#one of these days i will publish a fic. one of these days | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kamospeach · 3 days ago

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told you i like gentle giants so you softened up .ᐟ

plot: ceo!sukuna and the woman he was forced to marry finally learning to get along.

content warning: none at all. it's not 18+ but if i make a fic it will be.

peachy's yap: i wanna make this into a fic but im not 100% sure yet, lmk ! no smut just a small fluff to test out the waters. one last one shot coming until i go on a lil break.

this wasn't what you wanted at all. ever since you were a little girl you planned to get married to a caring man. years later give birth to a love child hold he or she in your arms as you and your loving husband smiled at one another.

that dream was gone now and here you were a year after your wedding. terrified to even knock on the door of his study knowing his temper was off the wall at the moment. when you were cooped up in your hobby room you could hear him barking orders. while you sat in silence writing novel after novel he forbade you to publish.

this was your everyday, wake up alone, eat alone, write alone, shower alone, watch movies alone, and even go to sleep alone. he was in his study night and day until his hefty body slipped into your shared bed waking you at 2am. he didn't bother to apologize he just turned away going to sleep himself. and yet you found yourself wanting to be close to sukuna.

you sighed already knowing the conversation you both were bound to have today... just like every month for the last year. you were given to him for your writing and negotiating skills. his father the previous boss offered to pay your father millions to suspend the contract at your job for you to work for them. all for money. you raised your hand knocing on the wretched door.

you and sukuna moved into this house 6 months ago and it felt like you'd been locked away in a tower. although sukuna never listened to your ideas or let you have your way about anything he left the house details to you. he stood back as you worked with the sketchy architect who purposely looked down your blouse (his words).

he let you pick out the number of rooms, and bathrooms. the ceiling height, the shape of the pool, even how many patio chairs you wanted. he let you decorate the house pick the colors, even would let you throw splashes of pink and purple where ever you pleased. but you never did it, you didn't want to do it if not with sukuna.

but to sukuna none of this mattered because his work was more important. in his words he said 'i'll let you deal with less important matters. at least im positive you won't fuck that up.' did that statement hurt? hell yeah but even then you still wanted to be close to him.

"s...sukuna?" you stuttered waiting to hear his gruff voice.

"get in here." he said sternly and you pushed the heavy doors open, struggling at the weight. once you pushed in you stood by the door hands behind your back fingers laced. "sit." he said pointing to the chair in front of his desk and you scurry not wanting to anger him.

"i'm sorry i didn't come sooner i was writing and i had a idea i couldn't lose." you plead his eyes never left yours. he face expression neither annoyed nor pleased.

"why must you continue writing, when you have a duty to fulfill here." he grumbled and you looked down at your thumbs.

"sukuna you wont let me go with you to negotiate that's all m'good for." you say and he scoffs at your excuse.

"you are here to write contracts and negotiate deals you have not done any of that over the last year!" he said his voice raising, by no means were you a push over. scared of this big, brolic, hunk definitely but one thing you'll never be is a punk.

"you have yet to assign me any work. i know what you'll say 'you should come ask me if there's anything to do' but you are my boss. you instruct i follow, i refuse to do anything for you if you can not request it on your own." your reply was calm, you didn't want to anger him further.

"i don't want to overwhelm you," he sighs. his strict facade dropping as he handed you papers and you hum. looking down at the papers it was full of stats and numbers that made your head spin. "this is everyday work for me, i need your help but i must figure it out alone."

"the numbers are a bit crazy but it's not much to find a way to make a deal that'll pretty up the numbers." you tell him and he nods.

"how?" he asked and you looked up at him. this was the first time sukuna had asked for your help. you were shocked that he even let you know that he needed help.

"i mean your the statistics man. once you work out the numbers we can talk negotiating." you tell him with a smile hoping the sly compliment of him being good with numbers didn't slip past him. his red eyes looked up at you through his thick lashes. the corner of his lips tugging upwards as if he wanted to smile and couldn't.

this day was the first day you sat next to sukuna behind his desk. your knees touched and even that amount of contact was enough for you. you helped him clean up his desk and he didn't object he just said 'make sure you put them where i tell you'. and you did picking up the papers on his desk and organizing them for him. placing them in different stacks based off who and what they were from.

little did you know sukuna admired your every move. he watched how you walked around his office complaining about how dull it was. how your curls bounced with every step you took. he watched you search up paint colors and decor for his office. not once did this distract him, he either hummed in agreement or disagreement as he worked on the numbers.

even days later the connection between sukuna and you began to grow. he listened to your opinions and even stepped out of his office during the day. he came to your writing room to sit and drink coffee with you at 3am when you felt like you had a good idea. he even showed you the room you called the 'junk room' that was quite literally filled with sukuna's junk. he pulled out an electric guitar bragging about how it was signed by one of the best.

he tells you the name as you face scrunches up in confusion never hearing of this man ever. but even your disinterest in that didn't deter his sheer audacity and gall. he called you a degenerate and said you were a bug under a rock. you replied with 'more like a boulder' as you looked him up and down judgingly.

this comment made sukuna laugh, yes actually laugh. from that day you never held in a joke, letting anything on your mind loose. sometimes sukuna would look at you as if you said the stupidest shit on earth. most times he'd shake his head with an endearing smile but 2 times out of 10 he'd laugh.

day after day the more time you spent with sukuna the more you were pulled out of the depression. you watched movies of families with a smile even thinking about having a child with that demon.

in return sukuna became more comfortable approaching you. initially he was scared to anger you or say something that would hurt your feelings. heading his father's warning 'don't talk to her too much. you know how you are, you'll hurt her feelings.' so he listened avoided starting conversation, leaving the bed before you woke up and coming in after you fell asleep. ate in his office and never ever entered your writing room.

that day you came in and told him he was your boss changed his brain chemistry. his father was wrong, he wouldn't hurt your feelings because you wanted him to act like your boss. you could dish it out and take it. that day was when sukuna thought to himself 'i could really get used to this'.

that's why after a month of the two of finally getting along sukuna instructed you to meet him at the dining table. dining table was a stretch as it only had 2 chairs. as you waited for him assuming it was about work you were shocked for sukuna to slam down your houses floorplan.

"it's about time we made this house into a home don't ya think?" he asked looking at you and you smiled. and the two of you sat there all night you sipping on a shirley temple and he drank whiskey. he promised he'd make you cocktails from now on since you found out he was a bartender for all of 3 months.

you planned and brainstormed until the next morning. you were leaned on the table drool coming out of your mouth. sukuna smiled at how comfortable you had became around him. he lifted you and carried you up the stairs. that was the first day sukuna felt like he was really a husband. that day was when sukuna swore to himself that he would be a husband.

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uranometrias · 3 days ago

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an ode to fake hatred — dean winchester

→ premise: the one where sam notices the exact moment dean starts to view you as someone more than just a third party on their mission to locate john winchester!

→ pairing: dean winchester x fem!reader

→ warnings: crack <3 , very short, mostly in sam's pov. takes place sometime during s1. reader is described to have lost a significant other <3

→ a/n: this is actually an excerpt from my dean x female! oc fic that i published on wattpad, but i thought it'd be cute to publish as a short little imagine too! <3

You had never felt like much more than a weapon to be wielded. Something to smite, to kill, and to be used. Never destined to be more than the thing forged to bring someone else to their destiny. Sitting in the Impala though, brought you a happy exception.

You never felt like anything outside of normal sitting inside that car.

You lets your toes wiggle as they sit up on the dashboard, knowing full well that the moment Dean catches you, he'll have your head. But, you'd filled a lot of your time with the Winchesters by getting under the skin of the eldest. He had not been happy about the fact that Sam had asked you to come along, but apparently some nightmare had him convinced you weren't safe if you were on your own.

Dean hadn't been as keen on the plan, but over time he'd warmed up to you in his own Dean-like way. You weren't sure exactly why Sam had even let you sit up front, you'd become quite accustomed to sitting in the back, familiar with every divot, every nook, cranny, and percy magazine Dean had hidden under the seats.

You'd even found having to lean in between driver and passenger seat to feel like part of the conversation between Sam and Dean, an expected part of your day-to-day schedule. Not today though, your muddied shoes had become decoration for the floor, and Sam's snorting as he takes in your polka-dotted socks.

A little childish, sure. But, they were also exceptionally comfy. Especially when she was forced to wear boots and sneakers most times of the day. You offer sam your middle finger in response to his snort, and that serves to make him chuckle. The sound helps to ease some of the tension you felt. Without meaning to, your eyes scan the outside of the car, and you hate the way your eyes light up of their at the sight of Dean finally coming out of the gas station.

His hands are full of all sorts of junk, and his smiling like the cat that ate the canary. You know nothing good could come out of it. You smack your teeth the second Dean's opening the passenger door, poking his head in, and chucking the entire pile right at you. Snacks smack your face, raining down like a junk-food shower. It makes you swing at him, just barely missing his face as he jerks away, shutting the car door behind him.

You find your lips curving up into a small fond smile when you hear the way your retaliatory actions make him chuckle. Sam is watching you closely, eyes jumping from you and then to his brother as Dean stands outside and pumps the gas. You're so caught up in watching Dean that you don't even notice the way Sam is reading you like a book.

He was no dummy, and he thanked his lucky stars that as the days began to roll together the arguments that used to fill up the time between you and Dean had started becoming far and few in between. It was precisely why he was sitting in the back, he had a bit of a hypothesis he was testing out. He'd never push a grieving person back into the dating fray, Lord knows he wasn't ever going to be over Jess.

But... there was something oddly poetic about the way you and Dean, two people who were a lot more alike than either dared to admit seemed to have found this new rhythm.

There was a quiet push and pull, both of you tiptoeing closer and closer to some massive fork in the road that would spin you down a different path forever.

Sam wasn't sure which way you two were headed though, not completely. Especially because tender looks when the other wasn't looking was not quite enough to prove anything. If it were all of Dean's taunts about you and Sam being in love would have a bit more merit.

Sam leans back, caught off guard when Dean returns, sliding into the car, and digging through the pile you'd let partially spill onto the floor, before finally offering him his own assortment of junk to quiet the grumbling of his stomach.

He hates the way you all live sometimes, but he knows your profession makes it hard to be too picky. As the impala comes back to life, Sam is looking between Dean and you again.

You're kicking your feet happily, mouth full of what looked like your favorite gas-station snacks, as well as something else that looked more like Dean's favorite. It was small things like that, that you did deliberately to garner a reaction from Dean.

The two Winchesters catch eyes in the mirror, and Sam is certain he looks smug as he stares down his obvious older brother. His eyebrow then quirks at the way Dean suddenly seems to take in the way you're eating his food, before his eyes jump to your feet perched up on the dashboard.

Sam chokes on a laugh the second Dean's hand flies out and swats at your feet. You let out a shocked gasp, glare pinned straight on the oldest. "What the hell's your problem?" you seethe as Dean's eyes roll.

"Get your damn feet down." he demands, swatting at your foot again.

It makes you smack your teeth, popping his hand as a small tussle ensues with Dean trying his hardest to remove your foot from off the dash. "You're lucky enough to be sitting in the front, and you wanna go 'head and mess it up." he scolds. Sam's stifling a snort, watching as you lean over the center console to flick his ear.

You don't move your feet, in fact you let your body slump until your feet were near touching the windshield, and Sam's eyes are back on Dean, almost wondering what he'll do next. "Oh, nice. That's real mature." Dean grumbles, but there's no real bite behind the words, and you seem to know as much. What with the way you smile up at him in a way that makes your eyes close, and exposes all your teeth.

"I don't get paid to be mature." you retort. "It's actually my life's mission to piss you off, Deano. Deal with it." you mutter with a shrug.

Sam notes the moment Dean's eyes seem to soften as he stares at your side profile. You're looking ahead though, no longer giving him your attention. "Well trust me, you're doing a damn good job." Dean's sarcasm makes Sam huff out a laugh, the quiet nose ignored by you and Dean once more. It was always like that with you two. Easy to get lost in the moment and forget who else could possibly be around.

"Good, I'll be here all week."

"Someone kill me now." Dean grumbles, and this makes you turn your head, jaw dropped as you gasp dramatically.

"Take that back." you demand as Dean's eyes roll at your dramatics. "You love me, and you know it." you accuse, finger pointing right at him as it jabs into his cheek, pushing his head away from the road. A nuisance, that's what you were, the kind that lingered under his skin, and all in his mind. He hated you most times, liked you a lot more than normal at other times. It was a nauseating experience.

It wasn't like you were unattractive, you were just annoyingly sweet towards Sam, oftentimes getting him in a way Dean didn't. If he was honest, it was the most annoying part of your whole arrangement, feeling like the stranger with his own brother.

You called him Sammy like it was the name he'd been birthed with, and he never had any quips or qualms about it. And you'd tug at his arm like a silent shadow, saying everything with your eyes when he'd look at her. No matter how tired, or exhausted he might have been, he always, always understood exactly what you were trying to convey.

And when he'd fall asleep in the front seat of the impala, you'd slip multi-colored scrunchies from off your wrists and make ponytails in the shaggy mop of hair he'd sported, and never once received more than a playful eye roll. He laughed at all your jokes, laughed until he couldn't breathe. He smiled, and let it reach his eyes.

He listened to every incessant ramble of yours. Never complaining, never telling you to shut up, only listening devotedly. And you talked, a lot. Talked about anything and nothing at all.

You were annoying, Dean knew that from the very first night you'd met. You grated on every single last nerve he had, and seemed so oblivious to just how unwanted your presence was. You laughed too loud, ate too slow, asked too many questions.

You forced yourself into conversations that didn't concern you, and made every motel room, every space they stepped into your own. Even now, your perfume filled the impala, making it smell much to sweet for the job you did, for the sort of life you lived. You were just wildly out of place, and Dean hated you for it.

Still, he turns his head back towards you, taking you in as you continued to gawk at him like he'd really wounded you, and he smirks. Mostly because he knew you were only playing up your dramatics to fill the empty spaces of the road trip. "Do I know that?" he queries, and it makes your eyes narrow. "Believe me, sweetheart. The only thing keeping you from becoming a hitchhiker is Sam's dumb little crush on you." he says firmly, and you snort.

Sam scoffs, because he doesn't have a crush on you. Not really.

"That was almost convincing." you reply. "But, your heart's just not in it." and with that, you're effectively shutting him up. You kick your feet some more, ultimately getting bored of the action, and deciding to sit up straight. Your feet though, don't touch the ground, instead you sit criss cross applesauce, and go back to eating your 'breakfast'

"Shut up." he gripes back, and you go through the motions of pretending to zip your lips. Your eyes wander, a devilish grin wiggling onto your face as you take in the radio. You're trying your best to get your hand on the dial, gasping when Dean's hand whips out and stops you. ''Would you just sit still?" he demands, and you want to scream. Mostly because road trips with the Winchesters could go on for hours, and what did you have if not your ability to piss him off?

"Would you just sit still!" you mock him, voice dropping a few octaves. "It won't kill you to listen to something outside of -" and you turn to look back at Sam. "What did you call it? Mullet Rock's greatest hits?" you call back to your very first hunt partnered up with the boys. "I happen to know that if you just flip your dumb cassette over, you'll like what you hear." you say, and Dean's shaking his head at you.

"My car, my rules, princess."

"You're the princess." you shoot back gruffly.

"You two are unbelievable." Sam comments, and that shuts you and Dean up instantly. Dean's grip on the wheel is tightening just slightly, all traces of humor escaping him for the moment, as you pivot your entire body, facing the window as you go back to quietly eating chips. Sam's not sure what's gotten into the both of you, if it had something to do with the fact that you weren't alone and were behaving as such, or if you both had just realized just how obvious you were being with your interest.

There's a brief moment where none of you are talking, only the quiet thrum of whatever was playing from the radio filling the space. That is until Dean's hands, quick as lightning are crossing the car to snatch the bag of chips from your grasp. You gasp exaggeratedly, and Sam's stifling another laugh, because Dean's pretending to be so unbothered. Grumbling something about spending extra money on snacks for you when you spent all your time eating his shit anyway.

Sam witnesses the second Dean sets the bag in a space that's perfectly accessible to the both of you. Cutting eyes at you, as you narrow your eyes at him, before slyly letting your hand move to the bag. Sam supposed this could serve as the answer he needed for his hypothesis, his eyes catching Dean's again in the mirror. Though, there's no smirk on his face this time, in fact, no smugness in his eyes at all instead... he finds that he's happy for his brother.

Even if the idiot didn't know why yet.

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ageless-aislynn · 2 days ago

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I was probably around 12 when I wrote my first Star Trek TOS fanfic in the '80s, without ever even having an idea there would one day be such a thing as "the Internet" to share things like fic. The first thing that I wrote to share was a Phantom of the Opera fic for a fanzine that went under before it was published in the '90s. 🤷‍♀️ The first thing I wrote to share that I actually posted somewhere was a Lord of the Rings self-insert thing back around 2002. But I consider my first "real" fic to have been a pair of Doctor Who drabbles posted on my Livejournal back in 2008, right before my 36th birthday. 😎��

authors!!

quick question...

also can you remember where you first uploaded your first ever fanfic??

#fanfic #fanfic poll #i am a fandom old what can i say #even though i was kinda late to the internet #i didn't get online for the first time until 2001 #😉

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wishcamper · 2 days ago

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happy @sjmromanceweek!

here is my entry for day three: First "I Love You

Under the Egg Moon

A modern Nessian AU ft archaeologist!Nesta and boat captain!Cassian

Read here or on ao3!

CW: explicit consensual sexual content

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wishcamper lore: when i was a college student (re: lost as fuck, re: no long-term thinking) through a series of random events i ended up on an archaeological dig in Cyprus. much of this fic is inspired by that summer, including a lot of the details of dig life, schedules, antagonistic animals, and how it ping-pongs from utterly boring to genuinely life-changing. and while i was unfortunately too consumed with my shitty boyfriend to hook up with the hot boat captain, fiction has the power to right all wrongs. and now: her.

(See the end of the work for more notes!)

Nesta sends a curse to whatever god made the sun so fucking hot.

She hopes it isn’t the one the ancient peoples of this island once worshiped, because she really needs this dig to be productive. But six weeks in the Cesere summer and all they have to show for it are a few shards of pottery, a blank amulet, and a fuckton of dirt. Not enough to write anything publishable, and nowhere close to what she needs to get funded for another year.

Nesta makes another pass over her three-by-three section, pickax chipping away one centimeter-thick layer of red earth at a time.

The trappings of a productive site are all here—isolated island off the mainland, no way to reach it except by boat. The ruins even abut a protected wildlife area, some ancestral seagull nesting ground, though the birds haven’t gotten the memo about leaving their side of the island alone. Every surreptitious trip into the high grass to use the bathroom becomes a WWII style air raid, feathery Luftwaffe dive-bombing from above.

She sends a curse to them, too.

“Let’s break here,” Nesta pants, and Gwyn nods from where she squints over her theodolite. At least they’ll have a CG map of the building’s visible walls by the end of the summer, if nothing else.

“I can’t tell if my eyes are wobbling or there’s an impeding earthquake.” Gwyn swipes a freckled arm across her forehead.

“It would get us out of explaining this fucking fiasco.”

A sharp pull on the whistle around her neck and a relieved groan echoes across from every corner of the excavation pit. Sweat-soaked students pour the last of their water bottles over their heads before they begin to pack all their equipment into thick black tubs. Nesta makes her way over to their makeshift staging area under a tarp to survey the artifacts from the day: more random shards of pottery, and a rock vaguely shaped like a triangle.

“I thought it looked like an arrowhead,” a sandy-haired boy offers as he hovers behind her. She should really get better with names.

“It’s a rock,” Nesta assures him. “And no one used stone arrows in the era we’re studying, anyway.”

Whatshisname deflates. Then works himself back up again, clearly having practiced whatever speech comes next.

“Dr. Archeron, do you think we could have the day off tomorrow?” he asks.

Nesta feels the expression fall over her face—the one that sends students shuffling from her office mumbling apologies after she makes her stance on grade-grubbing very clear.

“No.”

“It’s just that there’s this concert in Greater Cesere tonight, and we've already figured out the carpool—”

“I don’t care how hungover you are. You’re expected at the dock at 5:45, just like every morning.”

“Yeah. Of course.” His eyes go shifty. “We’ll all be there.”

This is the part of the dig when the less-dedicated get squirrely, when they get tired of instant coffee and dirt in their teeth and lizards in their beds. Nesta knows it’s normal, but she feels the heat rise in her throat, their mission on the edge of a chasm of underfunded failure. It would feel good to tear into him, but there are course evals to think of, after all.

“Go help Dr. Berdara with the surveying equipment,” she grouses instead.

“Yes, Dr. Archeron.”

Whatshisname scurries off. Nesta can’t help but smirking to herself, knowing she’s just given him enough fodder to become the prince of whatever night out they’re about to have, enough sympathy to get laid, even.

As a woman among arrogant Indiana Jones cosplayers, the scary reputation is a necessary evil. As is the horrid plod down the side of the island where their boat awaits, laden with trowels and tarps and empty jugs of water.

The Ceserean Historical Bureau earns the curse for that one.

Everything in, everything out, every day.

What a fucking mess.

But nothing this summer compares to the utter disaster that waves from the bow of the modest motorboat. Every six-foot-four, tanned, tattooed bit of him.

“Find any treasure today?” Cassian asks, as always. Nesta ignores the hand he offers to help her onboard, brushing past to take her usual seat in the back.

She made the mistake the first morning of sitting on the bow of The Windhaven, wanting to be visible among her students, a guidepost. But it put her directly in the line of burning hazel eyes, ones that danced with all of the terrible things Nesta would let him do to her if she gave less of a shit.

She needs to ask Emerie about curse tablets after the next department meeting.

“There’s a legend about this island, you know.” Cassian hops up onto the side of the boat and braces against the center console, students streaming to and fro. “That it used to be the nest of a great bird. One day an egg appeared, only it never hatched. A wave came and swept it into the sky, where it became the moon.”

“Charming. Wish the birds up there now had a bit more reverence.”

“Are you using the trick I taught you?”

She boarded one afternoon with a nick on her ear from not dodging quickly enough. Cassian advised her to hold a metal dustpan over her head. Nesta felt like an idiot the first time, but even she had to admit that it worked.

What didn’t work was how flustered she got when he insisted on cleaning her cut, weathered hands so gentle when they brushed her skin.

“I see.” That idiotic smirk made her cheeks heat. “You are, but you’re mad about it.”

And as the boat bumps through the surf back to shore, Nesta tries to convince herself of anything but that.

After their first week on the dig, she and Gwyn shared a very drunken and giggly night when Nesta confessed her attraction to their roguish captain. It’s been a while since she’s really had her world rocked, and the breakneck pace of the semester left opportunities for dating thin on the ground. Gwyn decided he would manhandle her like the flowing-haired men on the covers of grocery store harlequin romances. They’d laughed and laughed as the bottle of brandy drained, quoting their favorite lines from the days they’d get stoned with Emerie and do dramatic readings to stave off grad school delirium.

His growls of pleasure filled the tent, drowning out the screams of the wounded and dying.

“But Cassian would definitely put those big-ass hands to good use,” Gwyn affirmed. “Respectfully. Like pulling up an anchor.”

What a horrible mistake. Now it’s all Nesta can think about as the big-ass hand in question closes around her upper arm once they disembark, once the students are busy grumbling in the apothiki.

“Go out with me tonight.”

Cassian is smiling crookedly, as if ready to protect his face with a dustpan if this doesn’t go well.

“No,” Nesta answers without thinking. It’s not worth the trouble, especially with her own crew on the verge of mutiny. It's not the first time he's asked, and it won't be the last. Cassian’s smile widens, undeterred.

“Stay in with me, then.”

A huff escapes her, and he’s still holding her arm, somehow hotter than the sun that's driving rivulets of sweat down her back.

“Your students will all be gone, I heard them talking about that show in Greater Cesere.”

Nesta swallows.

“No one has to know.” He’s inches from her now, so tall he casts a shadow over her face. “You should see the things we do in my dreams.”

Fantasies flash through her mind, that strong body pressing her back against a door. Cassian’s full lips on her neck, hands roaming lower.

Wanting, wanting so thick and sharp it almost hurts spears its way through her. The desires Nesta pushes away come roaring back, an angry sea kept at bay by the levees she’s built around her heart. The hard outer shell, the layers of dirt under which she’s buried the very idea of wanting.

It’s an escape for her, rifling through the lives of people long-dead. There are parts of the past she’d like to let go of. Childhood shit, disappointing men. Hurts too unwieldy to even think in words. Her sister Feyre says Nesta is an ice queen, but she feels more like a golem, a being of earth and stone piloted only by what’s expected of her.

Nesta doesn’t get to want this. Can’t stand the idea of it being used against her.

“Ignorance is my only refuge, then.”

His eyebrow quirks, and there’s a scar through it, she notices, a tiny slash where the hair no longer grows. Cassian is looking at her like she’s just revealed something, though she can’t imagine what. A lemon-scented wind blows through the docks, setting the boats to rocking. Setting her heart to galloping.

What a mess.

“See you in the morning, Dr. Archeron,” Cassian says before releasing her, sauntering back toward The Windhaven to prep it for the next day.

After clearing the bathroom of its resident lizards, Nesta spends the next hour letting a cool shower hit her in the face, trying to determine what on earth he’s just discovered.

At dawn, the dock at is deserted.

“Of course. Of fucking course!” Nesta grouses as she throws her hands in the air. “I’m failing all those little shits.”

“Cmon Nes,” Gwyn says blearily, rubbing at her eyes. “We’ve been going nonstop for weeks. They deserve to let off a little steam.”

Good professor showing up again to play her part. Gwyn has always been the more forgiving of the two of them. Nesta rips out the rubber band to redo her braid, hair already frizzing in the humid morning air.

“They can do that at the dig wrap party. At this rate there won’t be anything to celebrate.”

“What are we celebrating?”

As if summoned by her ire, Cassian appears then, swinging his boat keys on a long lanyard. Curly black hair flows down to his shoulders, hips loose in the swagger of a man who’s either been up for hours or never went to bed at all.

Gwyn beams. “The dig party next week! You’re invited! Everyone who’s helped out can come, not just us. We couldn’t have done this without you!”

“Which isn’t saying much. Can we get going?” Nesta says impatiently. “I’d like to get this day over with before I want to kill anyone else.”

Cassian grins and fall into step with Nesta as they trudge toward the storehouse, murmuring, “I thought I was the only one you wanted to kill, sweetheart.”

Nesta has to concentrate hard on the rocky path beneath them, to keep from tripping.

It takes a while to shuttle all the equipment from the apothiki with only three of them, and by the time the mainland starts to recede Nesta is sweaty, grouchy, and already plotting the anti-recommendation letters she’ll write when asked.

She doesn’t want to care this much, to be this hurt. Maybe that’s why she accepts Cassian’s offer to help them disembark after only two refusals. It’s definitely not because his biceps look delicious when he hefts a plastic tub full of Gwyn’s surveying equipment over his head, tanned thighs flexing under faded shorts as he climbs the steep slope.

And how is she supposed to refuse his curious questions after that, when he’s looking around the empty dirt pit like he’s never seen something so interesting? When he picks up a chisel and says, Put me to work, Doc, in that magical, wavy accent, how is she supposed to say no?

Nesta blames her students.

They go to work in the same corner where she was toiling yesterday. Nesta shows him how to read the earth for signs of disturbance, the right pressure to apply to his pickax. He’s a fast learner, thank god, and he tells her about his childhood on the mainland while they sift through layers of nothing, leading to a very unfortunate discovery.

Cassian is funny. And not like the men in Velaris she’s used to who think they’re funny, who took an improv class once and think that qualifies them to muse about taking up stand-up comedy for the next decade. He’s quick, unruffled by the heat and the boredom, perfectly content to narrate their work from the perspective of the seagulls like the two of them are subject of a nature documentary. Nesta thinks the day would be entirely wasted if not for the laughs he pulls from her creaky lungs, the ones no one outside her close friends have heard in years.

It's dangerous, to get so carried away. The earth blurs before her, panic igniting even as she never wants this to stop.

Until she chips away in one spot, and a pinkish shard of pottery emerges.

The piece is strange, disjointed. A seam runs through the middle as if it’s been repaired, three small holes drilled in a triangular pattern. She picks up another piece and finds the same just as Cassian brushes away at a grooved stone, a pair of praying hands etched into the surface.

“That’s the symbol for the Mother.” Bits of information whiz through her brain, snippets of lectures and articles. She’s seen a piece like this before at the National Museum of Velaris, in their room dedicated to the ancient Cesereans.

“It’s a hearthstone.” The kind that only sat in permanent dwellings, the heart of a house. Nesta can’t hold back the tremble in her voice when her eyes connect with Cassian’s and she says, “We’re in the kitchen.”

Excitement crackles.

As if traveling through time, Nesta sees in her imagination how it must’ve risen around them.

And the pottery shard she’s still holding starts to take shape too, the form of a bowl following the curves, layers of time peeling back. And despite what her undergrad Classics professor said, peering into the past is not at all like looking down into a well.

It’s like a hand reaching out and grabbing hers. Thrilling and terrifying, the long stretch of history condensed to a door that’s just been opened.

“Look at this,” she says, tracing the line as Cassian hovers over her shoulder. “It broke, and someone repaired it. Turned it into a strainer.” No visitor would’ve bothered. “Think about the last person who touched this.”

Nesta pictures a woman washing apricots, like the ones candied in sugar she eats from the fruit stall when they get off the dig site every day. Of the mug Emerie bought her on clearance in an airport that says I’m a pretty big deal in the spearfishing community, the one she glued the handle back onto because it makes her laugh so much. She pictures someone digging that mug from the wreckage of Velaris two thousand years from now, holding that mended handle and laughing, too.

Cassian’s eyes are bright when she steals a glance back at him, emotion shimmering.

“I could be related to them.”

“You could.”

He swipes at his face, arm coming away wet. Clears his throat. “Why would someone come all the way out here?”

“That’s the question. It must’ve been significant.”

Her theory is that some ritual activity occurred here, she tells him. Watches a quiet admiration creep across his face as she details her rationale. Whether he understands a word of it or not, she can feel the pull between their bodies, the dusty air charged between them.

“They had lives and feelings,” Nesta finds herself saying. “They wanted things. I think that deserves to be remembered.”

Cassian keeps staring at her in that sun-bright way, and Nesta doesn’t know what they’re talking about anymore. Doesn’t know what to do when he reaches to take her hand, closing his own around it and the pottery shard she still holds.

“Thank you for this.” Gravel lines his voice, and she wants to run it through a sifter to find all the meaning inside. “I’m glad none of your students showed up today.”

“Why, so you can take credit?”

“No. I don’t want to share this with anyone else.” He’s blocking out the glare now, leaving her cool in his shadow. “You make me feel greedy, Nesta.”

A gull cries far-off, but Nesta can only hear the sound of her own heart racing. Cassian tips his head toward the sun and it shines down on his smiling face, warming down through the stone.

It’s only the beginning, more and more pieces unearthed from the ruins of the kitchen over the rest of the morning, a veritable treasure trove. He helps them load everything into apothiki once ashore, whistling as he carries out Nesta’s militant instructions. With an eye on the door for hungover students, Cassian pulls her in with sea-rough hands and kisses her like he wants to do much more.

His mouth tastes like earth.

Nesta doesn’t sleep that night. Instead she catalogs every piece as a high moon rises, a waxing gibbous near to hatching.

The dig wrap party is euphoric, and not just because everyone’s been over-served. There are bigwigs from the Historical Bureau here to marvel over their finds, a whole kitchen’s worth, and the students can see the dollars raining down like the leaves of the cypress trees strung with lights.

It should feel good. Better than this, anyway, because as Nesta nurses her lone glass of wine, she can’t help wondering why the place inside her that should be swollen with pride is empty.

An old feeling, one she’s never been able to make sense of.

“Is your boyfriend here yet?” Gwyn smirks when Nesta shoves at her friend’s shoulder. They don’t have to wait long before a crowd of students forms around one end of the bar, a familiar curly-haired head poking well above the rest.

“Can I steal you?” Cassian says once he finally makes his way over, after extricating himself from a gaggle of doe-eyed undergrads. Nesta feels like she’s swallowed a huge dirt clod, but Gwyn answers for her.

“Of course you can! Nesta hates these things, don’t you, Nes?”

“I do,” Nesta barely manages before his big-ass hand is closing around her own, pulling her out back of the restaurant they’ve rented to a small goat path that leads toward the sea.

The Windhaven bobs in the current, bumping gently against the dock. After many reassurances, Nesta lets him pilot them to a secluded cove, the hull cutting through the black water like a sharpened blade, the past and present dividing.

“The land speaks to you here,” Cassian says when he tosses down the anchor at last, pulling the extra line taut. “I thought you might like to hear what it has to say.”

“Why?”

The wind tugs at the hem of her sundress.

“It’s probably saying thank you. For not letting those people be forgotten.”

He says it so simply, like it’s nothing. Nesta braces her hands against the bow, trying to find some sense in the spaces between the stars.

It’s completely cloudless, and this far out there’s no light pollution, so she can see meteors cascading across the sky like rain. Cassian comes to stand beside her, shoulders brushing.

“Look look, it’s the space station!” he says after a moment, tracking a finger across the sky before he raises a hand and waves. Nesta snorts.

“You know there’s no way the astronauts can see you.”

“I know,” Cassian says, shrugging, and god she wants to kiss him. “But just in case, I don’t want to leave them hanging.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Nesta asks, more harshly than she means to. His answering smile is nervous, tight.

“Cassian.”

“No, I mean—never mind. It doesn't matter.”

It’s a very early mid-life crisis. It must be. Why else should she be so fixated on the way this weird-ass man’s mind works, how he seems to find wonder in the smallest things? And why is she jealous?

This is a mistake, undoubtedly. Nesta has ground herself down to the bone to get where she is. Fought her way through school, through the sludge of academia, been called difficult and prickly and a bitch in her quest to be taken seriously. Worn every label as a badge of bloody honor. Suffocated the part of her that just wants to let go and say fuck it all, to do something she wants instead of what she has to.

"Doesn't it?"

Cassian is backlit by the half moon glinting off the water, stray curls springing free from the bun atop his head.

And then he’s kissing her, and his mouth tastes like lemon and something else, something addictive. It’s the brandy sours that are as bizarre as they are popular here, that Nesta now doesn’t know how she’s gone so long without. Her fingers skate down skin so warm, like it’s drunk in the sunlight and trapped it inside him.

“Nes,” he breathes once they finally part, and she digs her nails into his shoulders, drawing a sharp inhale.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Yes, Dr. Archeron.”

Exhaustion collides with her better judgment, and Nesta pushes him back to sit on the bow, swings a leg over his hips so she’s straddling his lap. Plunges her hands into all that lush, dark hair, and says, “Fuck it.”

It all flows from somewhere deep within her, the brush of hands against skin, lips against lips. She stays so locked away, never allowed to feel the good things she works so hard to achieve. Locked up, locked out, looking into everything that feels like it should belong to her but she can never reach.

Nesta doesn’t know why this is the moment everything shifts for her, and even when she looks back years later it’ll never quite make sense. The alchemy of the island breeze, the deep black night between the stars, all greater than the sum of its parts.

And she lets herself have it. Each wicked, wild bit of her comes out of their dark corners and she’s laughing, head tipped back in euphoria and who the fuck cares that she has no idea where her bra is, whether or not she’ll get tenure. It doesn’t fucking matter. There’s value in being stupid, she thinks, wondering why she’s tried all this time to be so smart.

“You look like you’re swimming in a sea of stars,” Cassian says, looking up at her. Nesta smiles when he tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, fingers of his other hand tangling with hers.

“I wouldn’t have pegged you as a poet.”

The half moon hangs above them, cracked open.

“Every man can be a poet with the right inspiration.”

His hands are on her breasts then, pinching and squeezing, and she doesn’t have to force the moans that travel up her throat. They sound different like this, when they’re not for show.

It’s a kind of madness, being touched by Cassian. Like he’s weaving some spell through every cell in her body, enchanting them all to crave him, to want more more more even as she can barely take it.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted this,” he insists between nips at her throat, the sensitive spot behind her ear.

“No, but I’m feeling good about myself tonight so I’ll guess it was the first time you saw me.”

He laughs against her chest, hands squeezing her hips. “Close. It was the first time I watched you walk away.” Cassian squeezes her hips again for emphasis, roaming down to grab a handful of her ass.

“I should’ve left you on the island.”

“Good. Then you’d have to come back for me.”

Of course he has a condom in the boat’s center console, and he grins when she rolls her eyes.

“Sailors have to be prepared, I suppose?”

“I’m a poet, not a saint, sweetheart.”

The boat rocks them both as she sinks down onto his lap again. All velvety, warm softness in the night air, the breeze dancing, swirling upward, igniting.

They both want to go slow, want to savor it, but their discipline is beginning to tire. Nesta can’t help picking up her pace, fissures of pleasure splitting her apart. She tells herself there will be time to indulge later, hoping it’s not a lie.

It’s not.

Students trickle out over the next few days, flights home or to other far-flung destinations to decompress before fall semester. Nesta pushes her flight back once, and then again. It’s hard to remember why she wants to go back, when everything she’s been looking for is right here.

They swim in grottos, pick lemons from the tree outside his door and spritz them over fresh-caught fish, in the brandy sours she’s finally perfected. One night he licks the juice off her finger before hoisting her onto the counter, going to his knees between her spread thighs a moment later, his favorite place to be.

“I’ll visit you,” Cassian promises against her skin when they’re splayed out in his bed later, her temporary home the last two weeks. “I’ll do whatever it takes so this doesn’t end here.”

I love you, Nesta thinks as they stand outside his car at the Arrivals gate. Doesn’t say it, because this isn’t a fucking Hallmark movie. You haven’t been able to see someone off inside the airport in twenty years. No one is running past families and old ladies and men with briefcases, but they still kiss just as desperately amidst the smell of gasoline from idling cars, the unrelenting eye of the midday sun.

I love you.

She’s not ready to unearth it yet. It sits quietly beneath to soil of her mind, waiting to be dug up.

But the shape of the thought must reach him, for when he pulls back, Cassian smiles like he already knows.

Nesta smiles too, in case whoever’s strainer is packed in her carry-on can feel it travel down her arm through the handle, in case the astronauts are up there somewhere in the blue, smiling back.

Notes:

History fun facts: the amulet mentioned in the beginning is not always what we typically think of as a talisman or protective charm. some amulets during the Ptolemaic period served more like seals or signatures, where a carving would be done in the bottom of a small stone block. The amulet could then be dipped in ink and stamped on contracts, letters, and bills of sale. Many amulets have been found with holes drilled through the top, suggesting they may have been worn on strings around the neck or on a belt. Very helpful for lay people who didn’t know how to write. I also chose Cesere as the fictional location as a nod to the actual dig site I worked on, which was a temple of Apollo commissioned by Cleopatra. She commissioned a number of them across Cyprus to commemorate the birth of her son, Caesarion, whose father of course was Julius Caesar. Historical record tells us these temples were places where young boys (age 3-4) would go for the first time to spend the night away from their mothers. There they would engage in various rituals and ceremonies to symbolize their transition, kind of like Boy Scout camp. During the dig I found a blank amulet, which suggests people could’ve been carving them on the island, perhaps a token of the boys’ entry into the next phase of life. Caesarion himself was named co-ruler of the Egypt by Cleopatra in 44BC, at the age of 3. He unfortunately only lived to the age of 16/17, when he was captured by Julius Caesar’s successor, Octavion, in Alexandria (Caesar had already burned the library by this point). Upon Caesarion’s capture, Octavion is purported to have said “"Too many Caesars is not good”, a play on the famous Homeric idiom “too may rulers is not good”, aka too many cooks in the kitchen. After conquering Alexandria, Octavion likely had Caesarion executed to avoid challenges to his status as emperor, ending the once-powerful Ptolemaic dynasty and officially absorbing Egypt into the Roman Empire. Finally, the mug Nesta mentions is based on a real-life mug I thought of the first time I pulled a piece of Cypriot sigillata out of the ground. Only mine was a 2008 Sarah Palin mug my dad found at the airport in Anchorage. Yes, I still have it.

#nessian #sjmromanceweek #sjmromanceweek2025 #day three: first i love you #modern au #modern nessian #nesta x cassian

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messrsrarchives · 2 days ago

Note

Hello! I adore your blog and your yaps so much I’ve been following you for a few months now and I first wanted to tell you that you do so much good! So, a huge thanks to you for using your platform for trans topics/Palestine/as well as fandom etiquette/awareness and for just being amazing!

All things aside though, I do have a question! I was wondering what your opinion on @the-dead-gay-oscars was. I stumbled upon it recently and felt kind of an icky feeling about it, because it just feels like another way of comparing fanfic to mainstream media when fanfic isn’t really meant to be like that? It’s also putting a bunch of fanfic out there for people to vote on/critique publicly, and I cant find whether or not the fanfic writers are asked for permission for their fics to be included in such an event- especially when I know a lot of people have boundaries over that kind of thing. I just wonder if it brings back that almost expectation for fanfiction to be like published modern literature/movies. I doubt anyone had the intention for it to be like that but I just don’t really like it?

Idk, it just left me feeling weird about the whole thing, but maybe I’m being over dramatic and critical over something meant to be fun, which could totally be the case. 😅

Anyways, thank you so much for what you do! Have a nice day!

hiii !! first of all!!! thank youuu 😖😖🫂🫂

and yeah,,, not a fan. idk if this mention tags them and if it does, sorry!!! just some gentle opinions 😖

idk like,, "best" categories in fandom really ick me out. and i think it can be very discouraging to others? like how does the voting work? do they select nominations and then others vote?

oh you've said they do! so yes, then it turns into "oh my work wasnt as good as the one that won" etc etc - i just think there's better ways to show appreciation than creating more pedestals in a fandom that already has a massive issue with idolisation, imposter syndrome, etc etc

and whether the authors are asked permission or not is irrelevant to me (actually,, probably worse if they are and agree in my mind)

idk. good concept, poor execution that i personally think is just discouraging and competitive when this space is for everyyyyyyone to create and enjoy without worrying whether you're better than someone else or the "best" etc etc. and yes, 100% brings expectations.

i get it was for appreciation, but i dislike the notion when really you could just comment on a fic and say you liked it, and then make a post recommending it, or rec it to your friends etc etc. you know??

we don't need awards and competition, we need community and an encouraging space where everyone feels confident to engage and write and draw and edit and do whatever it is that they do without worrying about whether they're the best at it or if they're as good as someone else

unless i get best rant poster. then it's okay. (I'M KIDDING THAT WAS A /J. THAT WAS A JOKE.)

#asks #IF THIS TAGS YOU IM SORRY #but also not really because i do hope this is constructive criticism

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dollywoo · 2 days ago

Text

J.WY | A Poet’s New Muse.

hi!! this is my first x reader fic! some slow(ish) burn fluff just in time for Valentine’s Day! i hope you enjoy! ♡

pairings: wooyoung!waiter x poet!reader ♡

synopsis: you are a troubled poet who has a poem due on love, though you are experiencing writer’s block. that is, until your favorite waiter gives you new found muse and more!~

word count: 3.2k ♡

Wooyoung would hum a gentle tune as he wiped away the mess left behind by the patrons that had just exited one of his last booths of the night. though his tune seemed happy, his mind was troubled. it was nearing closing time, and the raven haired waiter was left questioning himself, ‘why hadn’t they showed up?’

then, almost like clockwork, the abrupt sound of ringing took his attention to the fromt door, his gentle gaze setting on you. your appearance was put together and exuded pure beauty — though your mind told a different story; the raging war and suffocating feeling of being a poet with the worst case of writer’s block ever seen.

Wooyoung hadn’t looked away, even when you made eye contact it took him a bit too long to break the silence. once he did, his curtain bangs fell into his brunette orbs as he stuttered back to life. “Welcome in!” he would speak in a winded, yet cheey tone. You would try and hold back a smile at the endearing sight before you — Wooyoung all disheveled and shy just at the sight of you made you blush a bit, though you quickly recovered once your right hand gripped at your poetry book slightly. then, the waiter would bring you back from your thoughts, “I’ll show you to your table, followed me.” it seemed that Wooyoung had recovered from his previous flustered state, turning to guide you to a booth in the corner, away from the bustle of other customers.

Wooyoung brought you to this table on purpose of course, he wanted you to be able to write as much as your heart desires — no distractions. he knew exactly how you liked it because he would watch you for months, ever since you first entered the restaurant on that dreary rainy night. You were the only thing that made that night shine bright for him, despite the pouring rain and his new Chrome Hearts beanie getting ruined.

once you were seated, his arm would extend to you, handing you a menu for the restaurant with a soft smile. Your gaze would betray you, taking in the ink that adorned the lower forearm of the gorgeous man before you — thankful that those sleeves belonging to his white button up were rolled to the elbow to display this. You would be brought out of your trance at your brain screaming at you once again, ‘y/n! focus on this writing! the publishers need something to work with in the morning!’ You would tear your gaze away, giving the alluring male a gentle, “Thank you.” before peering at the menu.

tomorrow was Valentine’s Day, and you needed a love poem to hit the papers bright and early tomorrow morning, your boss was going to wring your neck if you didnt have it ready. truth be told, you were too focused on this damn poetry to even think of having your own Valentine. the irony of having to write a poem about love but not having your own is a sick prank from the world.

Wooyoung walked off to give you some time, his own face red from the encounter, he saw the way you looked at him — his rose tattoo. it has his heart beating at a rapid pace, the blush on his cheeks made his dot all too evident than before. as soon as he made it to the safety of the kitchen he approached the sink, washing his face off promptly before hearing a scoff in his direction. he didnt even have to look before the owner of the laugh started to speak, “Woo…just ask them out, you always get so flustered every night when they come in!” his coworker, Mingi would speak as he prepared an entree for one of the tables belonging to another section. “It’s like I’m watching another kdrama! I see the way they look at you too! It’s Valentine’s Day! Just go for it, Wooyoungie!” the tall male would practically whine, “The worst they can say is no~”

Wooyoung’s cheeks would heat up once more, drying away the water droplets with a paper towl from the dispenser above the sink. “Shh.. you do this EVERYTIME” the waiter would groan out in a teasing tone, throwing Mingi a mischievous glare — he was teasing the older. “Maybe one day I will! Plus, they are focusing on their poetry! I would hate to be a distraction!” Woo whined out, moving over towards Mingi who had since finished preparing the dish and was now setting it to the counter to serve. “Can’t blame me for trying!” Mingi would giggle out, hitting the bell for service. “Actually, I think Jongho went to the bathroom, can you take this entree to table 9?” the taller would ask, shooting the younger a gummy smile. Wooyoung rolled his eyes, “fiiinee” he would whine out in a playful tone, grabbing the entree and heading to it’s destination.

as he walked out onto the floor, his gaze would find purchase on you, watching as you began to jot down some starting lines, before ripping the paper out of the book and setting it to the side with frustration. ��See, they are busy’ He told himself, finally giving the plate to the hungry customer and then making his way back to you.

You were mumbling to yourself, trying to rack your brain of how to write of a romance that you have never had. that was until your thoughts were pulled elsewhere, the waiter was speaking again. “I am so sorry to bother you again, but are you ready to order?” those eyes, they were so gentle — so kind. Wooyoung’s eyes were the kind of brown you could fall into, swim and get lost in. it was if every constellation was held in that magnificent gaze of his. You couldn’t look away — and neither could he. the look in both your eyes gave each other the sense of yearning — of longing.

the way the waiter’s raven hair parted down the middle, framing his face with pure elegance despite his redden cheeks caused your heart to blossom with want — the want of kissing on that cute little mole of his. his hands were holding a notepad and a pen, the way each vein in his nicely sized hands showed caused your beain to wander somewhere far more sinful. your own hand would reach to the other for a moment, placing onto Wooyoung’s and gently rubbing the vein with your thumb.

“my usual, please.” you would finally speak as Wooyoung took a moment, as if your voice hadnt even registered to him just yet. but as soon as it did, his pen began to move along the notepad. afterwards, the hand that was in yours would interlock your fingers with his, his head tilting to the side as he spoke. “will be out shortly for you, my love.” he would speak with such confidence, before lifting your hand and kissing the top. he then began to walk towards the kitchen, putting your order in with Mingi.

so this was love?

your pen began to move along the page as you found some sort of muse — a love to write about. You were finished before Wooyoung would return with your food, placing your poetry book off to the side so the plate could be set before you. the waiter was silent this time, before sliding into the seat across from you. you were shocked for a moment, but absolutely thrilled to be joined by such an attractive male, one that you had been daydreaming about for what seemed like centuries.

the silence was broken much quicker this time, like Wooyoung had found some confidence after their previous interaction. “so, do you have a Valentine this year?” he would question, sipping from a glass of water that he had brought with him. his gaze wouldnt move from you — now you were the one blushing.

“no..” you would speak softly, “my publisher needed this poem by morning, so I have been way too distracted to even think of having one.”

Wooyoung would fall silent, chewing on his bottom lip that was home to another dot of his. this man was truly a work of art. “well..” his voice would trail, that confidence wavered just for a moment before the dark haired waiter regained himself. “Would you like to be my Valentine?” his voice was as smooth as silk, the words rolling off his tongue with ease — your presence gave him confidence and calmed his nerves. “I can get tomorrow night off and take you to a different restaurant, or the movies. anything you want, y/n!” he added, another blush forming on your cheeks at the sound of him saying your name.

“Yes, Wooyoung, I would love to be your Valentine!” you practically exclaimed, your meal was now long forgotten as butterflies swarmed in your stomach. was this really happening? you had never had a Valentine before.

little did you know, neither did Wooyoung, between working at the restaurant and dancing at the studio he didnt have time for love — though you were an exception.

Wooyoung’s eyes light up with pure joy, you could see sparks flying with the way he was looking at you. “Can I have your phone number, darling?” he spoke with a bright smile on his lips, handing his unlocked phone over to you. with haste, your thumbs would tap across the screen, putting your phone number in and saving your contact in his phone. once you handed his phone back, he would text your number quickly. you felt your phone buzz, looking down at it for a moment.

“text me your address, I can pick you up at 6pm!” Wooyoung spoke with a smile on his lips, attempting to contain his excitement as he slide out of the booth, placing his hand on yours and giving it a squeeze before walking off. “See you tomorrow, love.”

────୨ৎ────

it felt like forever had passed by since you had seen Wooyoung, you had turned in your poetry early that morning at the office, and you were now heading back to your apartment to get ready for your date with the man of your dreams. the two of you had been texting all day, making the solid plan to go to a restaurant that Wooyoung said was to die for — then back to your place to show Wooyoung your prized writing collection. you were so excited that as soon as you entered the door to your apartment, you locked it behind you and ran to shower. your outfit had been picked out since last night after you had came home from the restaurant. everything was gping to be perfect.

after completing your shower, it was a bit after 5pm, so you began to get dressed and do your makeup and style your hair to make sure you looked your absolute best — even though Wooyoung would think you would be beautiful even in a cardboard box.

6pm came sooner than expected, you finally finished working on your appearance and sat down on your phone, scrolling through tiktok before a knock at your door brought your attention from the screen, you quickly grabbed your bag and made your way to the door. you were dressed in a pair of your nicest white dress pants that showed off every curve in your hips and legs. this was paired with a wine red flowy blouse that showed off your star necklace that you had adorned yourself with, and then a pair of black heeled shoes.

once you opened the front door of your apartment, your own breath was taken away by the raven haired beauty infront of you. Wooyoung was adorned in a white blouse that showed off his collarbones and upperchest nicely, his sleeves rolled up to the elbow; dress pants were a wine red, the color matched the blouse of yours which was an unplanned surprise that made your smile brighten, and then paired with a pair of black shoes. despite your heeled shoes, he was still taller than you, which made your heart swoon a bit. his orbs filled with admiration gazed down upon you, his hair framing his honeykissed face perfectly, some strands were tucked behind his ears. his silver earrings shone brightly in the light that illuminated your living room, he smiled softly, reaching out to grab your hips and pull you close.

“hello there, gorgeous.” he spoke gently, his tone way more flirty than the night before. he then placed a kiss on your cheek before sliding his hands down to his sides. “our reservation is at 6:30pm, are you ready to go?” he smiled softly as you nodded, he took your hand in his and lead you out of your apartment. you stopped momentarily to lock your door before you allowed him to drag you off into the parking lot.

the drive was amazing, Wooyoung drove the whole time and asked for you to put your favorite songs on to listen to. turns out, he likes your taste; his fingers would tap along on the steering wheel to the tune of your favorite melody as he finally made the last turn and parked. “this is the place!” he spoke with a smile on his lips, turning off the engine and getting out the car, rushing over to your side to open the door for you. you both then headed to the entrance of the restaurant, hand in hand. Wooyoung was a very touchy person, he couldnt seem to keep his hands off of you.

it didnt take long for the both of you to be seated, Wooyoung had made sure to request a seat with a magnificent view of the scenery of the restaurants garden which was adorned with tomatos, potatos, assorted vegetables and a few flowers. you had seen your favorite one and pointed at it happily, his attention was on you immediately. “ooo lily of the valleys! i havent seen those in so long!” you exclaimed with excitement, covering your mouth for a moment after in embarrassment. Woo would reach over and bring your hands from your mouth, wanting you to keep talking. “my favorites are sunflowers, i dont see much of them though!” he giggled softly, giving you a reassuring smile.

moments would pass before the waiter would make his way to your table, Wooyoung’s eyes were on you once he arrived. “Hello, beautiful. are you ready to order?” the waiter of the restaurant spoke to you, Wooyoung’s jaw clenched immediately before snapping back. “they are beautiful aren’t they? MY Valentine is the most gorgeous being to ever grace this planet.” he spoke, eye contact to the waiter now as he made sure to pronounce the word ‘my’ harshly. he was already protective over you and the first date wasnt even over yet, how cute.

You giggled softly, squeezing Wooyoung’s hand before ordering a pappardelle pasta with alfredo sauce. then Wooyoung would place his order as well, which was a tortellini pasta with tomato sauce. the male handed your menus back to the waiter who left promptly without another word, he seemed to be a bit intimidated by Wooyoung.

“sorry about that, i’m not usually protective like that.” Wooyoung would speak to you, caressing your hand with his thumb as he gazed longingly into your magnificent orbs. “don’t apologize, its very attractive.” you would respond. this caused a smirk to appear on Wooyoung’s lips, “ah, then i’ll do it more often for you, sweetheart.” he ended his sentence with a wink.

dinner went on perfectly after this, his hand always somehow found a way to meet yours, or brush your hair behind your ear; he was the moth, you were the flame. he wouldnt keep his hands off of you.

after you both finished eating, you stayed for another hour or two just talking about every interest you both have. it wasnt until the hostess came by and told you both they were closing did you realize how much time had passed. Wooyoung would giggle softly, thanking the hostess before standing and approaching your side. once you stood, he snaked his arm around your waist and you both walked to his car.

the drive home made you a bit upset, not because of Wooyoung — but because the date was coming to an end and you didn’t want him to go. before you could think, you blurted out, “do you want to stay the night?” you then looked over at him, who immediately met yours gaze as well as he pulled into the parking lot of your apartment. “of course.” he answered with a smile on his face.

once you both made it to the entrance of your apartment, Wooyoung’s hand gripped your hip softly, rubbing the bone in a loving manner. you unlocked your door before you both walked into your apartment. “make yourself at home!” you spoke sweetly, “the bedroom is down the hall to the right, the bathroom is across from it!”

though Wooyoung didnt leave your side even after you spoke that, he was glued to you. “hmm, how about we watch a movie?” he spoke excitedly, a yawn following the question as he gazed into your eyes lovingly. “we can cuddleee” he spoke that last word in a whiney tone, like he was already needy for your touch in every way.

you nodded, “yes we can! you choose a movie while i change okay?” you placed a kiss on Wooyoung’s cheek before making your way to your bedroom. in the meantime, Woo had brought in his dance bag that always contained an extra pair of clothes. he changed in the bathroom, now wearing a black t shirt and gray sweatpants when you returned.

you changed into a pair of shorts and an oversized top before making your way back out to meet him. you plopped yourself down beside Wooyoung on the couch, who immediately wrapped his arms around you and pulled you close to his chest. “i chose Howl’s Moving Castle, have you watched it?” he spoke softly, rubbing his head against you affectionately— like a cat.

“i love that movie! you so remind me of Howl!” you immediately blurted out, planting more kisses along his jawline as he let out a chuckle. “stopp i was gonna say i loved him!!!” he spoke in excitement, he then laid down on his back and without a second thought you climbed ontop of him. your head rested on his chest, listening to the gentle thumping of his beating heart.

“hey y/n?” Wooyoung spoke softly, running his fingers through your hair.

“yes, Woo?” you responded, fighting off the sleepiness that plagued your body now, and his warmth wasnt helping — though you didnt mind that too much.

“will you be my partner?” he questioned softly, kissing the top of your head. you then smiled the biggest you had all night, your cheeks burning from this.

“of course, baby!” you exclaimed, leaning up to pepper his neck and jaw with kisses. “my perfect boyfriend!” you whispered to him.

Wooyoung hummed softly, “my perfect baby.” he responded before you both succumbed to the peaceful lull of sleep.

—🧸taglist!: @vampzity @sanshairfollicles @dvrktvnnel @scarfac3 @rvereri @joonezra @jjongibears @h4untedgrl

comment to be added to my taglist! ♡

thank you so much for reading! i hope you enjoyed my first x reader fic!! ♡

#ateez fanfic #ateez x reader #ateez x y/n #ateez x you #wooyoung x reader #wooyoung x you #wooyoung x y/n #—🧸bunnie’s ateez fics !!#—🧸bunnie’s x reader fics !#—🧸bunnie’s wooyoung fics !#x reader #valentines day fic #ateez fluff #ateez fanfiction #ateez scenarios #fanfic

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jedisupernova · 2 days ago

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ONE HUNDRED FOLLOWERS ?!

you guys . . . my heart is so full 🥹 i've had this blog for a while now, but never published anything. i've just been writing in my drafts, unsure if i would ever post anything whether it be due to lack of confidence, wary of if what i was writing is good or not, or just general insecurity. it hasn't even been a full month, yet the whirlwind of love, gratitude, and excitement that's ensued in what's become my small corner of the internet is unlike anything i could've expected. i'd say i'm a pretty imaginative person, but this is something that almost feels too good to be true.

thank you for putting your trust in me, supporting me, and looking forward to what i write. i can't believe i'm lucky enough to say those words 🥹 i'll continue to write and share what's brewing in this brain of mine :D

here's to many more days together! i've said it before, and i'll say it again: i could spend an eternity transcribing my gratitude, and it still wouldn't be enough time. as a treat, see jiyong below for what the next fic is!

it is choi subong x wealthy fem reader — an idea i am so fortunate that @lexalith shared with and allowed me to build!! 🩷 i've been writing ideas for this fic in my notes app like crazy, so i can't wait to get started. i'm aiming to have it up for valentine's day, but if not, then definitely the weekend. if anything changes, as always, you will be the first to know :D

again: thank you. i hope wherever you are in the world, no matter the weather or your state of mind, that you're doing your best. if not, that's okay too. you mean the world; it does not move without you.

with sincerity, and deepest gratitude,

honey ૮ ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ა

#honey talks #yes i did make all of these memes and i had the best time doing it!!!!#thank you so much for everything #here's to many more days together!#squid game #kwon jiyong #choi seunghyun #choi su bong

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everlastingday · 11 hours ago

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thank you @thisbuildinghasfeelings, @welcometololaland, @nisbanisba, @henrygrass, @annoyingcloudearthquake, @paperstorm, @lemonlyman-dotcom, and @futures-tense for the tags! 💜

nothing new to share today, so today's wip is a work is published - here's a little snippet from the teen jonah fic, this little moment 📷!

TK’s handwriting replaces their mother’s on the next page, and there’s a few photos of him in New York from before he came to live in Austin, but they’re few and far between. Then, he sees a photo he’s very familiar with – it’s one of the three of them from TK’s 30th birthday, where Jonah has vague memories of sitting in a fancy leather seat for a few brief seconds, before he’s being lifted into his big brother’s arms. A copy of the same photo sits in a frame on his bookshelf, a leftover from the very first set of room decorations that TK and Carlos ever put together for him, when he was still at that boarding school that he doesn’t fully remember. It's his favourite photo of them, because it’s the first one they took together that he genuinely feels like is part of his consciousness.

From there, the photos become more and more familiar to him, physical evidence of his personal memories. A photo of him reading in a bright red race car bed, which he loved and slept in until he was way too big for it, and cried when he came home from school one day to find that Carlos had put his foot down and replaced it with a double bed that actually fit his growing frame. Jonah chuckles at the memory, remembering how he had shrieked at Carlos that he hated him, but that very same night, when he woke up from a nightmare and wandered over to the adults’ bedroom for some comfort, it was Carlos whose arms he wanted to be wrapped up in.

open tag & no-pressure tagging a few people under the cut!

@heartstringsduet @whatsintheboxmh @nancys-braids @reyesstrand @captain-gillian @bonheur-cafe @carlossreaders @lightningboltreader @eclectic-sassycoweyes @firstprince-history-huh @carlos-in-glasses @emsprovisions @herefortarlos @tellmegoodbye

let me know if you want to be added/removed, and please feel free to tag me as well, i love seeing what everyone else is working on! 💜

#wip wednesday #911 lone star #tarlos #jonah morgan #911 lone star fic #tarlos fic

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ollypopwrites · 2 days ago

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i got tagged by @the-bear-and-his-sunbird to post a snippet of a WIP and tbh I didn’t know what to post but I found something!

Tagging anyone who wants to play (please tag me I love to see what you are working on) and I am too distracted to think of all the lovely writers and their fics that I greedily want a sneak peak at.

This snippet was written at the beginning of a follow up to Aureate, a bit of a flashback moment. at this point I like what I wrote but am still unsure it has a place in that fic!! It is unedited and very much just like a spark of a thought i wrote out sooooo take it for what it is lol

Emmrich had known devastating loss, he met it very early and it had been somewhat of a companion for most of his life.

Suddenly and with striking finality he had become an orphan, with no other family willing or able to take him in. Home and parents, gone all in one fell swoop.

And he was a sensitive child, something that had never truly passed, not a phase or a fleeting reaction to tragedy. No, even forty odd years after the loss of his parents he was still quite easily moved to extreme emotion. The only thing that had changed was his ability to mask it, and even that was mediocre when the more pressing feelings washed over him in a tidal wave.

Loss was familiar but he never found it less harrowing. That initial detachment, the shock, had rendered him mute the first few days after his parents died. The first stage of grief was where one had to grapple with was the idea that someone was now forever absent. He had learned to trudge on through that, smaller losses had made it possible.

A first love, dashed and broken. Second, third and fourth loves in succession, deeply scarring in their start and end. The stark acceptance of dreams left behind. Indeed, lichdom had many appeals, one of which being that there would be no final grave next to his parents’. He had agonized over forewards of his books in editions published after his demise, mentioning a sparse trio of graves with no new names to add to the altar. The sharp edge of a lack of family in both directions; no parents, no lover, no children. It was only him and his work. The horrible ache of friendships thrown to the rocks. Johanna had been a slow but aching loss, one of the most memorable.

“So you didn’t get blown to bits! Aren’t you going to gloat? Volkarin the God Vanquisher! Pah!”

Even if she was still present in his life, and he had the slightest hope time would soften her to something less wretched (unlikely), the days where they could call each other friend were long gone. A new soreness bloomed, as he thought that the comfort of a friend who had been with him as long as she had would have been welcome.

Emmrich didn’t entertain a response to her jab. Nothing she said was going to soothe or even be remotely helpful. He’d be better off knocking on Taash’s door, who was actively melting everything in their room. Even now he could faintly hear a thud and a crash.

Poor, poor Taash. Their mother and now Lace.

Taash was not receptive to his approaches of comfort, but he was sure Rook would —

Ah. That’s right.

They had returned home from Tearstone Island three short. Lace Harding was undoubtedly dead, while Bellara was in all likelihood absorbed and dying a slow painful death by blight. Lovely ladies, very dear friends of his, the pair of them. Someone would need to water Harding’s plants, and he should organize Bellara’s scribbled notes to get them published for her. There were no remains to do anything with, and even if there were the others would have burnt them. Barbaric.

#emmrook #emmrich volkarin #emmrich x rook

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hellfiresky · 3 days ago

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Written in Red: Embedded

Contribution to @clonexocweek | Theme: Introduction

This is Chapter 3 of my longfic, Written in Red, written with this event and theme (Introduction) in mind. However, this chapter works as a standalone! I just released it on AO3 as well, so if you’d like some extra background, feel free to check out the previous chapters!

Please find the full fic here.

Summary: Tavi Drezz is an independent war correspondent embedded on the frontlines of the Clone Wars. Commander Wolffe leads the 104th Battalion, a unit specialising in high-risk extractions, reconnaissance, and special operations. When their paths cross in the dusty war room of the 104th, few hours before a rescue mission on Vanqor, it marks the beginning of an unlikely partnership. This is their story.

Prelude from Chapter 1:

In war, nothing stays still.

If you were born under the Republic, you’d grow up believing it’s the beacon of democracy, the one thing holding the galaxy together. But if you were raised on Confederacy values, you’d see the Republic for what it really is: a bloated corpse propped up by greed, a machine devouring its own soldiers to keep the senators fed. And you’d be right.

The truth was, both sides were corrupt. Not in the big, obvious way. Though there’s plenty of that, but in the quiet moments. The way the deals were handed to the same three corporations. The way the Senate Building was filled with arguments that sounded important but meant nothing. Sure, some senators were in it for the right reasons. There was always one or two, driven by ideals instead of credits. But that’s just it, isn’t it? That’s the thing about war, it gives everyone a reason to want something. Freedom. Victory. Power. Maybe even peace, though that one felt like the longest con of them all.

Pairing: Commander Wolffe x Tavi Drezz (F!OC - War journalist and holographer) Word count: 4861 Tags and Warnings: Swear words, lots of political commentaries mirroring real life issues, graphic depictions of violence, canon typical violence, author is a photojournalist, sets in the same universe as Seeing Red

Taglist: @msmeredithrose @orangez3st

Playing this song as a soundtrack is recommended!

Journalism in wartime was a strange thing. On paper, it was always about truth - bringing clarity to confusion, giving a voice to the voiceless. Hell, she hated that term, voiceless. Everyone had a voice; it was just that some weren’t being heard. Her job wasn’t to give them a voice - that would be presumptuous, intrusive even. Her job was to amplify what they were already saying, leveraging the truths they were desperate for someone to hear. But in practice, it often felt like a compromise. Between access and independence, between reporting the facts and navigating the agendas of the powerful. Tavi knew the game well enough; the Republic needed stories to bolster morale, to frame its war effort as just, heroic. And journalists? They needed the Republic’s permission to get close enough to see anything at all. And if they’re lucky, to publish the article with minimum Senate-approved cosmetics.

The war room of the 104th Battalion at the Republic Military Base was, unsurprisingly, dusty. Tavi had read through the infopack Chiko sent her the day before: the 104th specialised in search and rescue missions, spec ops, negotiations, peacekeeping, and commando raids. It also mentioned they’d lost a significant number of their men during the Battle of Abregado. She’d been in a few war rooms before - GAR bases in the Mid and Outer Rim - but never one as massive as this. Once, she’d attended a press conference about the Zillo Beast, held in one of the Coruscant Guard’s war rooms. That had felt oddly comfortable, probably because it looked lived in by the Corries. This one was different.

Almost twenty minutes had passed since she arrived, seated beside Chiko, who was busy flipping through her datapad. Every now and then, Chiko would glance at Tavi, as if measuring how much of this felt familiar to her.

“They always do this,” Chiko muttered, breaking the silence.

“Late?” Tavi resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

Chiko chuckled quietly. “Well, no one prioritises the Comms Bureau. But also, Wolfpack doesn’t get a lot of journalists. Most of them are from the Republic Press Corps. You know the type - ready-made pieces for the Republic’s site on the holonet. Independents like you?” She paused, scrolling through another page on her datapad. “Haven’t had one embedded in a while.”

“No kidding,” Tavi mirrored her chuckle. “Been there, done that. Worked in comms briefly for the Core Development Programme.”

Chiko raised an eyebrow, smirking slightly. “Ah, you should’ve started with that the other day. I actually handled their—”

The hissing of the door cut her off.

A clone trooper with a cybernetic eye stepped into the room, followed by two others, neither of whom were wearing helmets. Chiko instinctively set her datapad down, and brushed her hands against her trousers. “Commander Wolffe,” she extended a hand towards the trooper with the cybernetic eye. “Sergeant Sinker, Corporal Comet. Good to see you again.”

“Chiko.” He shook Chiko’s hand firmly before looking at Tavi from head-to-toe. She’d grown used to this behaviour from soldiers - the sizing up, the scepticism. If she had a credit for every time one of them questioned her presence, her wealthy parents might finally be proud of her for doing something “lucrative” with her degrees. But then, if she cared about that, she wouldn’t be sitting here.

“Tavi Drezz. Independent journalist.” She extended her hand, offering him the same professional courtesy Chiko had demonstrated earlier. Wolffe didn’t take it right away, he continued scanning her down. Down to her boots, the holocamera bag resting on the table, the datapad in her hand.

There was nothing welcoming about him, no warmth, no veneer of politeness, no forced 'career smile', nothing. Again, it wasn’t unexpected - she’d seen it before. Soldiers didn’t like questions, and journalists were nothing but questions. She could almost see him calculating the possibility that she was some kind of plant by the Confederacy - or worse, a waste of time.

Finally, he took her hand. “Independent, huh? Means you don’t answer to anyone.”

“Define anyone.”

Wolffe’s grip lingered just long enough for her to internally question his motive, then released. The commander stepped back, arms crossed, still closely observing. Judging. But it wasn’t just suspicion and judgement she felt radiating off him. It was fatigue. The one that settles into your bones when you’ve fought too many battles and buried too many comrades. The kind of exhaustion that didn’t leave room for niceties or patience for people like her.

“I’ve read the comms briefing,” Wolffe said flatly. “You’re embedding with us on Vanqor. We received a distress order last night. Departure is set for two hours.” He turned to Chiko without waiting for acknowledgement. “I assume she’s cleared all health requirements - immunizations, standard field readiness checks? Signed off on the non-liability agreement, the operational security clearance, and the embed conduct protocol? And she’s been briefed on rules of engagement for civilians in a warzone?” Chiko flipped through her datapad to confirm. “All signed, sealed, and logged. I also attached a recommendation memo from Commander Fox and Lieutenant Torch from the Coruscant Guard. She’s fully cleared for deployment.”

Wolffe didn’t wait for further confirmation before focusing back to Tavi. “So they vouched for you. I’ll give you this much: stay close, follow orders, and don’t slow us down. My men don’t need distractions out there.”

Tavi opened her mouth to reply, but he interrupted. “Two hours. Be ready.”

“Two hours?” she choked out. Wolffe raised an eyebrow. “What? You got a problem with that?”

“No. Just… wasn’t expecting to move that fast.” Tavi quickly regained her composure. She signed up for this. She had survived worse places with minimum protection and zero insurance. “Good.” Wolffe raised both eyebrows, then dropped them just as quickly. “You’ll learn fast that the field doesn’t wait for anyone. Pack light, Drezz. We don’t have room for dead weight.”

He turned to Sinker and Comet. “Get the squad prepped. I want everyone on the landing pad in ninety. Notify the General that we’re ready to depart.”

The two clones saluted and left the room. Without another word, Wolffe followed after them, leaving Tavi standing by the table.

“This is a search and rescue mission, as outlined in your infopack,” Chiko tried to reassure Tavi. She closed her datapad and beckoned for Tavi to follow her. “Thought it’d be better for you to start here, in planning and prep, instead of being thrown into an active battlefield. General Plo Koon and Commander Ahsoka Tano will lead the operation. I’ll introduce you in a bit.”

“The travel to the Outer Rim will take approximately five hours,” Chiko continued as they walked down the corridor. “Plenty of time to review your notes, rest, and, hopefully, eat. You did pack, right?”

“Enough to keep me going.” Tavi mentally ran through her packing list. At least she hadn’t been completely unprepared. She knew she was being sent somewhere, but Chiko’s message hadn’t exactly come with a detailed itinerary.

Her email had been blunt, almost clinical:

Your embed request has been approved. Report to the 104th HQ at the Republic Military Base by 0600 for further briefing. Pack accordingly—field conditions apply.

No mention of immediate deployment. No confirmation of where she’d actually be going. Just a line about “field conditions” that, in retrospect, should’ve been a bigger clue. Good thing she had charged the batteries for her holocamera last night and packed extra data chips. She’d also brought her satellite comlink - standard precaution, one she’d insisted on for herself ever since going professional. The GAR might grant her access, but she never fully trusted anyone else’s comms, not when stories had a habit of disappearing if they weren’t backed up properly.

She fixed the weight of her bag on her shoulder. “I’d have packed differently if you told me I was shipping out in less than a day.”

“Wouldn’t have made a difference. Wolfpack moves fast. You’ll get used to it.” Chiko smirked.

Three space gunships sat prepped in the hangar, their weathered hulls gleaming under the overhead lights. Not standard LAATs - these had been modified for vacuum operations, their heavy plating and sealed interiors built for search-and-rescue in hostile conditions. The air inside the hangar carried the distinct scent of fuel and exhaust, complete with the chatter of pre-flight checks filling the space. Mechanics moved between the ships, running diagnostics, sealing compartments, loading supply crates.

Near the closest gunship, a towering Kel Dor Jedi stood with his hands clasped behind his back. The polished metal of his rebreather subtly reflected the surrounding floodlights. Beside him, a Togruta in a battle-worn leather cuirass shifted her weight from foot to foot, arms crossed as she spoke with the clone commander in front of them.

And then there was Wolffe.

Same stance as he had in the war room, arms folded tight across his chest, spine locked. Everything about him felt charged, the kind of barely restrained tension that came from someone forcing themselves into stillness. Deliberate. Controlled. Like a coiled wire, wound tight enough to snap at a moment’s notice.

Tavi slowed her pace, absorbing the way they carried themselves. This wasn’t politics, not the calculated speeches and practiced smiles of the Senate hearings she covered. This was war, raw and unscripted. But not the kind of war she had covered. Of course, she had been in war zones before. Literal war zones, not just conflict areas. Ducked under crumbling buildings whilst blaster fire ripped through city streets, crouched in makeshift shelters with displaced families as they whispered about the Republic and the Separatists in the same exhausted breath. She had sat across from clone troopers after the fighting was over, recording the hollowed-out tone in their voices as they spoke about the men they’d lost, the orders they had followed, the locals who had either helped them or turned against them.

This was different.

These weren’t the ones caught in the aftermath. These were the people making the calls before the chaos hit. The ones who decided where the troopers would be deployed, which villages would be secured, which risks were worth taking. This was the part of war she had never been privy to. And she was about to see it up close.

Chiko didn’t stop. “They were briefed last night. The Jedi,” she muttered, keeping her voice low as they neared. “Wolffe confirmed your involvement minutes ago.”

The Jedi turned at their approach, and the sheer weight of Plo Koon’s attention landed on her like a quiet force of nature. Even through the mask, something in the way he regarded her carried depth - like he wasn’t just seeing her, but seeing through her. Measuring. Calculating thoroughly. The younger one, Ahsoka Tano, nodded and smiled, studying Tavi with a more open curiosity.

“General, Commander,” Chiko greeted them with a nod, slipping into the kind of professionalism that had been drilled into her for years. “This is Tavi Drezz, the independent journalist embedded for this mission. Communications Bureau cleared her yesterday. She’s here to document Republic humanitarian and recovery efforts.”

That last part had the polished ring of PR work. Tavi almost shook her head.

Plo Koon held her gaze. “Your work precedes you, Miss Drezz.”

“You’ve read my reports?”

Ahsoka’s arms dropped to her sides. “I think he means he’s heard about you.”

No confirmation, no denial. Tavi stole a quick glance at Chiko, who barely moved. The Jedi had access to everything - if they wanted information, they had it. The idea of being known before even speaking wasn’t new to her, but it wasn’t exactly comfortable either.

“Your role on this mission is strictly non-combative. Your safety, and that of the team, remains the priority.” Plo Koon spoke again. Before Tavi could reply, Wolffe exhaled sharply. “She’s had the full protocol briefing,” he muttered, half to Plo Koon, half to himself. “She’ll follow the team and stay out of the way.”

Ahsoka’s eyes flicked back and forth between them, her expression hardening. “You ever been in a combat zone before?”

The answer came easily. “Yes.”

Poof. There it was. A beat of silence.

“Ever been in one where we don’t know what we’re walking into?”

A smirk tugged at the corner of Tavi’s lips. “I think that describes every war zone I’ve covered.” Ahsoka huffed and crossed her arms again. “Fair enough.”

Plo Koon nodded once. “Then we are in agreement. Commander, ensure she has what she needs.”

“Copy that.” Wolffe saluted sharply before turning on his heel, motioning for Tavi to follow. She hesitated for half a second, looking at Chiko, who only mouthed good luck before pivoting and striding away. No further instructions, no last-minute reassurances - she was officially on her own.

The gunship was nothing like the sleek transport vessels that ferried diplomats and senators across the galaxy. No separate compartments, no assigned seating, just a hollow space lined with handgrips hanging from the ceiling, a few crates stacked against the walls, and the narrow entrance leading to the aircrew and gunners. It smelled like fuel, hot metal, and something acrid that she couldn’t quite place - maybe from the residual charge of weapons locked in racks near the cockpit. Tavi stepped inside, fingers brushing against the familiar weight of her holocamera as she started to pull it free from its bag. She wanted to capture this, the quiet before the storm, but before she could do anything, a firm grip landed on her shoulder. She barely had time to register it before she was pressed down onto one of the crates.

“Sit,” Wolffe ordered, barely sparing her a glance as he moved past.

Tavi’s brows knit together, processing. “I’m not—”

“Doesn’t matter,” he cut her off. “This isn’t a civ transport. You don’t stand unless you’re us, or, you have to.”

She let out a sigh, making sure her bag was secured behind her as a makeshift cushion whilst taking off the lens caps of her holocamera. Fine. She could work with that. But already, the contrast was setting in. This was it. No distance, no neutral ground. No hovering in the relative safety of the aftermath, documenting war from the periphery like she had on Ryloth or Ord Mantell. This was stepping into the story as it unfolded, not knowing which way the ground would shift beneath her. No time to contextualise, no space to analyse, just the raw mechanics of war unfolding in real-time. And instead of recording the aftermath, she was going to be right in the middle of it.

She started checking the settings of her holocamera, fingers moving over the controls in autopilot. She wasn’t going to waste the opportunity, if she was here, she was going to document every moment, every decision, every little hesitation in the faces around her.

Across the gunship, Wolffe secured his helmet - just before it fully settled into place.

Click.

Through the lens, she caught it. The brief, in-between moment where the man and the soldier existed at once. Half his face still exposed, jaw clenched. The other half already swallowed by the T-shaped visor, the impassive mask of command sliding into place. Then he turned. The gaze obscured by the visor locked onto her.

“Hold on to something when we lift off,” he said. “This ride’s not going to be smooth.”

No, it wasn’t. But then again, nothing about war ever was.

Tavi gripped her holocamera tighter, a habit she had developed, as if it would anchor her to the ground or whatever solid element beneath her. Troopers filed in, securing their gear, locking in weapons, taking their places like they had done this a hundred times before - because, of course, they had. She looked up as Plo Koon stepped into the ship, and settled in near the aircrew entrance, holding on to a stray handgrip above him. Ahsoka followed close behind. She stepped into position exactly in front of her - turned to land her gaze on Tavi, and then she smiled.

Not forced. Not out of politeness. Just a quick, genuine thing, barely there before she focused elsewhere. Okay, Tavi decided. She liked the kid.

Outside, the gunship’s ramp began to rise. The metal clanked into place, sealing them in. A low voice from the cockpit confirmed their final checks.

Then, with a sharp lurch, they lifted off.

Five hours in a space gunship was an experience. Not the worst ride she’d been on, but certainly one of the more unique ones. The constant vibration of the engines, the low thrum of hyperspace humming through the hull, it all blended into the background after a while. What she hadn’t expected was the music.

Somewhere between hour two and three, one of the troopers had hooked into the comm system and started playing rock music in Huttese. It wasn’t loud, just enough to fill the space without overpowering conversation, but it set the tone. At first, she thought it was a one-off. Some kind of inside joke, maybe. But no - track after track rolled in, a carefully curated selection that was clearly meant to serve a purpose. Stress relief? Maybe. A way to cut through the monotony of waiting? Likely. An adrenaline booster for what was coming next? Absolutely.

Tavi craned her neck to peek past Ahsoka who was busy talking to one of the troopers, Boost, exactly in front of her, to catch sight of Wolffe across the cabin. She waved her holocamera to catch his attention. Can I? She didn’t speak, just mouthed the words in his direction. Wolffe’s gaze locked into hers, then he shrugged, giving her a quick OK sign.

Permission granted.

Click.

Another moment captured - one of the small, in-between moments that defined war that rarely made it into history holobooks but stayed burned into the minds of those who lived through it. Tavi had to angle the shot from below, forced to stay seated whilst the others stood around her. The framing was different from her usual work - looking up rather than at - but it worked. The way the troopers loomed above, the curve of their helmets catching the dim light of the interior, the slight lean of Ahsoka’s stance as she was engaging Boost in conversation.

Click.

She wasn’t sure how many more of these she’d get before they hit the ground, but she’d take what she could.

Five hours passed before a voice crackled through the overhead comms. “ETA to Vanqor, ten minutes. Prepare for turbulence on descent. We’ll be running low-altitude scans before we drop a beacon - expect rough air.”

Ahsoka, still standing in front of Tavi, turned to face her. “Rough might be an understatement,” she said, adjusting the leather vambraces on her arms. “We’re not landing, not yet. The pilots will sweep around the wreckage of the Endurance first, see if we can pinpoint Anakin and Master Windu’s last known location.” Tavi noticed a subtle change in pitch as the engines adjusted for atmospheric entry. Around her, the troopers started double-checking their gear, securing weapons, tightening straps. Ahsoka exhaled through her nose, rolling her shoulders like she was already bracing for impact.

“Hope you’re not afraid of a little turbulence.”

Turbulence didn’t scare her. She’d been through worse. Hostile environment training, emergency crash simulations, rapid decompression drills - she had the certifications to prove it. She had sat through flights so rough they felt like they were being rattled apart mid-air, had deployed into zones where the ground was still smoldering from orbital bombardment.

But if she was being honest, she wasn’t thinking about herself right now. She eyed the young Jedi standing in front of her. Ahsoka’s stance was solid, confidence rolling off her in that way only Jedi carried themselves. But the thin leather cuirass strapped over her chest wouldn’t be enough to stop a blaster bolt, would it? And Beneath it? A simple bandeau, bare shoulders, exposed arms. The leather cuirass didn’t match her usual outfit, either. The only thing it seemed to coordinate with was the grey markings of the 104th.

That wasn’t an accident. The Wolfpack must’ve insisted she wear it - probably the best compromise they could convince her to accept. Ahsoka Tano was a Jedi, sure, but she was still a kid, and these troopers had fought beside her long enough to know just how much of a risk she took every time she jumped into battle.

“Not worried,” Tavi said finally, shutting off the holocamera to save its battery life. “Just calculating what to do when you find your colleagues and I need to take pictures.”

Ahsoka’s brow lifted, the corner of her mouth moving upwards like she was about to shoot back a response - but before she could, Wolffe’s voice cut in from behind the girl. “Stick to Wildfire.” A sharp jab over his shoulder towards the trooper standing at his left. “I’ll be doing the rescuing,” he continued. “So I can’t be responsible if you plummet yourself out of the ship because you want to take pictures.”

Tavi exhaled through her mouth. “Damn,” she adjusted the lens on her holocamera. “You make it sound like I’m about to throw myself into a Sarlacc pit.” Wolffe didn’t dignify that with a response. He simply glared his visor onto her longer than necessary before turning back towards the rest of the men.

The pressurised LAAT staggered hard as it broke through Vanqor’s upper atmosphere. The change in gravity pressed against Tavi’s ribs, a hollow, stomach-dropping sensation that sent adrenaline sparking through her limbs.

Outside the open hatch, a dead war machine dominated the horizon. The wreckage of the Endurance sprawled across the jagged terrain below, its massive form a carcass of metal and ruin, semi-buried in the planet’s rocky surface. Smoke still curled from sections of its torn hull, vents and broken conduits spilling eerie glow where power flickered in its dying systems. The ship had once been a monster, a Venator-class Star Destroyer that had torn through Separatists fleets with its cannons. Now, it lay broken and silent.

Ahsoka moved to the edge of the open hatch, gripping one of the handgrips closer to the hatch as the gunship rocked against the turbulence. Tavi followed instinctively, trying to lean past her to get a better view. The wind resistance was brutal, the force of it whipping against her face, but she barely registered it. She had seen images of Venator-class Star Destroyers before - holonet broadcasts, Senate reports, recruitment posters that framed them as symbols of the Republic’s power. But she had never seen one in person. And certainly never like this.

Tavi gripped her holocamera tighter, her pulse picking up. She needed this shot. She adjusted herself, trying to find a good angle without breaking her grip on the support bar. The gunship rocked again, and Wildfire’s hand clamped onto her arm. “Careful,” he muttered, barely audible over the wind. “Wolffe’ll toss you out if you get any closer.”

Tavi barely heard him. The framing was perfect.

The Endurance sprawled beneath them, a monument to destruction, whilst the other two gunmetal LAATs of the 104th combed through its remains. The shot practically framed itself; Republic search-and-rescue forces navigating through the wreckage of a once-feared fleet, searching for their missing Jedi.

She adjusted the settings using one hand on instinct, regulating her breath.

Another. Click.

The red targeting scanners of the gunships swept across the surface, methodically scanning for life signatures. A voice crackled through the static of the onboard comms. “No sign of the Generals yet. Scanners picking up debris, still sifting through interference from the ship’s reactor.”

War had a way of distorting perspective. From the Senate floors, it was endless debates and statistics - how many fleets were lost, how many credits were needed to sustain the next campaign. From the outer rim, it was evacuations and aftermaths, burning cities, displaced civilians, silenced confessions from people who had lost too much to care who won. But here, inside the war machine itself, it was another beast.

No grand speeches. No declarations of righteousness. Just men in armour combing through wreckage, trying to pull their own from the ruins. She looked up to her left, catching Wolffe’s helmeted gaze as he turned his head towards her.

Click.

An audible gasp from Ahsoka - then, “There! The bridge! I can see them!” She pointed through the open hatch. Excited beeps followed from an astromech unit, blue and white, standing behind her. Tavi blinked. Had the R2 unit always been there? She had been too focused on the troopers, the wreckage, the shots she needed to capture, but now the little droid whistled insistently.

Plo Koon, standing just behind Ahsoka, turned towards her. “Ahsoka, hold the ship steady.” Without hesitation, the young Jedi threw her arms forward together with the Jedi master. Palms up, fingers splayed, and the gunship was immediately steadied by some invisible magnetic pull. Tavi stumbled back a step as the ship adjusted mid-air, the force of the movement knocking her closer to where Wildfire stood, making Wolffe now directly in front of her. She barely had time to react before Boost, Comet, Sinker, and another trooper - Corvis, she thought - moved into position to shoot ascension cables. The cables flew across the gap before they tethered the gunship into place.

Click.

Two troopers moved in unison, lowering their blasters they used to fire the ascension cables. Tavi barely registered which ones. Close to her, Wolffe’s voice snapped her from her awe.

“Comet, let’s go!”

Before she could process it, two troopers leaped out of the gunship. They landed hard on the bridge, kicking up dust and debris as they sprinted forward, dodging the unstable metal beneath them. Instinct had Tavi stepping forward, trying to get closer to the open hatch, camera already raised.

A hand caught her forearm, again. “Don’t get too close!” Wildfire snapped. She barely nodded, still focusing on the chaos unfolding below.

“Hurry, Commander Wolffe.” Plo Koon commanded with urgency. Down on the bridge, Wolffe and Comet worked fast, pulling at debris, pushing aside slabs of metal. Beneath them, the structure groaned - a deep, ominous sound. This wreck wasn’t going to hold much longer.

Then, Tavi caught a distant movement. Mace Windu and Anakin Skywalker - alive, pinned beneath collapsed durasteel plating, obscured by the dust. Her breath caught as the clones braced, pushed, heaved the weight off the Jedi, working as fast as they could. The cables groaned, the bridge sinking by inches.

“We’re leaving in ten!” The pilot’s voice crackled again, filling the cabin. The gunship dropped lower, hovering dangerously close to the bridge’s edge. The gravity pull was brutal, Tavi felt it dragging her stomach downward as she clutched onto the nearest handgrips. Wildfire’s grip didn’t loosen. Her arm was probably bruised by now.

Above them, four figures moved towards the edge - Wolffe, Comet, Skywalker, Windu. They were so close, too close, to the point where one misstep would send them all plummeting into the wreckage below.

Click.

“JUMP!” Sinker yelled at them, and the four figures leaped. Armour and robes silhouetted against the wreckage as they jumped straight into the gunship. Plo Koon immediately yelled out his next command, “Cut the lines.”

Ahsoka’s lightsaber ignited to life. A sizzling green blur sliced through the ascension cables in one motion, the burning edges hissing as the cut pieces snapped back towards the collapsing bridge. Tavi barely had a second to process it before the gunship banked hard.

The floor lurched beneath her, and of course, she forgot to hold on. The sudden movement of the gunship knocked her backwards. An arm caught her waist. Tavi jerked back just in time to see the Endurance's bridge collapse into itself, swallowed by a gut-wrenching groan of metal as it vanished into dust and ruin.

That was close. Too close.

All she could think was Wildfire‘s now comforting grip. No - wait. Not Wildfire. Wildfire and Corvis were tending to Windu and Skywalker near the entrance of the cockpit. The grip tightened, securing her as the gunship lifted higher. “I told you to hold on,” Wolffe groaned, his modulated voice was close enough that she felt the rumble of it against her shoulder. She swallowed as she tried to reach for the handgrips above, but Wolffe hadn’t let go.

The gunships jettisoned from the wreckage. Tavi barely registered the motion of it, instinctively raising her holocamera. She twisted her body in Wolffe’s grasp just enough to frame the shot --

Click.

Behind them, the Endurance exploded. A detonation of fire and wreckage split the horizon, the collapsing Star Destroyer consumed by its own destruction. Through the viewfinder, Tavi framed her final shot. One of the other two LAAT gunships tilted sideways in the foreground, caught as it veered away from the collapsing wreck. The fiery glow of the explosion behind it illuminating the falling shards of metal scattering across the hellfire sky.

Wolffe was still holding her steady.

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