember about me?

"I don't know, I don't know. Why are you doing this, Lockwood?" Something was very, very wrong. What was he of all people doing here, and why weren't his lips moving when he talked?

How can you be so in love with me if you can't even remember me?

I do! I do remember you! Please don't say I don't.

Why'd you leave me, Y/N?

"Wha...what? I didn't - no - I didn't mean to leave you-"

I wanted you to stay.

"Then you should have TOLD ME!"

But I did tell you.

It still hadn't fully clicked in her brain, but she gleaned enough to tell that this wasn't Lockwood. Some obscene bastardisation of him, perhaps, but nothing of any real substance. She walked back a few steps, keeping her eyes trained on him, and against her better judgement threw a flare at him. It hit the centre of his chest, which began to fizzle up and corrode away at the figment until there was nothing left but the dying embers reflected in her misty eyes. He had looked...so solid. So real. Real enough for her to believe. Oh god, how badly she wanted to believe.

That night, she had barely pulled off much of her excess gear before slumping into bed, which she did not leave for the next three days. Obviously, that hadn't been Lockwood, it was a Fetch. But it only had her memories to work off of. What was it that had happened that made her feel like he had told her to stay? She drove herself mad picking apart every interaction she had had with him since she was 13. What did she miss? Where was the mistake?

Maybe she was just hoping for a mistake.

I miss you. I wish you were here - not miles away in London, here, beside me. I wish it was you lodged in my chest instead of this acrid longing. I'm the one who can't do this without you. Please come back to me. I'm so tired of being strong. Please come save me. I need you here. I wish you were here. I wish you were here. I wish you were here.

TAGLIST: @mitskiswift99 @dangelnleif @elenianag080 @snoopyluver20 @ell0ra-br3kk3r @avdiobliss @ahead-fullofdreams @neewtmas @mischivana @houseoftwistedspirits

P.S. until I changed my mind at the very last minute this WAS going to have a happy ending I wrote it out and everything but then deleted and Grammarly won't let me ctrl z my way out of this :(((

[saltpepperbeard]

What are your top 5 Ed x Stede moments? 😊 I’m curiously asking several blogs to see how many of us share favorites!

MAN, anon! I tried to give this one some thought to see if the choosing would get any easier/become any clearer. Spoiler alert: IT DID NOT HSDLKS I AM STILL JUST AS TORN AS I WAS BEFORE. But let me see if I can at least ~*~attempt this~*~. My first three were easy but then the LAST TWO HAD ME PACING SHDLKS:

So okay, obviously have to put their first kiss in the ranking because it's so iconic and it's the thing that got me into the show in the first place! Like, literally the FIRST scene I laid eyes upon. And it had me crying full blown tears at work because I was just so floored that we weren't queer baited and that it was so sweet and tentative and cautious and just,,, The rest was history of course lol!

Like really, the Power it has. Didn't even know the characters or the story that much at all, and was already crying LMAO.

Then of course I have to put the second beach kiss(es) because good god lol GOOD GOD!!! I think I adore it so so much mainly because Ed and Stede are finally on the same page. No more doubts, no more worries, no more anxieties, no more questioning if they have the same feelings or are going too slow/fast. Just them and their strong, solid love--their good bones.

Not to mention Ed dropping the double "I love you" ??? I cannot even begin to express how thankful I am that we heard a legitimate "I love you." And Ed being the one to say it after all the hurt, all the pain in feeling unlovable, all the fear that he'd die completely alone, all the worry that his strong feelings were too much...Man. MAN.

And thennnnn the reunion scene because yeah. Yeah. I've said this before and I'll say it again: watching this at like 4:30am for the first time almost gave me an out of body experience HSLDSHS. Like, I think there's just something about the fact that we were all going through so many different iterations of possible reunions during the s1-s2 gap. We envisioned angsty, silly, romantic, and everything in between.

But this lol THIS,,,

I feel like it just surpassed expectations in such a beautiful, fantastical way. Like genuinely, I never EVER anticipated Ed being stuck in purgatory about to die and Stede coming to him as a mermaid because the real Stede is sitting with his body begging him not to succumb.

Also, Stede begging and screaming at Ed not to die/to wake up/to come back to him always makes me feel some sort of way. Something something he's normally so silly and so theatrical but he's so choked up and so serious in that moment that it PUNCHES ME IN THE KIDNEYS. Like it really just goes to show how utterly desperate he is. And that last, whispered, strained, "come back to me..." ??? Homie............

ALSO also, obligatory "This Woman's Work" mention because I knew that song and nothing else for like two months straight HSKLDS. Or two months gay, rather.

...

see this is where i start Dying because i'm being pulled in so many different directions lol DO I GO FOR ROMANTIC, OR SILLY, OR EARNEST, OR,,, SKLDJHLDJKDKDA

Okay okay I think I'm going to have to go earnest because I adore that they actually talked things through together. FLEETING LMAO, BUT STILL GLAD THEY DID, EVEN IF IT WAS JUST FOR A BIT. I just love that they actually expressed some frustrations, that Stede actually talked about his fears/his panic, that Ed set a boundary, and that Stede respected it. And then Stede gently navigated around and expressed his love in different ways and it folded Ed in half almost immediately hsdkljs YOU LOVE TO SEE IT.

But yeah no--if me rolling around Atticus' fics and me writing my own stories is any indication, I really REALLY LIKE IT WHEN THESE TWO ACTUALLY TALK LMAO. BECAUSE THEY HAVE SO SO MUCH BOTTLED UP, BOTH INDIVIDUALLY AND AS A COUPLE, SO IT'S JUST HSLDKS TALK IT THROUGH AS A CREW OF TWO MY BELOVED!!!

......

oh god oh god what do i pick for the last one lol WHAT DO I PICK FOR THE LAST ONE,,,

mmmMMmmmMMMM,,,,,,

SUCCUMBED TO MORE TALKING IT THROUGH LMAO.

I love so many of their other moments, and honestly, so many things could have made this list. But the bathtub scene...man. Taika saying it's more vulnerable and even more romantic than their first kiss is shdljks yeah. YEAH. LIKE HE'S COOKING A BIT WITH THAT BECAUSE IT'S JUST,,,

I feel like it's such a pivotal and important step in their relationship. Ed has literally never told that secret to anyone else, but he entrusted it with Stede. He feels safe enough around Stede to expose the darkest parts of his past, and he's entirely right to do so, because Stede doesn't view him any differently at all. Stede is right there, wanting to be his friend--loving him still.

And I think it's also good for Stede because of that vulnerability. He gets to see how much Ed trusts him and feels safe around him. He's getting to see Ed and Ed alone, which can't be said for so many other people.

It's just the two of them in that moment and I adore it so much.

...I just adore THEM so much, anon, so thank you for spreading this sweet little ask around! It was super fun to consider, aLBEIT SLIGHTLY RGGHGHGHH INDUCING BECAUSE I COULD INCLUDE SO MUCH LMAO. But thank you kindly! <3

Also, for the record, if I had to rank them from most favorite to still favorite but not AS favorite, I'd go Double Beach Kiss, Reunion, First Kiss, Love Everything About You, and Bathtub.

[jrob64]

Silly Songs With Killian - a CS Modern AU One-shot

You can blame @sotangledupinit for this silly, but sweet, little story! She posted a prompt on Discord which caused my muse to jump to attention, and I wrote it in two days. If you're not familiar with the Veggie Tales videos, you'll still be able to enjoy this, but do yourself a favor and check out the songs on Spotify here. You don't have to be a kid to enjoy them and I guarantee they'll make you laugh!

Special thanks to Kit for making young Henry look even younger for the pic set, Mary for being my beta, and Krystal for being a second set of eyes for the Silly Songs lyrics and also for the pic set I created. It pays to have wonderful fandom friends!

Summary: After a frustrating and exhausting day, Emma Cassidy is relieved when her little boy, Henry, is entertained by a gorgeous musician at a restaurant, giving her a chance to sit back, relax, and enjoy the music (and the view!) It gets even better when the singer, Killian, sings some of Henry’s favorite Silly Songs from his favorite videos, Veggie Tales. 

Rating: T

Words: 3946

Also posted to Ao3 and ffn

*********

It’s been one hell of a day. It wasn’t supposed to be this exhausting, but of course my ex, Neal, had to complicate things.

I was looking forward to going wedding dress shopping with my future sister-in-law Mary Margaret and her other bridesmaids, sipping champagne and giving my input on each of the possibilities. It was going to be so much fun.

And then...remember the saying that was popular many years ago - shit happens? Well, Neal can be used interchangeably with shit - they’re one and the same.

It was his scheduled weekend with our three-year-old, Henry, which was one reason why Mary Margaret chose this day. Then on Friday, almost an hour after Neal was supposed to pick Henry up at my apartment, he sent me a text: Something came up. Can’t make it this weekend. Tell Henry I’m sorry.

Apparently he turned off his phone after sending it, because he didn’t answer any of my increasingly volatile texts - eighteen of them, to be exact - or phone calls. I had to sit Henry in front of the television so I could go into my bedroom to leave some choice words on Neal’s voicemail.

Fortunately (or unfortunately for my sweet little boy) Henry is used to being let down by his father. In the eighteen months since we called it quits, Neal has skipped out on more weekend visits than he’s kept. I guess being a lying piece of shit takes up way too much of his time and he can’t spare any for his son.

Also unfortunately, all of the people who usually babysit for Henry were unable to watch him. Most of them were included in the shopping trip, my brother David was busy because he was painting the living room of the house he and his fiancée just bought, and Ruby’s Granny was off bowhunting with her new beau. (Bowhunting with her beau has been a running joke ever since she left a week ago.)

So instead of enjoying a carefree day of shopping with Mary Margaret, Belle, Ruby and Elsa, I had to keep an active, inquisitive toddler entertained in one bridal shop after another. We were all relieved when he finally fell asleep in the third shop, until the manager woke him up by screeching about how he was going to drool on the green velvet upholstery. That cost her any business she might have had from us (though in all honesty, her gowns were all hideous and looked like something only the Wicked Witch of the West might wear.)

Eventually, Mary Margaret said ‘yes to the dress’ in the fifth shop late in the afternoon, then we all decided to get an early dinner at a nearby restaurant that serves kids’ meals and has outdoor seating. If Henry has to spend one more minute inside today, I think he might have a complete meltdown.

After placing my order and getting Henry situated with the provided coloring sheet and obligatory four crayons, I hear someone speaking into a microphone and look over to see a guy standing on a small stage with a guitar. A very, VERY attractive guy.

“Good evening, everyone,” he says, and my jaw drops at the sound of his British accent. “My name is Killian and I hope you enjoy the music tonight. I do take requests. Feel free to sing along or dance in this nice, open area in front of me.”

“Oh, wow!” Belle gasps. “He’s very handsome, isn’t he, Emma?”

My jaw snaps shut and I turn to look at her. Seeing her sly smile, I teasingly say, “Why are you asking me? We all have eyes, you know.”

“Yes, but we all have significant others, too,” Ruby adds, which is completely unnecessary but, sadly, also completely true.

While my self pity begins to set in, the guy - Killian - strums his guitar and launches into the Eagles classic “Take it Easy”. Henry, who by this point has scribbled all over the coloring sheet, somehow managed to break his crayon into at least four pieces and, judging by the color of his teeth, took a bite of it as well, looks up with bright eyes. Since I allowed him to kneel on a chair instead of trying to strap him into a booster seat, he takes advantage of it and hops down.

Before I can chase after him, he makes a beeline for the open space in front of the admittedly gorgeous singer and begins jumping around in what passes for a three-year-old’s version of dancing. I sigh and start to get up, but Mary Margaret stops me with a hand on my arm. “Let him go. He’s been very good all day and deserves to burn off some energy. Besides, he’s only a few feet away and we can see him clearly from here.”

It doesn’t take much convincing for me to heed her advice. If someone else can entertain Henry for a while, I’m not going to complain.

When the song comes to an end, Killian acknowledges the smattering of applause and plays the extremely recognizable first chords of “All Right Now”. Henry doesn’t miss a beat, throwing himself around like a rag doll while all of us at our table, as well as most of the other diners, laugh delightedly at his exuberance.

By the time Killian is in the middle of his third song, “Old Time Rock and Roll”, our food arrives and I face the dreaded task of dragging my son back to the table to eat. I nibble at my fish and chips until the song ends, then dash to the makeshift dance floor to cajole Henry. When he shows the expected resistance, Killian chuckles and helpfully says, “Go with your mum, lad. I’ll play a slow song that’s not as much fun for dancing.”

True to his word, he croons the song “Everything I Do, I Do It For You” as Henry acquiesces and comes back to his seat to shove French fries into his mouth as fast as possible. It might not be a good song for Henry’s style of dancing, but Killian’s smooth voice singing the beautiful lyrics is sending pleasant chills down my spine.

Another song with a slow tempo follows, during which my little man polishes off his fries. But when Killian starts “Footloose”, all bets are off and Henry is back on the dance floor with a chicken nugget squeezed into both of his chubby fists.

After we finish our meals, Belle, Ruby and Elsa leave to spend the rest of the evening with their boyfriends. Mary Margaret lingers, telling me she’ll stay to keep me company, because she’d rather not have to help David clean up his painting mess. We don’t want to take up a table, so we move to some empty seats along the edge of the patio from where we can still see my little dancing king.

“You’d think his battery would run down soon,” Mary Margaret comments.

“Are you serious? That kid is like the Energizer bunny, plus he’s been cooped up in stuffy dress shops all day. My money is on the singer wearing out before Henry.”

She’s uncharacteristically quiet for several minutes. When she finally speaks, she says quietly, “He really is very handsome and seems like a nice guy.”

Her statement is out of left field and I’m confused. “Who?”

“The singer - Killian,” she clarifies.

I narrow my eyes at her. “What’s your point?”

“No point. I was just making a comment,” she shrugs, all innocence.

I don’t believe her. Mary Margaret is the queen of set-ups and wears the crown proudly. She introduced Belle to Will, Ruby to Jefferson and Elsa, well, she introduced Elsa to Victor, but that didn’t work out very well. Elsa met Graham on her own.

“I’m not looking for someone to date, Mary Margaret. I’m still dealing with my idiot ex and trying to concentrate on raising my son not to follow in his father’s footsteps.”

“I understand, but…”

And it’s at this point I resign myself to the fact she’s going to spout some argument that’s going to weaken my resolve not to date.

“If Henry had a really good male role model in his life, it would help you in raising him to be a gentleman.”

“Seems to me David does a pretty good job of that, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“I know,” she sighs, “but between working, getting the house ready and planning the wedding, his time with Henry is very limited.”

“The house will be ready before you get married and the wedding is in less than five months. After the honeymoon, he’ll have more time.”

“Oh, but then we’ll have children of our own, and you know how much time that takes.”

“Is this your way of telling me you’re pregnant, Mary Margaret?”

‘’What?” she gasps. “No! I’m just saying…”

“I know what you’re saying and I hear you. If the right guy comes along, I wouldn’t be opposed to dating him, but I’m not gonna try to force something to happen.”

“Wouldn’t it be nice to have a date for the wedding, though?” she presses.

“Henry will be my date. He’ll be very dapper in his little tux.”

“But…”

“No buts, Mary Margaret. I don’t want to be set up with someone just so I don’t look pathetic at your wedding.”

We both fall silent as we watch Henry continue to dance in front of the bemused musician. Glancing at the time on my phone, I realize he’s been at it for well over an hour and isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. It’s beginning to get dark and I know I’ll have to wrangle him into the car before too much longer for his bath and bedtime.

I feel a little sorry for Killian, though. Nobody else has taken him up on his offer to dance, despite his repeated invitations. In fact, most of the diners aren’t paying attention to him at all. I hate to take his number one fan home, especially when I’m able to sit back and relax while listening to some seriously good music.

“I’m going to take a little break and then I’ll be back,” Killian announces, lifting the guitar strap over his head.

“Well, I guess that’s my cue to take Henry home,” I say to Mary Margaret.

“I suppose so,” she agrees. “Let me say goodbye to him and then I have to be on my way, too. According to his text, David is anxious for me to see how the living room turned out.”

We both stand up and move toward the stage, but I stop in my tracks. Killian is squatting down in front of Henry, listening to him with a huge smile on his face. I don’t know what Henry is saying, and I’m not sure Killian will be able to understand it anyway. Henry has an extensive vocabulary for a three-year-old, but I listen to him with ‘mom ears’, which means I can actually decipher what he’s trying to say.

When we reach them, Killian looks up at us and whatever I was going to say flies right out of my head. From a distance, the man is handsome. Close up, he’s nothing short of breathtaking. Carefully trimmed scruff covers a jawline sharp enough to cut glass, his cheekbones would put every male model to shame, and his dark hair is swept back from his forehead with a few rogue strands hanging down enticingly. Even his slightly pointed ears are adorable.

But it’s his eyes that shut down the functioning part of my brain. To say they are blue is like saying the sun is a tad bit warm, and the way the waning light catches them makes them shine like sapphires. I’m aware that my mouth is hanging open like a fish on dry land, but I can’t seem to make it form actual words.

“Hello, Killian. We’ve been thoroughly enjoying your music tonight, even if we haven’t been showing it as much as this little guy.”

Thank God for the natural chattiness of Mary Margaret.

Killian reaches out to ruffle Henry’s sweaty hair, then stands up. “I’m very happy to hear that,” he says in that beautiful, lilting accent. “I was just telling young Henry here that I’ll play some special songs for him after the break.”

I finally find my tongue. “Oh, but I was coming to tell Henry it’s time to go home.”

My little con artist turns his baby browns on me. “Please, Mommy. I be a good boy, I pwomise.”

That’s just great. Now if I take him home, I’ll have to forfeit my Mom of the Year award.

Mary Margaret laughs. “Well, Henry and Emma may be able to stay, but I really have to go.”

Why did she emphasize my name so much? As if I don’t already know.

She hugs Henry and me, tells Killian goodbye, and winks at me as she passes by. Even without trying to set me up, she’s setting me up.

I look back at Killian, who finishes chugging a bottle of water and grins at me. Reaching out to take my hand, he shakes it and says, “It’s nice to meet you, Emma, and little Henry.”

“Nice to meet you, too, Killian. Thanks for entertaining my son tonight.”

“It’s been my pleasure. I love how uninhibited kids are, and how joyful.”

“Well, his day certainly didn’t start out joyfully at all.” I shouldn’t have said it, but I’m still boiling about what Neal did to his own son, especially when this stranger seems so happy to spend time with him.

“No?” Killian questions. “May I ask what happened?”

I glance down at Henry, not wanting to bash his no-good father in front of him. He’s happily lining up little stones he collected along the edge of the patio, oblivious to the conversation going on above him.

“He was supposed to be with his dad this weekend, but he canceled. Again. So Henry was stuck shopping for wedding dresses with us all day.”

“I see.” He ponders for a second. “Would that wedding dress be for the lovely lass who just left…or someone else?”

“Yeah, it’s for Mary Margaret. She’s engaged to my brother.”

“I’m very glad I was able to make Henry’s day better, because his dancing did the same for me.” We watch Henry play, babbling to himself. “He seems like a happy little lad,” Killian observes.

“I do my best, but as a single mom, I make a lot of mistakes.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Love. All parents make mistakes. It’s a good thing kids have perfect aunts and uncles,” he says with a smirk.

“So, are you an imperfect father or a perfect uncle?” Am I really flirting with him right now?

“I have two nieces, so that would make me the latter.”

“Do you get to see them very often?”

“Aye, they live just a few miles from me, so I spoil them as often as possible. They’re my brother Liam’s girls.”

“Doesn’t sound like you’re originally from the U.S., if you don’t mind me saying.”

He chuckles again, rubbing his finger behind his right ear. “We were born in England and lived there until I was fourteen, then my father took a job here so we moved across the pond.”

“That explains the accent.”

He nods and checks his watch, blowing out a breath. “I should probably get back to my set. Will you allow young Henry to stay for a few more songs?”

I shrug my shoulders. “Sure. What’s another fifteen minutes in the grand scheme of things?”

A genuine smile splits his face. “Excellent! I think he’ll particularly like the next three or four songs I play.” He looks around and grabs a nearby chair from an empty table, setting it down beside me. “Won’t you please have a seat, Emma?”

“Such a gentleman,” I say, sinking onto the offered chair.

“Oh, I’m always a gentleman.”

Somehow I don’t mind him flirting with me.

He steps back on the stage, slips his guitar into place, and positions himself in front of the microphone. After giving me a wink, he announces in an overly accented, squeaky voice, “And now it’s time for Silly Songs with Killian. The part of the show where Killian comes out and sings…a silly song.”

I burst out laughing at the very familiar words. Henry is addicted to Veggie Tales, the wacky shows featuring talking fruits and vegetables. I love them because they teach good moral values; he loves them because they’re hilarious. His favorite part of every video is Silly Songs with Larry the Cucumber, which we watch over and over and over again. Apparently he conveyed this obsession to Killian.

Killian closes his eyes, somberly strums his guitar, and sings, “Oh, where is my hairbrush? Oh, where is my hairbrush? Oh where, oh where, oh where, oh where, oh where, oh where, oh where, oh where, oh wherrrrrrrre…is my hairbrush?”

Henry is jumping up and down like a kangaroo on a pogo stick, shouting, “Mommy! Mommy! It’s the Lawwy song! Keeyin is singin’ the Lawwy song!”

Wiping tears of laughter from my eyes, I look around at the half-dozen people at the tables, who are looking at the musician like he’s lost his damn mind. Bunch of sticks in the mud. Lighten up.

But Killian isn’t bothered by their response, or lack thereof. He smoothly transitions to another of Henry’s favorite silly songs. “Oh, everybody’s got a water buffalo. Yours is fast, but mine is slow. Oh, where’d we get them, I don’t know. But everybody’s got a water buffalo, oooooo.”

Henry is beside himself with excitement. He’s running around in a circle, waving his arms in the air in his best impression of a rabid chimpanzee.

Killian moves on to sing a few lines of “I Love My Lips” (I can’t help thinking I’m quite fond of them, too), followed by “The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything”.

By this time, the diners have relaxed, laughing and clapping along with the crazy tunes. Meanwhile, my son has finally worn himself out, collapsing in a small heap in front of the stage, looking up at Killian adoringly.

“...and we’ve never been to Boston in the falllllll,” Killian concludes with a flourish and takes a deep, dramatic bow.

I dig into my purse and pull out a twenty dollar bill. I always try to watch my budget, but I’ll skip getting a chocolate caramel latte for a few days to compensate. It’s worth it for what Killian did for Henry tonight.

Walking up to the stage, I drop the bill into the tip jar, smiling up at the singer. He’s between songs, so I say, “Thank you so much, Killian. You’re my hero for entertaining Henry tonight. It was great and he loved it, didn’t you, kid?”

Henry jumps to his feet. “I weally did, Keeyin! I love Lawwy songs!”

“What do you tell him?” I prompt.

“Thank you, Keeyin,” he says obediently.

“You’re very welcome, lad. I play here again in three weeks. Perhaps you can stop in and see me again?” He’s talking to Henry, but he’s looking at me.

“Can we, Mommy?” Henry pleads.

I know we probably can’t. This restaurant is all the way across the city from where we live, plus it’s pretty expensive. Mary Margaret footed the bill today, but twelve bucks for a kid’s meal is a little steep and I won’t pay it. I don’t want to say any of this though, because my tired son is walking a thin line between lingering happiness and an emotional collapse. So I use the parental standard, “We’ll see.”

Taking Henry’s hand, I say, “Thanks, again, Killian. Have a good evening.”

Something that looks like slight panic flashes through those gorgeous eyes of his and he speaks into the microphone, “I’ll be back in five, folks.” He slides his guitar around to his back and steps off the stage, placing himself directly in front of me. “Emma, if I may be so bold, and if you’re not already dating someone, would you consider going out with me?”

“Wh-what?” Apparently, getting asked out by the most handsome man I’ve ever laid eyes on renders me a bit stupid.

He lightly wraps his hand around my wrist and pulls me further toward the side of the patio for some privacy. “Even though we just met, I would really like to get to know you better.”

“But…but you don’t even know my last name.”

“What is it?”

“Cassidy.”

“Mine is Jones, so now we know each other a little better already.”

I stare at him, trying to think of a single reason why I should say no to him. “I…we…um…Henry and I, we…uh…we come as a packaged set.” That’s the way, Emma. Use your kid to try to scare him off. And you did it so gracefully, too.

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m really quite fond of your son. That’s not a deal breaker,” he states firmly. He still hasn’t let go of my wrist and now he’s rubbing his thumb over it. I find I don’t mind at all.

“I…”

“Mommy, potty!” Henry announces.

Oh, geez. Killian has to get back to his set and Henry has to pee. I’m running out of time.

Dropping Henry’s hand, I rummage through my purse, trying to find a pen. “Got a piece of paper?” I ask, mid-rummage.

Killian dashes to his guitar case and pulls out a piece of sheet music, returning with it just as I locate the elusive pen. He plants his foot on a chair and slaps the paper down on his knee so I can scribble my number on it.

When I finish, I lift Henry into my arms and take off to find a bathroom. Before disappearing inside the restaurant, I glance back at Killian. He’s still standing where I left him, a broad smile on his face as he grips the paper in his hand. Raising my free hand, I give him a little wave and he returns it.

After I’ve had time to think about it, I might regret giving him my number. Right now I just have to keep my kid from peeing down the front of my dress.

*********

A year ago, Killian Jones was my hero for giving me a chance to relax while he entertained my son. Five months later, he was once again my hero by being my date to Mary Margaret and David’s wedding. Today, he’s still my hero because he’s continuously proving that not all men are incomparable asses.

On the contrary, he’s everything I dreamed a man should be, once upon a time. Killian Jones is talented, intelligent, funny, considerate, masculine, caring, loving, passionate, and a great conversationalist, not to mention drop-dead gorgeous (if I didn’t mention that, it would be a crime.) He’s the total package and I’m head-over-heels in love with him.

Oh, and he’s a fantastic role model for my little boy. I usually hate to admit when Mary Margaret is right, but in this case, she was unequivocally correct. He and Henry absolutely adore each other and it makes my heart so happy. They do everything together - read books, play Star Wars with lightsabers, build block towers, climb trees, ride bikes, you name it.

And Henry loves singing silly songs with his soon-to-be stepfather. What more could a mother want for her son? Except, perhaps, a sibling.

Killian and I are working on that…and thoroughly enjoying every second of it.

*********

Thank you for reading. I hope it brightened your day!

Tagging: @hookedmom​​​​​​ @kmomof4​​​​​​ @cs-rylie​​​​​​ @qualitycoffeethings​​​​​​ @grimmswan​​​​​​ @wyntereyez​​​​​​ @the-darkdragonfly​​​​​​ @ultraluckycatnd​​​​​​ @paradiselady19​​​​​​ @xarandomdreamx​​​​​​ @motherkatereloyshipper​​​​​​ @julesep3026​​​​​​ @courtorderedcake​​​​​​ @lfh1226-linda​​​​​​ @pawshapedheart​​​​​​ @vampcoffeegyrl23​​​​​​ @tiganasummertree​​​​​​ @captainswan4life85​​​​​​ @bluewildcatfanatic​​​​​​ @eleveneitherway​​​​​​ @elfiola​​​​​​ @kday426​​​​​​ @julieenchanted-swans​​​​​​ @gingerchangeling​​​​​​ @andiirivera​​​​​​ @djlbg​​​​​​ @jonesfandomfanatic​​​​​​ @snowbellewells​​​​​​ @huntressandlioness1​​​​​​ @anmylica​​​​​​ @booksteaandtoomuchtv​​​​​​ @pirateherokillian​​​​​​ @cocohook38​​​​​ @ilovemesomekillianjones​​​​​​ @laschatzi​​​​​​ @zaharadessert​​​​​​ @jennjenn615​​​​​​ @yasbio2015​​​​​​ @lyssapup27​​​​​​ @nachocheese-itsmycheese​​​​​​ @singersdd​​​​​​ @mie779​​​​​​ @undercaffinatednightmare​​​​​​ @winterbaby89​​​​​​ @xsajx​​​​​​ @jackieorioncat​​​​​​ @teamhook​​​​​​ @bdevereaux-blanche​​​​​​ @soniccat​​​​​​ @searchingwardrobes​​​​​​ @jarienn972​​​​​​ @apiratewhopines​​​​​​​ @softkilly​​​​​​​ @goforlaunchcee​​​​​​​ @kymbersmith-90​​​​​​​ @captainswan217-blog

[zylphiacrowley]

9 People I'd Like too Know Better

tagged by @bananarose (thank you~!)

Last Song Listened To: Elijah by Matthew and the Atlas is currently playing on my spotify

Currently Watching: Technically I'm currently rewatching American Gods but I stopped a while ago and haven't picked it back up (It's fine I've already finished it previously, the second season is just a bit harder to get through for me). I also have Siuil a Run: The Girl from the Other Side on the docket for my next "to watch" thing.

Sweet/Savory/Spicy?: Sweet and savory. I am a wimp baby child when it comes to spice. I'm better than I used to be about it though.

Relationship Status: in one.

Current Obsession: I managed to get myself re-obsessed with Final Fantasy XIV a few months ago after taking a bit of a hiatus. We see how well that's going lol. I've never unsubbed since I started tho so it's been there for the past several years now.

Let's see if I can make this new tumblr tag system work...

Tagging: @uldahstreetrat @ornerykarakul-blog @duelisted @neriyon @sailor-artemis

@ambalambs @girlierest @azemessence @lilas

Oh forgot the obligatory you don't have to do it if I tagged you.

[love-bokumono-fics]

If you're looking for a little random song inspiration, or just want a playlist to use for this month's Casual Prompt might I recommend the BRBB Playlist.

Participants in the 2022 Bokumono Reverse Big Bang collaborated to put together some of their favorite writing jams into one playlist, creating a most eclectic mix of songs (and the obligatory Rick Roll) With almost 300 songs to pick from and almost 18 hours of music, it's sure to give you a real treat of a song to base your songfic off, and as a bonus it will provide some great jams while you work!

[loftec]

no. 4 and 7 for the music ask game please :)

Yeee absolutely!

4. A song you’d put on a playlist for a character you love

Listen... listeeeeen. I've been working on a Charles Rowland playlist for the last 3 months and it's got 89 songs on it and I'm so proud of it, so picking just the one song should be a chore... but it really wasn't. I love this one for Charles.

7. A song you know every word to

A Kaizers Orchestra concert is an obligatory sing-along from start to finish, but I think Delikatessen was one of the first of their songs I learned every word to.

Thank you <3!

[romacharm]

title: we didn’t get it right, but love we did our best

pairing: tifa lockhart / aerith gainsborough

words: 4.3k words

tags: Major Character Death, Apocalypse, End of the World, mix of modern and canon divergence au, Social Commentary, Angst and Tragedy, Hurt/Comfort, can be read without romance, Past Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife

summary: 

First, the world ends.

Then, Tifa meets Aerith.

[AO3]

The world ends on a day just like this one. This one, and every day before it. 

Tifa is tending her bar. As always. She woke up this morning with a crick in her neck that abates just a bit after some careful massaging. Despite everything, she’s not really a morning person; the sun takes time to seep into her skin. Despite it all, she heads out to run errands at a prompt nine in the morning to get everything set up for Seventh Heaven’s noontime opening. 

The thing they don’t tell you, when you try to start something yourself: there is never enough money. Not for the food, for the drinks, for the damn building. Maintenance costs run her out of house and home, into a dingy Stargazer Heights apartment furnished with little else than her bed and a decrepit television set that doesn’t even connect to cable. The room always tastes like static and dust, but Tifa loves it fiercely, because she has no other choice. 

This particular morning, she stops by the grocery store to stock up on eggs and canned soup, and a few impulse purchases that she really does believe she’ll eat in the next week—a promise she makes every week and only sometimes follows through on. 

(Of course, the irony in this is that there is no week ahead—the time remaining is markedly less than even a day. The soup boils and burns in the fires, and the eggs become soft and yolky, dripping from the fridge.) 

After that, she swings by the home decor store to buy new glassware to replace the ones that broke this past month. The store can be described only as the world contained in aisles decorated with pillows reminding one to live, laugh, and love. Harsh, ambient lighting makes the whole store hum an irritating D-sharp. It would be so easy, she does not think, to get lost in these aisles, to be a restless child wandering off, stepping into the between spaces where there is nothing. Oh, there’s the glassware section. 

She could easily order the glasses online, but she likes to pick out all her items herself, test their weight in her hands, their smudge resistance, their rigidity. Maybe one of these days she’ll settle for cups made of more plastic than glass, but for now, she’s a stickler for quality, and too much plastic in glassware taints the taste of the drink. She’s been doing this long enough to learn little tricks like that, and hasn’t yet fallen so far as to start sacrificing quality for cost. 

She brings everything back home, stows the groceries in the fridge, and lines up the glasses into boxes stuffed with cut-up Styrofoam that she’s accumulated from old packages. Needy fingers make do; she doesn’t always say this, but she believes it, wholeheartedly. The television blares static as she lines up the glasses, humming to herself a tune only she can find in its familiar buzz. Something that sounds vaguely like the opening song of a cartoon she watched when she was little, huddled on the carpet with Cloud and her favorite worn-out stuffed animal. Back then her eyes didn’t burn if they were open for too long, and her hands were always sticky with dirt or sugar. 

The glasses are packed up all too quickly, and eleven looms just around the corner. With it comes opening, checking stock, mixing drinks. Another long day, just like the one before it, and the one before that, and the one before that. 

That’s okay. Tifa likes what she does. A little bit of happiness in dark times—that’s what she promises, mixing cocktails to take the edge off. So even though it’s tiring, all the upkeep, the obligatory smile, the weird comments from patrons—it’s good work, it’s necessary work, and she does it all to make things just a little brighter, in spite of everything. 

Seventh Heaven, on the outside, appears shabby: built mostly out of wood and scrounged-together pieces and located right in the center of the neighborhood, furnished with a big sign Tifa painted herself back when she’d first decided she wanted to be a bar owner and a porch for the people who need a breeze with their booze. She spends the rest of the time until opening polishing the countertop until it shines and reorganizing the lowest shelf of spirits for easy access. The Friday night crowds are the largest, and their drink preferences vary more wildly than on any other night; the shelf is crowded with all sorts of alcohol, chasers, and cocktail ingredients. 

Halfway through, Barret—her partner in work, among other things—comes in with his daughter Marlene, who he sets at the bar to play with a stuffed monkey and watch the old sitcom Tifa’s left playing on the TV monitor set up on the wall. Barret then hunches over the bar in the seat next to her, his prosthetic arm thunking heavy on the wooden surface. 

“All good?” Tifa asks, turning from the liquor shelf. 

“Yeah,” Barret grumbles. “Been tough around town these days. Folks’re gettin’ antsy.” 

“And no word from the Shinra rep?” 

Barret scoffs. “‘Course not.” 

The tragic irony in Barret’s work—and, by extension, Tifa’s work as his consultant-slash-friend—is that he is in many ways the de facto father of their area of the city, but that he is utterly unwilling to play the games of bureaucracy. For the past week, Shinra, the oh-so-godly corporation lording over the city like its own lawless government, has put a pause on all food shipments to the poorer areas of the city, leaving so many people to fend for themselves for food and drink. Sure, it’s driven up business for Seventh Heaven (for now, while people can afford it), and Tifa’s lucky to have Cloud do the legwork in getting supplies when she can afford him, but… well. She hates the hungry look in everyone’s eyes more than anything. The hopelessness. 

“Would you get the sign for me, Marlene?” Tifa asks gently, and Marlene nods enthusiastically, happy to have something to do. She jumps down from the barstool and scampers over to the door, where she flips the sign from CLOSED to OPEN. Barret huffs, breathes in heavy and slow, calming the fire in him, as Marlene comes back to his side. 

“We’ll be in the back,” Barret says, standing. 

“Sure,” Tifa says. Barret makes a lot of the food when he’s not running himself ragged in meetings or distributing resources, and there’s another room back there with a TV and a box of toys for Marlene. A bar is hardly a good place for a child, but the two of them make do. 

Barret takes Marlene through the door to the right, and they disappear from sight. Tifa will see them in a bit, once the orders start coming in. 

The first customers trickle in—a regular with someone new in tow, a salaryman with a worn briefcase, the woman who always staggers in at opening and stumbles out at closing—and Tifa shuts her brain off, switching into customer service mode. An easy smile on her lips, a bit of sunshine at her fingertips. 

The best-worst thing about being the proprietress of a bar with hardly any employees is that Tifa gets neither breaks nor days off. Which she doesn’t really mind, all things considered. A day off means time to think, which means she’ll get in her head about all the things that should be happening that aren’t, or all the things that shouldn’t be happening and are: gasoline-tinged air from permanently whirring machines, mako deficiency in the planet, people with sunken eyes and gaunt cheeks unsure of their next meal. Ash in the air from distant fires, laced with hopelessness. She hates it. She hates all of it. 

Cloud comes in around five, after what she assumes is his latest job. He hasn’t told her much about it; hell, he doesn’t tell her much at all if she doesn’t pry, and that was true even while they were dating all those years ago. It’s not all bad, though—he’s just started to look her in the eyes again. 

“Hey,” he says, monotone, ignoring all the tables of people staring at him in favor of beelining to the bar. Cloud’s got quite the reputation in these parts—he takes on any odd job for a price, which makes him invaluable. He’s the reason they’re not all dying of starvation, and the reason monsters rarely foray into their sector anymore. 

“What’ll it be?” Tifa asks, wearing the smirk she saves specially for him. It’s a habit from all the years they’ve known each other. 

“Surprise me.” 

“You never like when I do that.” Nevertheless, Tifa turns and plucks out bottles for a new magnum opus. 

“I’ve never said that.” She doesn’t have to look to know he’s pouting in that way only he does, half-indignant, half-scowl. Tifa shakes his drink up and pours it: a vaguely pink concoction tinged with lilac extract and citrus, hardened by vodka. This one’s off-menu, one of her experiments. Cloud takes one sip and his nose scrunches up before relaxing hurriedly. 

“Not your style?” Tifa asks. 

“It’s not that,” he says. She knows him well enough to tell when he’s being polite and when he’s not, so she knows it’s not that he doesn’t like it. It’s that he’s used to eating gruel and protein bars, so anything with flavor can be too much. She knows this, and waits for him to say it. “It’s just… different.” 

“Good different or bad different?” 

He thinks for a moment, and says, “Good different.” 

“I’m glad.” She rests her elbows on the bar and leans over. “How was work?” 

“Fine. Today I tracked down someone’s chickens.” 

It’s more than she’s gotten out of him in years. Some things do change. “Sounds fun.” 

“Eh.” Cloud shrugs and takes another sip of his drink. 

“So? Got any plans for the night?” 

Cloud scoffs. “No. Do I ever?” 

“Sounds about right.” 

Another customer calls Tifa’s attention, and she’s back in work mode. 

Seven comes and goes, and with it comes the arrival of the rest of their friends: Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge. The three of them crowd around a table and watch as Barret emerges, haggard, from the back, Marlene sitting in the crook of his elbow. The two of them take the remaining seat at the table and cheering breaks out among them. 

“Another day down!” Jessie cheers. 

“And another day tomorrow!” Wedge adds. 

Back at the bar, Cloud sighs. “Are they ever quiet?” 

“I’m just surprised you’re still here to see it,” Tifa says. “Usually you’re home by now.” 

Cloud scowls. “I don’t know. I got a bad feeling tonight.” 

His intuition is usually right, which makes Tifa apprehensive. All those years in the military, she guesses, honing his senses for danger. Not for the first time, she wishes they lived in a world where Cloud had never sacrificed his body for war, and she had never had to run from a burning village. 

She shuts that line of thinking down quickly. 

“Tifa, baby!” a regular calls out, clearly high on more than drink. Maybe life. Maybe substances. Not Tifa’s business, anyway. “You doin’ anything tonight?” 

“Tending the bar, Jimmy,” Tifa replies, “as always.” 

“You oughta get out more,” he says. “See the world.” 

“Maybe, if I can find the time.” 

“Time’s bogus. Where’re you gonna find it if you don’t make it yourself?” 

There’s truth there, the kind that makes Tifa uncomfortable. She laughs hollowly, and Cloud glares until Jimmy plops his forehead down on the bartop, spent. 

By eleven, the bar’s mostly cleared out—Cloud’s gone home, as have Jessie, Wedge, Barret, and Marlene, leaving Biggs behind—and there are just a few people left, sad or drunk or both. Biggs has replaced Tifa behind the bar, giving her a chance to take a seat at one of the barstools. 

“It’s weird,” Biggs says. “I get the feeling tonight is the last time I’ll see anyone.” 

“That is weird,” Tifa says. 

“I told you.” Biggs crosses his arms over his chest, his leather harness shifting with the movement. Tifa’s never understood why he wears that, but she supposes it does look good. 

Tifa closes her eyes, bracing herself against the bartop. Her eyelids feel heavy; they always do this time of night, even though her schedule is such that she stays up this late every night. 

It’s in this brief moment of peace that the first explosion sounds. The entire building shudders, down to the earth it’s built into. Tifa lurches forward; Biggs catches her, extending one hand to catch her shoulder before her face hits the wooden counter. 

“What was that?” he asks, looking at the door. The patrons who aren’t dead drunk have crowded the windows, staring outside. One of them opens the door. 

“I don’t know.” Tifa stands, wobbly, and makes her way to the door. 

Outside is chaos. Fire rains down from the sky, taking with it chunks of metal and burning wood. The city is in disarray: on fire, buildings caved in, people running around screaming, searching for shelter where there is none. Their buildings are not built sturdy enough to withstand this kind of carnage. Tifa’s chest feels tight; she can’t breathe. 

“Jesus Christ,” Biggs whispers, right behind her. She can practically hear his mind racing a mile a minute—she and Biggs are too similar in too many ways, and their capacity for worry is one such example. 

It’s impossible to tell what the source of the destruction is. Where did the burning start? Where do the fires end? No matter where Tifa looks, there’s smoke and ash and flames, and screaming. 

“Get down!” Biggs shouts, pulling Tifa down to the wood of the porch as a chunk of burning metal flies over their heads and into the neighboring building. 

“What the…” Tifa can only stare for a moment before her entire body starts trembling. 

The wind picks up, whirling all around them, spewing ash and dust every which way. There’s no shelter—there’s no running. 

“We’ve got to make sure everyone’s okay!” Biggs shouts over the noise, the din of dying. 

“Right!” Tifa nods and takes his hand, letting him lead the way, bracing them against the wind. She doesn’t trust her feet to carry her without support, and Biggs is always steadying, even in the worst of circumstances. They shove their way through the mob of people bemoaning their lack of shelter options, since their homes are all made of wood and cheap metals, easily crumbled in natural disasters. Not like the skyscrapers in the center of town, or the Shinra live-in workers’ homes, all hard steel and indestructible titanium. They’re probably fine. 

The first house they stop by is Jessie’s; it takes longer than either of them would like, pushing through a multitude of forces. The door is wide open, and two of the theater girls who live there are huddled under the table. Jessie, however, is nowhere to be found, the buildings on either side of her place having crumbled, and the street decorated in ash. Tifa and Biggs exchange concerned looks and continue on. 

Next, they find Wedge’s place, now devoid of the cats it usually crawls with. On a normal day, one can hardly reach Wedge’s front door without being assaulted by at least two cats playing guard duty. Today, not only are there none in sight, there is also the marked lack of Wedge himself anywhere, either; when Biggs pounds his fist against the door, there’s no response. Tifa kicks the door down: they find all the lights off and the inside strangely silent. 

The last place they look is Stargazer Heights, the apartment building where Tifa and Cloud both live. But… 

The entire building is in ruins. The second floor’s caved in, a rusty chunk of steel laying where Tifa’s room used to be, and the doors on the first floor have all flown off their hinges, exposing their crumbling interiors. 

Tifa falls to her knees. 

“Cloud…” she gasps. 

“He’s fine,” Biggs reassures her, a comforting hand on her shoulder. “He’s strong. I’m sure he got out before…” 

He swallows, not able to finish the sentence. 

It’s not fair. Tifa’s chest burns. There are no answers to what’s happening, no understanding, except that they’re dying because the planet is tired and taking it out on tired people—

“I’m gonna take a closer look,” Biggs says. 

“Okay.” Tifa’s voice sounds small and helpless, even to her, the single word snatched away by the wind. 

“Be right back.” Biggs dashes off toward the building’s husk. 

It’s not fair. That’s the only thing Tifa can think, the sentence running through her head over and over like somehow it contains any answers. It doesn’t. Life isn’t fair and money isn’t fair and the planet isn’t fair. And death isn’t fair. 

Then when she looks up, the wind whips a plate of metal encased in flames from its course, careening it toward where Tifa sits, helpless. She could do something about that. She could roll away or kick at it. Anything. 

She doesn’t. 

There isn’t any fighting a dying planet taking its revenge. 

Her eyes open to blank nothingness. White space. 

Tifa’s head hurts. Was it all a dream? Did she lose it and down all her stock herself? 

But no—something tells her everything is real, and she’s—

White spreads out everywhere, reflecting on itself, creating strange rippling light. There seems to be a floor, but that’s white too, impossible to differentiate from anything else. Tifa’s standing on it; that’s all she knows. 

And in front of her sits a girl. 

A girl in a red dress, the neck cut low and dancing over her chest, spaghetti straps holding it to her shoulders. The hem is laid out on the floor, fanned out around the girl’s knees, which are folded under her. 

The girl’s name is Aerith. Tifa doesn’t know her. 

She doesn’t know how she knows that name. 

“Hey there,” Aerith says. “You’re here.” 

“Do you know me?” 

Aerith smiles, bittersweet. “I think so.” 

“Oh.” Both of them are quiet for a moment, before Tifa finally asks, “Where are we?” 

“That’s a tough question to answer.” Aerith brushes nonexistent dust off her dress, smoothing out its folds. “We’re somewhere in between the planet and the conscious world. Something like that.” 

“The planet…” Tifa looks around, like answers will make themselves known, but there is still nothing to be found in any direction. “So it was a natural disaster?” 

Aerith cocks her head. She looks like she’s listening to something, closing her eyes and running a hand over the floor. Then, she opens her eyes and says, “Yes and no. The thing is, the planet is like us—with boundaries and needs. And when it’s being killed, well…” 

“No one in that town did anything wrong,” Tifa says hotly. She takes a step toward Aerith, who doesn’t even flinch. “It’s those—those jerks at Shinra who—” 

“I know,” Aerith says. “I know.” 

Frustrated, Tifa lets out a strangled noise and buries her face in her hands. It feels so helpless. She feels so trapped.

“So?” When she finally speaks again, her voice sounds hoarse and damaged. Like something is broken. “Am I dead?” 

“Something like it,” Aerith says. “When we die, we return to the planet. The lifestream.” 

“Right,” Tifa says bitterly. It’s not that she doesn’t have any appreciation for this spiritual crap; she just thinks she and her friends don’t deserve to die for the wrongdoings of the people at the top, the people who don’t care about anything but their profit margins for this quarter. 

“The world is ending,” Aerith says. It surprises Tifa less than it maybe should. “If it helps. No one is making it out alive.” 

Tifa grinds her teeth. “It doesn’t help.” 

“Sorry.” 

“And you? Are you dead, too?” 

“I’m an Ancient,” Aerith says, “which means I’m just as much a part of the planet alive as I am dead.” 

“What does that mean?” 

“I don’t know.” 

This is so frustrating. “So I’m dead, but I’m not dead. And everyone I care about is also dead but not dead. And I’m stuck here with… with…” 

“With me,” Aerith says. “Not for long. Once the chaos on top stops, we’ll stop being conscious and join the planet for real.”

“That’s horrible,” Tifa informs her. 

“I know that.” 

“There’s nothing we can do?” 

Aerith shakes her head. 

All the fight leaves Tifa’s body. Her hands relax, leaving biting crescents in her palms where her nails had dug in too hard. She sits down, swallowing down the promise of tears. 

“Hey,” Aerith says, “it’s okay.” 

“It’s not,” Tifa replies. 

“Okay, you’re right. It’s not. But you’re not alone.” 

Tifa takes in a shaky breath. At least she’s not alone, and she knows she’ll go out with dignity because propriety states she will not cry in front of someone she barely knows. 

“Why don’t we spend our last moments alive remembering all the good parts?” Aerith suggests. 

“The good parts?” 

“Yeah!” She scooches closer to Tifa and shifts to cross her legs in front of her, heedless of the social rule that dictates pretty girls in pretty dresses should not sit in such ways. “Like, for example, here’s a happy moment for me. I lived with my mom, and I got to spend a lot of time growing flowers. One time I got so distracted talking to them that I fell asleep, and my mom came to find me. When she woke me up… I’ve never felt as loved as I did then.” 

“That’s sweet,” Tifa says. 

“I’m sure you’ve got something like that.” 

She has to rack her brain a bit, but in the end, the question isn’t as hard as Tifa initially thought. She tells Aerith about climbing to the top of the windmill with Cloud as teenagers and tracing patterns into the stars, creating their own constellations that looked nothing like the names they gave them. It was one of the few things to do in a village situated in the middle of nowhere. Aerith smiles at the story, her eyes never leaving Tifa’s face. 

“Tell me another,” Aerith breathes. 

So Tifa tells her about the bar. About cleaning up Seventh Heaven, buying the building and fixing it up, what it took to build the perfect atmosphere. Her favorite drinks, her experiments. Her regulars. The way she could watch as the stress smoothed away from their brows for just a few short hours every night. The way she believed herself a bit of sunshine for people in the dark. 

“I heard about your bar,” Aerith says. 

“You did?” 

“The planet tells me a lot of things.” There’s that bittersweet smile on Aerith’s mouth again. “I think the idea was we served similar purposes, in our own ways. Me with my flowers. You with your bar.” 

Tifa blinks at her. “The planet told you about me?” 

“Tangentially.” Aerith lays her hands in her lap, fidgeting with her thumbs. “I always wanted to visit.” 

Tifa’s about to tell her to drop by whenever she wants when she remembers why they’re here in the first place. So, instead, she says, “I’m sorry.” 

“No, don’t be. I should’ve…” Aerith trails off, and that thought is never finished. She changes gears. “Tell me more about it? About the people. What it looked like. How it worked.” 

So Tifa tells her. Everything. About Barret and his knack for sniffing out the right spices, the tiredness that never seemed to dull the warmth in his eyes. Marlene and her stuffed toys, her favorite shows. About Jessie and Biggs and Wedge, a trio unlike any other, who came and went like the wind when their schedules allowed. About Cloud and the scowl he used to hide how he felt. 

She tells her about the tables, the glasses. The colors of the drinks. The string lights Tifa hung up for special events, like Jessie’s birthday and Halloween. The arcade machine against the wall and the dartboard in the corner. The regulars who flirted with her, and the regulars who cursed at her. Aerith listens like there has never been anything more interesting, like Tifa’s handing her an in-depth playbook to a successful life. 

“Thank you,” Aerith says, when Tifa’s run out of things to talk about, her throat gravelly and hoarse, “for telling me all that.” 

“Yeah,” Tifa says. Something unfurls in her chest; something she doesn’t have a name for. “Sure.” 

Aerith looks up into the nothingness. “We don’t have much time left.” 

“I didn’t get to learn anything about you!” Tifa protests. “That’s not…” 

“Tifa,” Aerith says softly, though Tifa can’t remember ever giving her name, “Thanks. For once, you let me know what it’s like to really be human.” 

“You are human,” Tifa insists. “You’re just as alive as me. As anyone.” 

She doesn’t know why this is so important to her. Why it matters so much that Aerith knows it. 

“It means a lot for you to say it,” Aerith says. Static crowds the corners of Tifa’s vision. Is that an indicator of the end? The finality of everything? 

“Aerith,” Tifa gasps, desperate. She doesn’t want to die. Why did she spend all this time recounting her life? What did it matter, in the end? 

“I think, Tifa,” Aerith says, “in another world, we would’ve been close friends.” 

“More than that,” Tifa assures her. 

Aerith’s responding smile is dazzling. Perfectly happy, at peace, her eyes glimmering like polished emeralds. “More than that,” she repeats. 

The static bleeds everywhere. The whiteness falls away. Aerith throws her arms around Tifa, holding her close. 

Around them, the world ends. 

[ideas-of-immortality]

Top 9 People you want to get to know better

Tagged by @ouranian

Favorite Color: Blue, but like specifically the blue of Lapis Lazuli, especially with the flecks of gold and white and other stones it's beautiful. But I also a fondness for any pastel colors and half my wardrobe is pastel goth colors soooo take with that what you will.

Currently Reading: Kūkai: Major Works by Yoshito S. Hakeda, A New History of Shinto by John Breen & Mark Teeuwen

Last Song: well I'm on the train atm listening to my playlist on shuffle so the last song that played was Au bar des suicidés by Pierre Lapointe

Last Series: I'm going to assume you mean last series I finished watching and it would be either Lego Monkie Kid, or Mobile Suits Gundam: The Witch from Mercury.

Sweet, Savory, or Spicy: Insert Obligatory Both Both is Good gif here, I have a sweet tooth, but am working on improving my spice tolerance :D

Currently Working on: Uh not failing my current semester of Japanese Language School while in Japan? Also studying for the JLPT N2 which I was an idiot and signed up for the December test giving me 3 months to cram for it :)))

You don't have to answer, and honestly I don't have 9 whole mutuals I feel like I can tag anyways, so picking random people on my reblogs notifs feed LOL: Tagging: @fluffypotatey @shieldherostuffs @angstandhappiness @crazy-emo-on-the-loose @mischief2459 @eternallyblight @just-another-dreamerr

Also stopping at 7 lol

[yurigalactica]

Any assortment of 1, 2, 7, 9, 17, 21, 22, 30 for the music ask game! It's alot but I couldn't decide which ones lol. U don't have to answer them all just pick ur favorites

jokes on you jinx i am so obsessed with music and deep within my own brainrot that i will be answering ALL of them >:D 1. a song you can listen to on repeat

now this question in particular is really hard for me, because i tend to listen to a lot of songs on loop a lot. however most of the time doing so easily makes me sick of it and i have to take a break from listening to it for a few weeks. however one of the songs i listen to a lot and never seem to get bored of is Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales by Car Seat Headrest. especially the end bit, it really scratches my brain the right way, and it's really fun to belt out the harmonies in the car when you're driving through town in the evening

2. a song from one of your favorite albums

it's no secret that i'm a slut for los campesinos. everyone knows this about me. so it's kinda obligatory that i use one of their songs for these asks lmao. my favorite album of theirs in particular is definitely romance is boring (i just adore so many songs on that album!!! genuinely it's banger after banger, i highly recommend listening to the whole album.) my personal all-time favorite from that album is definitely In Media Res, just because of the ending bit with the trumpets. holy shit i get such a surge of dopamine when gareth campesinos goes "if you were given the option of dying painlessly in peace at forty five, with a lover at your side, after a full and happy life, is this something that would interest you? would this interest you at all?" just—AGH

7. a song that reminds you of your friend(s)

this one's easy—Dynamite by BTS. my irl best friend loves k-pop (stuff like BTS and Stray Kids), and while i don't listen to it on my own, i've gotta admit, she's got immaculate taste. dynamite is the one i hear the most around, playing on the radio (because it's mostly in english and i live in a country where most people i know speak english as a first language). so literally anytime i hear this song i find myself immediately thinking of her and going to text her about it LMAO

9. a song that reminds you of yourself 

this one was definitely the hardest to answer, and quite frankly, i sat at my desk for a solid hour trying to find a good one for this. but after some careful deliberation i had to go with Dear Wormwood by the oh hellos. the oh hellos are an incredible band and i genuinely adore all of their music, and highly recommend you listen to their entire discography. this song, though, holds a very special place in my heart—after all, it was my number one song on my spotify wrapped during 2020. it was the song i had on loop during the entirety of quarantine, when i was stuck in my bedroom, isolating myself from everyone in real life and online. during those months i didn't talk to any of my friends, not even over text. my only steady companion was my beloved spotify premium subscription. listening to this song over 500 times permanently altered my brain chemistry and i'm pretty sure it's the reason i have anxiety now /j

17.  a song with great lyrics 

holy fuck. holy fucking shit. To Tundra by los campesinos. i literally froth at the mouth anytime i think of this song oh my gosh. i made a whole post about it ages ago but i'll go on about it again. like "meet me at st. nicholas among the oaks, behind the church that sway like pig-tailed girls as summer wind whistles around your bare-skin knees and the forsythia leaves" KADGKKDFHKADFKHK THE IMAGERY AHHHHHHHH "and in a hazy daydream, our bodies married the stream and we broke down into pebbles and silt" SCREAMING SOBBING VOMITING /pos "we take on the burden of all these sad-eyed children with lilies bunched in our hands" i am literally going to eat a brick this makes me feel so many emotions

21. a song for the rain

Woman by the 1975, probably. there are a lot of good songs to listen to in the rain but this probably takes the cake just because of how echoey and melancholy it feels. i love it when artists do that kind of stuff with the guitar and make it carry out really long—and almost make it sound like it's wailing. it's one of my favorite electric guitar effects ever and i've always found that the 1975 does that really well! and as a guitar player myself how a guitar is played and how it affects the rest of the song is really important in my picking of a favorite song. this one in particular is very versatile, and i feel like you could listen to it not only in the rain, but at night in the car too.

22. a song for dancing 

Tongue Tied by grouplove!!! it's genuinely one of the most happy fun upbeat songs i know. it's like dancing in the kitchen while making cookies with your bestie at 2am kind of music. if you need to cheer yourself up and have an impromptu dance party with energy and excitement then this is the song for you!!! ultimate anti-depression song. and this also happened to be my most listened to song in my spotify wrapped 2021 if that tells you anything about how that year was for me /lh

30.  a song you recommend

Do Me A Favour by the arctic monkeys. i've been listening to them a whole lot more lately, mostly because i also admire their guitar work and also feel like their music vibe fits very well with a fic that i've been workshopping for a while and have not released yet. this one in particular is my ultimate favorite of theirs, probably because of the guitar and the lyrics that go together (but probably mostly because of how well it fits the overall vibe of the fic it goes with. and if you're interested in what it is, it's a benchtrio-centric mystery/horror au)

[tuftypompom]

Update on the Chapter 3 Mock Stuff + Some Other Stuff!!

Hey all! It's me, your favorite purple goat with a booty stank upload and sleep schedule, Pompom!

Ever since the newsletter Toby had published on Halloween, I have started to feel less and less encouraged towards continuing my mock Chapter 3 content. On top of lacking any sort of consistent motivation towards making music like I used to have, it seems like we're nearing the release of Chapter 4 sometime within the next couple of years. Now, that's exciting, for sure! And, while it may seem like a long time, it's been, like, almost half a year since my last uploads, LIGHT THE LIGHTS and Written in Stone, and, while I certainly feel better than I had during that time, there's no denying that I still lack so much of the creative potential I once held, and I'm afraid my motivation has been so lacking, that I can't fathom when I'll ever feel the same again. I would kill to upload consistently again sometime, but it really does feel like I have to be on this little forced hiatus. Darn you, brain!

Well- Apologies for the pseudo vent post! But I only bring this up because, due to these complications, I've decided to just drop what I have now here. This doesn't mean I'll never pick these back up, but I feel terrible for leaving my last upload five months in the past, and I haven't really added anything major to any of these tracks since, well, forever ago! So, if it's something you're interested in, these three are among the primary tracks I was developing for my mock Chapter 3.

"Obligatory Field Area"

Obviously, this track holds no title. I mean, technically speaking, none of them do, but the other two I just decided to play along with the existing naming schemes of Deltarune character tracks (Like "Queen", or "Lancer" (But is that called "I'm the Bad Guy?" I don't really know...)). Meant to be the primary area of the mock chapter, resembling a similar, sprawling "field" to that of Hopes & Dreams and Cyber, this is where you would, inevitably, meet Tenna. The art was just a quick mockup I made and never expanded upon, so excuse the poor quality.

Mike

A (very short) song doodle I was making for Mike, the day host (Think of him and Tenna like Nickelodeon and Nick @ Nite, or Cartoon Network and Adult Swim!). Mike holds a more mature, thoughtful attitude and is much less of a "threat" to the Lightners. Even if he has a notably short temper, he knows how to keep his cool and to remain with his stage face on! Instead of directly stopping the Lightners, he more so just likes fooling with them to keep his audience entertained. That is until partway into the chapter, when a mysterious foe comes to bust the party and kick Mike off the stage...

Tenna

A theme for the Big T himself, Tenna! He's a lot more, uhm.. Obnoxious? Than Mike? Being the night host, he holds a more brash attitude for his more mature audiences, and is a lot less thoughtful than Mike. There's not a lot else to say about him, as that's all I've really had in mind up to now, lol. Probably my favorite theme out of the three, though; Obviously, it's kind of a re-take of my previous "Mike" theme that was just made for funsies.

And that's it, really! Those are the three big songs I was doodling out before my brain said, "No." Perhaps sometime in the future I'll pick these back up and continuing developing my ideas. Thankfully, other than music, I've still been trying to get some stuff done, including prototyping various game ideas pseudo-privately. I do anticipate uploading on Tumblr more, I've just never really had a reason to do so as of yet, lol. Sometime, though, I'd love to eventually start posting about my coding projects, and maybe my art. I've never really worked with social media platforms before, admittedly, but I'll definitely try to at least consider branching out and experimenting more with Tumblr going forward.

Thank you all for the continued support! I hope to continue posting sometime, whether it be about music, coding, or whatever.

[matt0044]

Fave meme thingie

Tagged by @spacevixenmusic

Favorite Color: I... can't say?

Currently Reading: IDW's Sonic The Hedgehog run. Picked up the "Tangle & Whisper" trade and fell in love with those funky little lesbians (whether SEGA allows it to be said or not). Whisper speaks to the introvert in me and Tangle speaks to the part of me who can be a lot for others.

Wish they were the perspective characters for the Neo Metal Sonic arc for new fans tho.

...

Anywho...

Last Song: Look Up! The Sky Is Falling by Michael Bradley as Yellow Dancer

Last Series: Naruto Part 1 and movies (Three is the best in terms of plot structure and character writing). And yeah, I saw the Filler Hell. Guess what? I. Liked. It. A lot.

Last Movie: Terra Willy. It's actually a animated movie from France that's all about a kid surviving for ten months on an alien planet. Starts off slow but grows. There's no obligatory villain, twist or otherwise, but nature to contend with.

I get that YouTubers need clout and profit so they focus on Disney/Pixar/Sony/etc. but the movies distributed by Kids Viva are honestly some of the best I've seen. Some are clearly "inspired" by Disney but even they blaze their own trail. Check out their catalogue if you hope to broaden your animation horizons if only a bit.

Working on: I'm planning a crossover between Miraculous Ladybug and The Jungle Book (specifically the 1989 Anime adaptation) and a crossover between Digimon Fusion & Fairy Tail with Lisanna Strauss as the lead.

WARNING: My main gallery and faves is SUPER NSFW with every kink imaginable. If you prefer your pure mental image of me to remained unsulied by the reality that people get horny in weird ways, tread carefully.

For now, I'm working on an adaptation of my favorite Pokemon game, Black & White. The player characters are practically premade OCs so developing the personalities of Hilda and her team has been cool (you will love her and Oshawott). I just completed the first story arc (Chapter) so check it out and leave a comment: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14142529/1/Pokemon-Heroes-The-Black-White-Chapter-One

Tags: @princealigorna @tumblingxelian @bloodraven55 @simkim704 @silvermoon424 @theirisianprincess @swan2swan @knightzilla

[gabby-i-guess]

how can I tell if I have ADHD?

Hey tumblr friend!

Obligatory disclaimer: I'm not a psychiatrist, so take my thoughts with a pinch of salt. But! I have ADHD, I have learned a lot about neurodiversity, and I (almost) have a degree in health promotion. So my thoughts aren't total bullshit either lol

This is a long one, so if you're going to skip through it I understand, but at least read the last 2 paragraphs. That's the most important bit x

I think the biggest red flag for me was never feeling quite right. It didn't matter my friend group, didn't matter my school, didn't matter how hard I tried or how good my grades were - I always felt like a puzzle piece that fit just well enough to finish the puzzle but just badly enough to feel perpetually uncomfortable. And this didn't go away over time - I got more comfortable in myself, but never felt like the world quite had a place for me.

Although I didn't realise it at the time, another big red flag was that all of my best friends and all 3 of my high school boyfriends had ADHD. If you take a look around you at all of the people you connect with and they mostly have ADHD/autism, you probably do too.

And then of course there are the actual individual symptoms. Here's a rundown of what I experienced:

Mental illness, especially early in life and/or triggered by nothing in particular

Dissociation, which in my case hid lots of my sensory issues

Intense interest in hobbies for a relatively short period of time, between a week and a few months, then completely forgetting about them

Tiredness, ALWAYS, regardless of how much I slept

Trouble sleeping (including poor sleep quality)

Easily distracted from most tasks

Impossible to distract from very specific tasks

Forgetful, except for randomly specific things (e.g. song lyrics were seered into my brain word for word, but I forgot my sports uniform more times than I'd care to admit)

Perpetually disorganised

Or extremely organised for a short period of time, then somehow managed to disorganise myself again

Always late, no matter how hard I tried

Trouble with food (over eating, comfort eating, body image issues)

Easily made superficial friendships, struggled to make deep, long-lasting connections

Always labelled gifted but always told I wasn't reaching my potential

Very creative and imaginative

Very emotional, tending towards big mood swings (in fact, one psych thought I might be bipolar. Nah bro, just the ADHD :) )

Intense but unstable friendships (that is one of the symptoms that can look like BPD)

Weirdly specific habits/rituals/routines, with irritation but not distress if they were disrupted (for example, I always drank a specific bottle full of water with berocca every morning for 6 months. If I didn't have the bottle on hand, it was annoying, but I wouldn't get upset. Having said that, it did mean that I would forget to drink water all day and become very dehydrated)

Becoming bored/depressed every 6-12 months if nothing major in my life changed. This could be fixed by moving my furniture around. Or moving country. Or breaking up with my boyfriend. Or dyeing my hair. These were all pretty much the same to me

Executive dysfunction - as in, wanting to do something really, really bad but your brain just not letting you

Obsessive skin picking that frequently resulted in open, bleeding wounds

Feeling like I never had my shit together, right from age 12

Teachers noticed a lot of these too. My school reports are littered with evidence of my ADHD, starting from literally age 3... and yet no one ever picked up on it. Here are some examples:

"Gabby is a very bright girl, but needs to work on her organisation skills."

"Gabby has lots of friends, but needs to find better times to socialise."

"Gabby has a strong sense of right and wrong, and is frequently correcting her classmates."

"Although Gabby is sitting on a B in my class currently, if she paid a little more attention in class, she could easily be getting an A."

"Gabby's work is always thoughtful and interesting, but would often benefit from a final proofread before submission."

"Gabby often makes careless mistakes in her work, which brings her marks down."

All of this might not help you. After all, every person with ADHD looks a little different. But there is one thing I, a diagnosed ADHDer, can tell you that will help: you are welcome in ADHD spaces. Self-diagnosis is not ideal. But diagnosis is often a privilege, and not accessible to many people. Don't let anyone make you feel excluded because you don't have a diagnosis. If you find it helpful to consider yourself an ADHDer, to look for resources for ADHDers, to use tips and tricks for ADHDers, then it doesn't actually matter whether you're diagnosed or not. You're not faking - you're making do with what you have.

Sending you lots of love and strength Tumblr friend - all the best in your journey, wherever it takes you ❤️

[atmosphericlouds]

and just like that, that slow drip to the cement of the now ash cigarette, her heel follows within proximity of an accidental slip. brisk away, waypoint in mind, her ligaments arise her to the heavens she departed and descend her back to a reality she chose to ignore. the clicking two-step beat of her heels, synchronize with the unlock, the turn, and the starting of the engine. of course, obligatory to what had just occurred, I began to forget how to breathe. caught with a bullet to the head, my hands unwillingly act as the instigator between my tears and the ground. its viscosity is all too familiar to me in the past couple of months.

she left, again. she said it was for good this time, but she’s said that every time. I must've done it. I must've finally driven her away. my obsession, my hands tightly bound to the bouquet of roses she had just handed to me. “this won't end well” echoes again and again until it becomes a memory entwined to each brain wave, so every motion ever attempted, every song ever hummed, everything up until now has led me to her. in seven years her touch will fade from my skin and she’ll remain another name on my list of “crazy ex’s” and I will remain in the time of her life she wished she could forget. I hate her. she was the one drawing force that picked me from my sullen mattress and made my morning routine dance in melodies around me that I have long forgotten.

[give-grian-rights]

do u have taurian headcanons

YES ! ! ! ! this can be read mostly as platonic or romantic. obligatory reminder that these are roleplay characters that are referred to as characters and are completely different from their creators. also their characters are canonically dating .

Taurtis' escapism is music. He usually wears his headphones 24/7 and especially during the night. When he and Grian starts sharing a bed in Tokyo Soul, he just softly plays the music on his phone. Grian's one of the only people he comfortably shares his music with. They both will just quietly listen.

Taurtis shares the playlist with Grian, and Grian sometimes adds a song or two. They never talk about the music in the morning, or what the subjects of any of them were no matter how dark the get. They understand eachother completely during that time.

They both have hearing loss from the shoot outs and car crash. More specifically, tinnitus. Taurtis' is worse than Grian's because Taurtis would blare music whenever Sam would be particularly awful. also from him blasting the game music whenever he'd play anything.

They made hiding batteries for their hearing aids a game. Grian had a pair taped underneath the band of Taurtis' headphones for two months before getting a VERY confused message from him. Grian finds at least one in his pocket after everytime they catch up.

Part of knowing eachother for so long is being able to REALLY EASILY grind eachothers gears. When they escaped YHS/TS, Grian and Taurtis picked up a competitive nature with eachother and at a certain point, it's what keeps their relationship alive. They pick a fight, they split up and find ways to mess with eachother, and then the need help with something and they goof off, catch up, and go back to acting like sworn rivals

With the nature of their lives they go through long period of times without seeing eachother. Whenever they do get back together in person, everything picks up where it leaves off. They stay up all night catching up on the important points, with music quietly playing in the background.

They are both polyamorous and in an open relationship. They both struggled a long time with staying in one place, and as they both are coping with trauma and trying to grow from codependency issues, they know that they'll meet other people.

They have matching shoes . They bought a pare of canvas high top shoes in red and blue. Grian has right red and left blue and Taurtis has the other of each <3