#one thing about me is if a game gives me the option to sprinkle some religious trauma onto a character. well.

[clowndensation]

(picrew) this is aja, he's mentally well and also normal. and there's nothing wrong with him.

[bratbarzal]

On Your Side (NH13) / Chapter Five

Pairing: Nico Hischier x Fem!OC Poppy Jensen*

*I say it's an OC, it's just a name and third person POV. I use minor character descriptions because I don’t get on with writing vague reader inserts/YN for long-form, story heavy fics, but I will generally try to avoid including race and body type or really any physical descriptors. I’m always open to feedback on my writing, or how to be more inclusive.

WC: 17k (holy moly)

Chapter Warnings: I tried to sprinkle some fluffy flashbacks and smutty references later in here just to lighten the mood but this is angsty!! probably cursing I honestly can't remember, and serious warnings rn mentions of hacking/gossip blogs/blackmail/cyber bullying/nudes being leaked, talia is her own warning tbh. I tried not to make a cliched ex comes in between them plot and idk how it comes across but yeah I was trying to toe the line between it being interesting/different and then going too far and not being able to write around it which is why the plot kind of fixes itself quick and is a leeeetle bit bad but there's some unresolved bitterness in that relationship for sure lmao she has a LOT 2 say!! did I mention there's angst in here? insecurity/self-doubt and miscommunication!!! in abundance!!! but!! luke is a cutey patootie in this I wrote his part with a lil smile on my face 💖 also a ridiculous conversation about huffing glue lmao

Series Masterlist

Previous Part (Chapter Four)

A/N: ok so in the grand scheme of things this is both a filler chapter and also like a pivotal point in the story to set something later up, but when I was planning this entire fic out, the only directive I gave myself for this specific chapter was insert angst. you wouldn't believe the amount of times I've written and rewritten and gone back and forth on what's in here. it's the kind of instruction only a complete melon would give themselves and I clearly just hate myself in ways that are spooky and strange to submit myself to this kind of torture.

and I hear your cries of hasn’t this fic just been angst so far??? yes!! you may be correct!! but you don’t get a rainbow without a bit of rain hun!!! grab an umbrella!!! I promise good will come of this lmao

I'm sorry this one took so long, it's the only chapter I didn't have any kind of plan or direction for obviously and I tried to come up with so many different options for the talia plot before I landed on whatever this is, but the next one I do have some scenes written out in my plan so shouldn't be as long in between. my goal has always been a chapter a week but like I said the other day work has been a lot for me the past couple of weeks so I am genuinely sorry for making you wait!!

you guys were very fun and very kind to me after the last chapter so please please please lets keep the good vibes going come chat to me about your thoughts about the fic about the weather about anything!! 💓

Nico

When Nico and Talia had first started dating, there had been an element of excitement to the dynamic. Nico hadn’t properly dated anyone in a while - had casual flings here and there, and for the most part spent his time swallowing down his burgeoning feelings for his best friend - and there was a novelty to starting something with someone new.

He had all the intentions of building something serious with her. She was fun, got on with his friends, had ties close to home that meant he wouldn’t be putting a wedge between the two of them should he want to travel back in his breaks, and sinking his teeth into the challenges of a relationship was something that actually intrigued him.

He liked planning dates, liked buying gifts to see that buzz of joy and gratitude it would elicit, and he liked the companionship - liked having someone there when he came back from a long roadie or a tough string of games. 

He liked it so much he never really opened his eyes to the fact that Talia didn’t. 

She didn’t like the dates he planned - didn’t like the restaurants he chose, the movies he wanted to share with her, the bars him and the guys frequented. She didn’t like America, didn’t like their coffee shops, thought their pastries were packed with too much sugar, their portion sizes were too large for her ever to enjoy going for lunch, always complaining about feeling bloated and sluggish after every meal. She hated Jersey - wanted to spend all her time across the Hudson, looking down on everyone she met and everywhere they went together. She didn’t make much use of the gifts he bought her - let every bouquet of flowers die a quick, careless death, said the watch he bought her didn’t go with enough of her other jewellery and turned her nose up at every effort he made to make his apartment feel more like her home. 

She wasn’t all that comforting when it came to companionship, either. Rolled her eyes when he came home aching and exhausted, went out without him on the days he was coming back from a roadie and returned home when he had long retired to his bed. She would always want to meet up with her girlfriends instead of hanging around the team, and only ever wanted to come to games if she could bring her own entourage - mostly to show off her connections and hardly ever to actually support him.

And so, despite the initial attraction, despite the excitement that first came with their blossoming relationship, Nico can only look at Talia with disinterest and frigidity now.

He barely greets her as he opens the door to his apartment, moving aside to let her in and waiting for her to trudge her small case in behind her before he closes it, leaning against the surface and watching her discard her bag and keys on the counter with familiarity.

When she turns to face him, running a hand through her hair and huffing out a big sigh, he takes in her dishevelled appearance.

Even when travelling, Talia usually takes great pride in her pristine exterior - hair blow-dried, outfit co-ordinated and steam-pressed to perfection, not a crease or stain in sight, and usually a light layer of makeup to cover the slight imperfections like the darkened under eyes and redness around her nose. This isn’t like her.

She looks like she’s been messing with her hair the whole 8 hour flight out and beyond, her eyes are rimmed-red with smudges of brown at the corners, her lips are chapped and swollen like she’s been crying, and her sweatpants don’t match her hoodie. It’s almost like she’d thrown on whatever she could find and caught the first flight out, fresh out of bed.

“What’s going on?” He cuts straight to the chase, losing all formality and courtesy. He should feel bad for his callous greeting, but she had broken up with him over text not even a month ago - she doesn’t exactly deserve outstretched arms and a warm embrace, he thinks.

“Hi Talia, how have you been, Talia? It’s nice to see you Talia.” She mocks, a frown overtaking her features immediately. “I’m absolutely amazing, thanks for caring, Nico!” Sarcasm spews from her tongue like pure venom, and his eyes practically roll into the back of his head.

Nico pushes himself off of the door, heavy footsteps leading him into his kitchen where he can make himself a coffee to get through this. His watch reads 6:05 - far too early for her antics - and rising to her nagging is only going to make things worse.

“Do you want a drink?” He asks, as he busies himself with his coffee press, unable to look at her too long without the pricks of guilt irritating him.  He doesn’t even know what he has to feel guilty about.

“I’ll get it myself,” she scoffs, venturing over to the fridge and pouring out some orange juice - her movements around his space eerily natural. She slams back most of the drink as he works out how to brew his coffee - but she sees right through him. He’s hardly ever used the press before, and he’s just doing so now to avoid her in whatever capacity he can. “I need money.”

Nico’s almost positive he hasn’t heard her right - that there’s some kind of mix up between her standard German and his Swiss - and he slowly turns to properly face her, brows slanting into a deep frown as he assesses her expression.

She has a hand on her hip, her jaw set and her eyes darkened and serious. 

“You have money.”

Talia comes from money - her father is some kind of film producer and her mother an artist, if Nico remembers correctly - and she makes good money, herself. She’s been a print model since she was scouted in some market in Munich since she was 15, has had her face plastered in ads in magazines and catalogues around the world. She’s hardly strapped for cash. She gets things gifted to her by whatever company she can get a hold of. What could she possibly need him to give her money for?

“Not enough.” Her tone is cold, her demeanour the same, and if Nico can still gauge her emotions correctly, there’s an element of blame that she is starting to shift towards him, and his whole body starts to feel tense.

“Not enough for what?”

He can’t quite tell what feeling washes over him - worry, at the thought she’s gotten herself into some kind of trouble, stress, at the thought this could be a recurring thing, and potentially pity, at the way she’s so clearly carrying the weight of something heavy - something she’s lugged all the way across the Atlantic on a long haul flight with her.

“Not enough to pay the guy who’s blackmailing me not to leak the videos that I sent to you.”

“What vide-“ he bites back, and the immediate arch of her brow tells him all he needs to know. “Oh.”

Shit.

“Oh? That’s all you have to say?” She sneers, fury in her gaze and dismay in her tone. “You’ve ruined my life, and all I get is an oh?”

“Whoa, slow down, I’ve ruined your life?”

Nico has never been one to shame any girl for sending explicit pictures - he’d been more than willing to receive them at the time - but he hadn’t ever forced her hand. He hadn’t even asked her for them, in the first place. 

She’d taken it upon herself to spice things up, as she had put it at the time, when the team had gone on the road in early December. It was just after he’d returned from his injury - a time in which he’d spent mentally distanced from her as he’d focused so much on getting back to the game, their relationship consisting mainly of not-so-passionate sex to avoid aggravating his injury and hardly of any kind of meaningful conversation - and she had thought that keeping him on his toes on a roadie would mean he’d come back more interested than ever.

If he’d been looking out for red flags at the time, he might have caught that blaring one; needing to try new things only a few months into a relationship to keep it fun and light.

He’d been in his hotel room in Seattle, freshly showered and ready to throw himself straight into bed when his phone had started to ping. It was suggestive texts at first, are you alone? And I’m thinking about you. Then it had been pictures, hands over lingerie and fingers between glossy, pouted lips.

And then videos, one after the other before he had any chance to respond - her phone set up far enough away that her whole body was in frame, touching herself while laying on his bed and calling out for him.

He had called her instead of sending anything back, and as he realises the severity of the situation, a selfish part of him is glad he did so.

“Talia, I didn’t even save those videos, and I definitely didn’t show them to anyone else.”

Nico could never. Not only for the fact that he was raised to be a decent human being, but he has a sister - if anyone ever did that to Nina, he’d tear them apart, limb from limb. 

“You’re the only person I��ve ever sent anything to.” She seems to have made her mind up, and Nico feels as if his heart plummets through his torso at the realisation. She’s travelled all this way because she genuinely believes he’s the cause of this - that he’s shared intimate videos of her without her consent, to someone who would extort her for them. “And he sent me some pictures as proof, had information about me like the address of this apartment.”

“Talia, I swear on my mother’s life, I wouldn’t do that to you - to anyone, not ever.”

Tears well in her crystalline eyes, and Nico waits with bated breath as she assesses the situation in her head. 

He isn’t a liar - he has never given her a reason to think he is one. In their time together, he had always been honest, always been loyal, and he hopes at the very least - despite her obvious distain for him now, and how little she ended up caring about their relationship in the end to cut it off in the way she did - she thought of him as kind. 

He can do nothing but be patient, let her come to whatever conclusion on her own, and it’s only when he spots the quiver in her bottom lip that he takes an apprehensive step forward, ready to console her if needed.

She practically throws herself into his arms, wrapping her own around his waist and bawling into his chest, and all he can do is hold her and wait. He tries to rub a soothing hand up and down her back, holding the other against her head as her body wracks with sobs. All he can feel is the pounding of his own heartbeat, pulsing throughout his entire body until it’s all he can hear, too.

Nico does his best to comfort her, shushing and cooing and whispering how it’s going to be alright, but it does little to help. She’s beyond relief.

“There’s a guy who said he can track whoever is doing this to me,” she sniffles as she pulls herself away. “He’s in Jersey City Heights, he’s some sort of ethical hacker, whatever that means, I’m going to meet him and he’s gonna go through my phone.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” Nico doesn’t even hesitate to ask - if not to protect her, and make sure she isn’t unknowingly getting herself into an even more dangerous situation, then to protect himself too. If someone has Talia’s pictures, and she only sent them to him, there’s a possibility his phone had been hacked, and if this guy is as ethical as he says, maybe he can check Nico’s stuff, too, just to be safe.

She gives him an appreciative smile, eyes still glassy and cheeks flushed. “I’d really appreciate that.”

“I’m gonna shower, then we can go. You can grab whatever to eat while you’re waiting.” He backs away from her completely, only just able to acknowledge the ache in his muscles once the intensity of the situation has settled a little, and he just needs to stand under the steaming spray and clear his mind before he properly immerses himself in her company. 

He has a lot more than this whole mess that he needs to think about, and maybe a shower can bring him a little clarity on how exactly he’s going to explain himself to the beautiful girl whose bed he had abruptly left not even an hour ago. 

“Why are you dressed?”

Nico stops in his tracks.

When he had got back to his apartment, he’d made a little effort for it to seem like he’d been there all night. He’d gone through to his bedroom, mussed up his sheets to make it seem like he had been sleeping in them - and not with the anticipation that Talia was going to be entering his bedroom, but with her, he never knows - trying to retrace the steps of his usual routine before he goes to bed, he had closed all the blinds, had moved his gym bag by the door.

But he hadn’t changed.

Still adorned in his sweatshirt and jeans from the night before, the clothing feels all that much heavier on his body as she brings attention to it, and he quickly racks his brain to come up with a valid excuse that doesn’t rouse further suspicion.

“I fell asleep in these clothes.” As easy as the lie comes out, he doesn’t feel great saying it. Doesn’t feel like erasing the night he had shared with Poppy is for the greater good, even if it is just to Talia, but avoiding another difficult conversation is a must right now - especially when he’d already lied to her on the phone. “Was out late with the guys last night, Timo threw a party for my birthday.”

“Right,” she drags out, and when he turns back around, she casts a scrutinising glance over him, top to bottom. “Sorry, I forgot.”

“No worries,” he shrugs, genuinely not offended. She has no reason to remember his birthday. Not anymore. “Like I said, help yourself to whatever, I’ll try not to be long.” 

When he undresses for his shower, he’s thankful he hadn’t had the foresight to change in anticipation of Talia’s arrival. He probably would have donned a t-shirt and some shorts, oblivious to the visible indents on his thighs where Poppy had dug her nails in as she took him in her mouth.

His chest and torso are littered with scratches, some faint, some a little deeper, and he can’t get the right angle to see his back but he imagines they’re the same - the memory of her clutching at him as both of their climaxes approached is vivid enough for him to picture the marks she left behind.

He groans as the thought of her brings back that swirling feeling in the pit of his stomach, as he notices the blooming arousal pool there, and feels himself harden as he steps under the spray of his shower.

If his phone had been on do not disturb through the night, he could be in the shower with Poppy, instead.

He could have woken up to her in his arms, could have pecked at her sleep-swollen lips until it brought her out of her slumber, and spent his morning making up for lost time just like he had promised her last night. He could have made light work of the pleasure he had given her the night before - could have had her underneath him in her bed, tangled up in the mess of sheets and falling apart before they shared a morning shower, where he’d have held her up against the tiles and would’ve moved into her until they couldn’t tell where he ended and she began. He’d have made her breakfast, something sweet, so that as she sat and watched him atop the kitchen counter he had tasted her on for the first time not even 12 hours before, he’d press his tongue into her mouth after she had eaten and savour the flavour of strawberries that had settled between her lips.

Instead, he’s here, turning the temperature of his water down until any and all excitement in his body is dampened, and all he can focus on is the effect the cold has on all his other aching muscles.

Once he has showered and gotten dressed - and has come to the conclusion that any further thoughts about Poppy need to wait until the Talia problem is resolved and out of his hands, he finds his ex girlfriend sprawled across his couch, music playing from the speaker in the corner, and taking helping herself to a whole new level. 

Her case is opened where she had left it by the door, and she’s set herself a little vanity up on his coffee table, fixing her appearance before they leave.

She’s changed out of her mismatched sweats, has dressed herself in jeans and a sweater, and has found an extension cable long enough for her to plug in whatever hot tool she’s currently running through her hair.

“You take the longest showers in the history of man,” she rolls her eyes, not even casting a glance his way as she focuses on her own reflection in the little mirror she must have brought with her. “I do not want to know what it is you get up to in there.”

“I was barely 30 minutes, are you ready to go?”

“Yeah, almost,” she runs the tool through her bangs until they flick out at the edges on either side of her face, and it reminds him of all the times he had watched her while waiting for her to finish getting ready. It makes him feel uneasy how familiar it all is, how she’s so quickly made herself at home again in his space.

He wants to tell her she needs to pack her stuff back up, that she won’t be staying here and needs to give his keys back, but the weight of the situation at hand dawns on him before he can open his mouth.

He’ll wait until they get back later, his decision depending on the outcome of their visit to her hacker friend.

As much as he doesn’t want her around, he isn’t going to kick her out with no place to go if her life is still shrouded in unsafe circumstances. 

Talia unplugs her stuff, wraps the cord around the handle of the brush she was using, and places it on a mat she must have brought with her so it doesn’t burn through the surface of the table. “Kay, let’s go.”

She marches ahead of him, picking up her bag and keys on the way out and leaving him to lock up while she calls for the elevator. They wait together in silence, his heart thudding an anxious rhythm in his chest as he anticipates the arrival of the elevator - and thankfully, it arrives empty.

He tries to distance himself from her as they enter, him standing in one corner, and hoping she takes the other, but she doesn’t quite get the memo, standing obliviously in the centre as she types away to someone on her phone and he presses the button to go to the basement.

Nico watches the numbers go down with bated breath. His floor, the next, the next one after that, and he uses any good will he has left with the universe to hope and pray it skips the floor coming up - but, as is just his luck, the elevator comes to a stop with a soft thud, and the doors open to reveal the very situation he’s been hoping to avoid. 

Jack walks straight in, eyes cast down to the phone in his hands, distractedly typing away and not even noticing the button for the parking level has been pressed before he pushes it, himself.

Luke notices straight away, halting in his movements to enter the space as his gaze flickers between the two people already occupying it. 

He diverts his eyes when they meet Nico’s head dropping as he steps in and stands beside his brother, uttering a quick greeting of, “Hey, Cap.”

Jack’s attention is captured immediately, spinning at an almost dizzying speed to face his captain, phone disregarded into his back pocket. “Schao! I thought you’d be at-,”

He’s thankfully able to tune into his perception before he carries on with his train of thought, a subtle movement in his peripheral diverting his gaze to the figure stood to the side of Nico. 

“Talia. Hi.”

“Hi, Jack.” Nico cringes inwardly at how disinterested she sounds. “Luke.” Talia had never really cared for Nico’s teammates - especially not the younger guys like Jack and Luke. She was quick to pass judgement, making comments on their maturity, or apparent lack-thereof, and wasn’t the biggest fan of how close Nico was with the pair. Didn’t like the time or attention he gave them considering the close quarters they lived in, and had always been resentful. She always claimed her English wasn’t good enough to hold a proper conversation with them, but he’d seen her enough around her American friends to know it wasn’t true.

“We’re just meeting up with some of the guys for breakfast.” Jack says, cautiously, in an attempt to fill the silence. The invitation remains unspoken, but Nico can tell in the way the younger boy cocks his head and meets his eye that he’s gauging his current situation for the morning.

“We have plans.” Talia must be able to tell what he was getting at, too and Nico can see Luke’s eyes narrow as soon as the word resonates in his head. Plans. Pre-meditated. Made before she had sprung all of this on him within the last hour or two. Panic stirs within him, and his throat itches to speak the truth, but it’s just not the right time to do so with Talia stood beside him. If he starts getting defensive, she’ll start asking questions, and the boys will have to bear witness to him skirting around the matter of Poppy. 

It’s not a good look no matter which way he swings it. He’s stuck in a thick, dark, tarry mess of not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings but making all the wrong decisions. A minefield of not knowing how to explain himself without raising a million questions on either side, and hoping one of the brothers might toe the line of the boundaries of their relationship and just straight up ask why Talia is here.

He knows he has fucked up without the way neither of them are looking him in the eye.

He knew it the second Poppy’s door had locked behind him this morning - he doesn’t need Luke refusing to meet his gaze, doesn’t need Jack’s shifting side eye to tell him he’s made a mistake. 

“I’ll text you later.” Nico says, mainly to Jack but still trying to meet his brother’s eyes with no luck. It’s an attempt to say something, without saying anything. A silent beg not to jump to conclusions about what they’ve seen - and, although he knows they wouldn’t, not to tell anyone else. Not whichever of the guys they are meeting up with, not anyone else on the team, and definitely not Poppy.

“Yeah, sure,” Jack mutters in a poor attempt to hide his discomfort, and an even worse attempt at masking his relief when the doors ping open on the parking level.

“Have fun with your plans,” Luke huffs out, his tone like a tight fist clutching at Nico’s chest despite his courteous choice of words.

“We will,” Talia forces a smile. Nico gets the feeling she isn’t as oblivious to the tension as he hopes she is.

The four of them separate into their pairs with mumbled goodbyes, Jack and Luke heading off to Luke’s car on one side of the garage, and Nico and Talia heading to his on the other, and Nico can’t even let out a sigh of pseudo-relief before Talia jumps on him.

“That was weird.”

“We broke up, they weren’t expecting to see us together.” He quickly excuses as he starts the car up, turning on the heat and hoping the soft buzz of the air will fill the silence enough that she doesn’t feel the need to talk. 

“It’s been like 3 weeks, most couples get back together after their first breakup.”

Has it only been 3 weeks? He thinks, shuddering at how little time had actually passed between her sending that text and him restoring balance to his life.

“We’re not most couples,” he shrugs, shutting that train of thought immediately as he starts to make his way out of the parking garage, ascending the ramp where the doors open up to reveal the dull beam of the winter morning sun. “You dumped me over text a week before Christmas, we’re not getting back together.”

“Oh yeah, I bet you were real cut up about it,” she jibes, sarcastically. “Probably landed straight in the bed of some desperate puck bunny more than happy to take your mind off of how awful I was to you.”

His mind immediately goes to Poppy, to last night, to her bed - and despite the complete bullshit Talia has fabricated in her head, despite how much he wants to tell her she has it all wrong, he can’t bear to twist himself even further into knots to skirt around mentioning the girl who did make him better.

“We’re not having this conversation right now.” He decides, tapping at the screen in the console of his car until he brings up the navigation. “Put in the address you need, we’re not too far from The Heights.”

The location she enters into the system is for an unassuming condo in a quiet, suburban area. The neighbourhood itself is picturesque, the buildings colourful, the paths lined with trees that seemed to flourish even in the midst of winter, and when Nico pulls up across the street, he notices the amount of families around - parents walking their kids to school and couples with dogs getting their morning steps in. It’s the last place he imagines some hacker to be shacked up, but maybe that’s the point.

He still doesn’t entirely understand the ethical part.

“It’s the one with the red brick and the balcony,” Talia points to the other side of the road as she unbuckles her seatbelt, and Nico looks over at the building as if he’s going to be able to see all the secrets stored within it.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, number 414.” She shows him the messages she has exchanged with the guy, and sure enough, the address matches up. “C’mon, the sooner we get in there, the sooner we can figure this out.”

He follows her across the street, adjusting the cap he wears atop his head and making sure it conceals his identity from anyone with eyesight good enough to catch it, trying to shrug off the discomfort of the whole situation as he waits for someone to pick up the buzzer Talia relentlessly presses.

He hears a different kind of buzz, lighter, like the manual zoom of a camera, and cranes his neck to assess their surroundings as they wait, before he catches sight of the device in the top corner of the porch, facing directly onto them.

He hears the click of a lock as soon as his eyes make contact with the thing, and cautiously tries the handle on the door until it pushes all the way down, letting them into the building. 

The door to the ground floor condo is open, and stood in the entrance is a guy no older than 20, dressed in all black with dark, beady eyes framed by wire-rimmed glasses. If Nico could find it in him to see the humour in the situation, he’d laugh at how he looks like Luke - a mop of curly brown hair, tall with a slim build and ever so slightly poor posture.

He straightens up as the two of them approach, Nico keeping Talia behind him as he assesses the safety of the situation. If they’re being lured into some kind of trap, he could definitely take this guy - he can’t even maintain direct eye contact, never mind manage to subdue a man of Nico’s stature.

“You didn’t tell me you were bringing someone, Talia.”

He’s soft-spoken, his voice ever so nasally, and despite the fact that he’s talking to the girl behind him, his gaze has settled on Nico’s chest.

“My name’s Nico.” He introduces himself, holding out a hand to shake. He thinks he can write him off as a threat, for now, and if making him feel comfortable encourages him to help them, he wants to put him at ease. “

“I know who you are.” He doesn’t shake Nico’s hand. “I’m Myles. Come in.”

Myles doesn’t wait for the two of them, marching back into his place and leaving the door open for Talia and Nico to enter and close behind them. 

Nico isn’t surprised by the space - from his brief encounter with the resident so far, it fits him to a tee; neat, impersonal, furniture that looks fresh out of a catalogue. He follows him over to the corner of his living room, a PC set up with several monitors that he can’t tell are on until they’re standing straight in front of them.

Myles throws himself down into the large swivel chair, spinning until he’s facing the two of them and crossing his arms over his torso with disinterest. “So, nudes?”

Straight to the point. Nico can’t exactly be mad at it.

Talia steps out from behind him, handing her unlocked phone to Myles. “The messages started last week, just after New Years. Straight to my number, not in DMs or anything, but the number doesn’t even come up for me to call it from another phone or anything, just says unknown.”

Myles takes her phone and plugs it into his setup without even looking at whatever she has opened on it, and Nico watches as the screens come alive with mirrors of the device and some other apps that launch as soon as it connects. 

“That’s more helpful than you think, they have to use an app to be able to anonymously text you, makes it easier to identify them.”

The way Myles talks is monotonous and detached, but the way he works is anything but. His fingers move quicker than Nico’s eyes can track on his keyboard, typing away at whatever as different things flash up and leave his screen. It like something straight out of a spy movie.

“So we can find out who it is just from that?” He asks, arms folding over his chest as he watches in almost-awe.

“Not exactly. If it is a hacker, I could identify their signature. Doesn’t mean I could identify them, but we can work around it potentially.”

Talia throws herself down on the couch behind them exasperatedly, sighing loudly and making her displeasure known. “You told me you could track them down, that’s what I’m paying you to do.”

“I told you I could help you, I didn’t say I could specifically track anyone, that’s not how this works.”

“How does it work then?” Nico asks.

Myles wheels his chair to the side to make room for Nico to get closer, and starts walking him through the process, pointing through the different apps he uses and explaining how he uses them. One deciphers which app the person used to message Talia. Once that’s been deduced, he uses another to enter a backdoor into that app’s servers, perusing through them until he finds the account that sent the text, making sure the date, time and then content line up. Once he’s found the account, he can see the other texts sent from it, and a gallery spreads across two screens, with maybe hundreds of pictures, videos, messages and transactions all to or from that same account.

“You’re telling me you have the power to do all this and you don’t use it to like rob banks or something?”

“Ethical hacker, clue’s in the name.” Myles shrugs. Nico looks back to Talia, her jaw set as she picks at her nails out of boredom. It’s probably taken about fifteen minutes for this guy to work an absolute miracle, and she looks like she couldn’t care less. “We use all this information, and the access I have on the server, to shut this dude down and cut his con before he can do it to anyone else.”

“Whoa whoa,” Talia shoots up, “Won’t that make him mad? Make him just post all the photos?”

“I doubt it,” the hacker comments, bringing up a couple of the photos on the screens, some of Talia, some of another girl, making Nico divert his eyes. “They’re not even real.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Excuse me?”

Talia and Nico both question at the same time, leaning in to get a proper look to confirm what is being told to them. The other pictures Myles had brought up, the ones of other girls, are actually kind of the same. The same poses, the same backgrounds, the same outfits, or lack thereof, just different faces and different hair.

“They’re called deep fakes. Photoshop, essentially.” He has that aloof tone to his words again, and Nico can’t quite believe how simple it seems for him to say. “They put a bunch of your pictures into an AI generator and give it instruction, like put this face on a body posed like this or wearing that. I’d assume the video they have is the same.”

“How is that even possible?” Talia gasps, pushing herself forward and snatching the mouse from Myles’ grasp. She clicks into what she assumes is the video, and it starts playing before she can think better of it, thankfully without any sound. 

It’s Talia - that much is obvious from the initial close up of her face - but Nico doesn’t recognise anything else about it. He doesn’t recognise the room she’s in, the bed she’s on, the things she’s doing. He’s never seen this before. It’s definitely not one of the videos she had sent him, and when he looks closer, he realises the little moles on her ribs aren’t even there.

None of it is real.

“You said he sent you the photos? You didn’t realise they weren’t the ones you took?” He can’t conceal the bite in his tone, his brows furrowing as he looks at her in disbelief. She’s flown out here, disrupted his peace, blamed him for blackmailing her, and she can’t even recognise what is or isn’t her own body. 

“They looked real, I-,” Her shock disappears as quickly as it had come about, her mood shifting and a glare all of a sudden being directed at her ex boyfriend. “I wouldn’t have accused you if they didn’t look real, Nico.” She snaps, frowning at him like this is his fault. “You have no idea what it’s like to be threatened like that, I won’t have you blame me for panicking.”

Slivers of guilt seep into his subconscious, and he takes a deep breath, diverting his gaze uneasily and letting out a big sigh.

He knows he should be a little more compassionate, but there’s panicking, and then there’s this.

She had accused him of ruining her life.

“What about the rest of it?” Nico asks, “Like how did he get her number or have my address? You said he had other information?”

“He did,” Talia nods, looking over to Myles.

“The address he probably got when he got your number, and he could have got that from anywhere. Could be something as small as you ordering something online and the store having a data breach, or clicking a link that shared your IP address, and getting your phone information from that.” Myles starts his typing again, keeping a tight grip on his mouse so that it can’t be snatched again. “I could probably find out actually, they’re pretty easy to spot, do you clear your history often?”

“I wouldn’t even know how to do that,”

“Perfect,” Again, his fingertips work at lightening speed, and Nico watches as instagram opens on one of the screens. “Yeah, a DM sent to you from… Devils_tea. You opened a link to a shared drive to upload some pictures, the drive probably had malware and the pictures have location metadata.”

Nico rolls his eyes, that small ebb of pity washing almost completely away, and before Talia can stop him, Myles carries on. “Some of the pictures you sent them are the ones they used for the AI photos, look your face in this one is the exact same as this photo they threatened to leak.”

Nico recognises these photos. The ones that had been plastered all over social media when their relationship had leaked. Pictures of them back in Switzerland, on a weekend trip to Ibiza, selfies of them in his apartment, and even a picture of the two of them with his parents back at his family home in Valais.

He has been far too oblivious to Talia’s games for far too long, he realises. 

Of course she had been the one to leak everything - who else would have had those photos - but he hadn’t even considered it would be her; she had faced the harshest aftermath for it, why would she subject herself to all the subsequent grief that came with people knowing about their relationship?

Thank God for this guy’s lack of social cues, Nico thinks, or he would never have known that for as long as they had been together, she had been violating his revered privacy and trust.

“Nico, that wasn’t-,” Talia’s panic is evident, wide eyes, trembling hands raised in defence, “I must have been hacked,”

“Actually, there’s no-,” Myles begins to interject, fingers working again to fact check, but Nico doesn’t need him to validate what he already knows.

“Shut up,” Talia snarls, with a finger pointed at him, “You don’t know what you’re talking about, we’re done here.” She reaches forward to snatch her phone back, yanking out the wire that connects it to his monitors and throwing it onto the desk. “We’re leaving, and if you think I’m paying you anything, you’re deluded.” 

Talia marches past them and straight out of the condo, slamming every door she possibly can behind her. Nico can only cringe as the sounds of her stomping footsteps echo until they fade out - until she’s probably outside and waiting for him back at his car.

“Doesn’t she want me to shut this thing down?”

“I’ll pay you.” Nico sighs, reaching into his pocket for his phone and trying to push down the feeling that arises when he’s met with a blank lock screen.

Poppy hasn’t messaged him. 

Not that he deserves for her to make it easy, to let him off the hook and pretend he hasn’t royally fucked things up with her.

“If you stop him, does he still have all the photos? He could still release them?”

“Yeah, but they’re pretty easy to validate as fakes, especially when you have the source material. I don’t think this guy is sophisticated enough for a full blown hack into her phone for the real thing. I couldn’t find evidence of any breach of her cloud or her device.”

Nico nods, but the information does little to quell the anxiety that squeezes his chest in a vice-like grip. 

This whole morning has been nothing but a giant waste of his time. From the second his eyes opened, to this moment right now, he’s made nothing but mistakes.

Not putting his phone on sleep mode before he and Poppy went to bed had been a mistake. Taking Talia’s call had been a mistake. Not waking Poppy up had been a mistake. Leaving without a note, without a text, leaving at all - it had all been one error after another, and all he has left to do is face up to the fact.

He can’t do anything to dwindle the panic rousing in every fibre of his being, the scarring marks left by torturous lashings of regret that whip at his skin.

He’s never felt so ashamed of himself, in such disbelief at his own decisions.

Why didn’t he just wake her?

She’s the most level-headed, acceptable person he knows. She would have understood. He hadn’t had a reasonable explanation at the time, and he doesn’t really have one now - but she would have accepted it, whatever he could have told her, she would have listened, waited until he could give her more.

He needs to see her, to explain, before it’s too late.

If he thinks about the feeling settling in his stomach, if he can compare it to anything, it’s like running from a blazing inferno of doubt and insecurity, licks of fire racing to catch up to him, the soles of his feet pressing into the sizzling ground - and Poppy is the cool embrace of safety.

She is light cracking through a window he just needs to break through to make it out.

If he can get to her quick enough, if he runs, and runs, maybe he’ll make it before he’s jiggling at a red hot handle that won’t move, won’t give, won’t budge.

If he can just talk to her, maybe the morning from hell will be outweighed by the days of resilience, weeks of efforts, years of loving her in whatever capacity, and the promise of something better.

He just needs to get rid of Talia.

The car journey back to his apartment is carried out in a deafening silence. She had tried to talk to him when he’d made his way out of Myles’ condo, when he had found her waiting by his Mercedes with crossed arms and a sour look on her face, but he’d told her he didn’t want to hear it, that they’d deal with it in private.

He hardly wanted a showdown with her in the middle of the street.

And so, she sat in his passenger seat, jaw set, glaring out the window and letting out the occasional huff or puff for attention that he wasn’t entertaining.

The elevator ride up to his place had been the same. Silent, filled with the type of tension you could cut with a knife, and all he could do was ignore her continued petulance and take deep breaths to calm himself down. In through his nose, out through his mouth, overlooking the way she tapped her foot in his peripheral vision, and almost audibly rolled her eyes every few seconds. 

“Would it have killed you to defend me in there?” She scoffs as soon as the door closes behind them in his apartment, “You just let him accuse me of all that stuff and completely invade my privacy!”

Nico screws his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose.

He can’t blow up, can’t stoop to her level. He won’t feel good after the fact. He knows how Talia operates, should have known she’d immediately play the victim card, and he isn’t falling into the trap of arguing to the point of being in the wrong.

He’ll say something he regrets and she’ll use it to her advantage, somehow.

“You asked him to go through your phone, Talia.” He sighs, making his way over to the kitchen and getting himself some water. Chugging at it does little to soothe the burning feeling prickling at the back of his mouth, or the itch of his tongue to spit out a scathing retort. “He’s shut down the guy behind it, he can’t message you or anyone else with any more threats, you should be happy.”

“I should be happy?” She follows him wherever he tries to get away, crowding his space and jabbing a pointed finger into his arm. “You have no idea what I’ve been going through this past week. I thought my career was over! How was I supposed to know it was fake?”

“You didn’t even look at the pictures-,”

“Because I was panicking! I was upset, you can’t expect me to be able to recognise what’s been photoshopped when I’m scared like that!”

“But you can fly straight over here and pin the blame on me for ruining your life? You weren’t too upset to point the finger, Talia,”

“Don’t be an asshole, Nico, it doesn’t suit you.” 

“I’m being the asshole? You don’t even care about the trail of destruction you leave behind you, do you? You send private pictures of us, of me, of my family to random people online who you don’t even know, for what, Talia? For money?”

“I don’t need their money-,”

“So it was just for the attention? You get to parade our relationship around like it means nothing more to you than a title, and once you get your fifteen minutes and a few more instagram followers, you just jet back home and dump me over a text?”

“Oh my God,” she cries, flailing her arms dramatically, following him yet again as he makes his way into his living room, picking her stuff up after her that she had discarded here before they left and throwing it into her travel bag. “Stop playing the victim, for Christ’s sake, you’re hardly heartbroken over it. I know for a fact you’ve been hooking up with someone, one of the girls messaged me that they saw you leave a party with her on New Years!”

“So that’s what this is?” Nico snaps, pointing to her, to her stuff, “You think I’m moving on so you fly back out here and spring this bullshit on me, try to make me feel bad?”

“You have some nerve, Nico,” Talia scoffs, folding her arms across her chest and levelling him with a darkened glare.

“I have nerve? You’re the one who broke up with me out of nowhere and think that you can just march back here and make demands, Talia, blaming me for something that was entirely your own doing.” He’s getting sick of walking on egg shells around the topic. If she hadn’t have been messaging people she wasn’t supposed to, this would never have happened - it’s no one’s fault but her own, and as harsh as it may be, he wants to wash his hands of the whole thing. “Calling me in the middle of the night, telling me I ruined your life, saying I need to give you money?”

“Out of nowhere?” Of course she would only pick up on that, he thinks. “My God, you are so self-absorbed.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Do you think that dating you is easy?” She questions with a measured step toward him. “Do you think I want to spend my life waiting around for my boyfriend, only for him to only ever come home grumpy,” another step, “Or whiny,” and another, “Or too tired and achey to do anything? And that’s when you do come home at all and aren’t half way across the country with the communication skills of a candle. It’s a constant uphill battle trying to get even a second of your attention, Nico, so God forbid I tried to gain some kind of advantage from being with you.”

Her words are starting to cut, but he tries not to react, tries not to bite back. He can count several ways in which she gained an advantage being with him, just off the top of the head - a girl like Talia is never shy of attention. Her courting gossip blogs and sending them private information is probably just scraping the barrel of the ploys she made for exposure while she was with him.

“I didn’t break up with you out of nowhere, I put up with you and the whole circus that comes with you for months, but God, is it exhausting being with you.”

“You knew what you were getting into, Talia. You knew my job, knew my life.” They had met initially through mutual friends - hockey friends of his back home, even - and she has other friends who happen to be wives or girlfriends of athletes. She can’t say she came into the relationship completely oblivious to the downsides of dating a professional player.

“Not really,” she shrugs, “All the other guys can find some sort of balance, but not you. All the other girls get a proper boyfriend, someone who spends time doing what they want to do, who sticks up for them when their psycho fans start to turn on them, who doesn’t keep them hidden away like some dirty secret.”

“That isn’t fair, I can’t control that stuff, Talia, it’s not my fault.” He wants to point out that she was the one engaging in their gossip and riling them up, but he can’t keep harping on about something she refuses to acknowledge. He doesn’t have the time, patience or energy for it anymore.

The initial ‘leaking’ of their relationship had caused their first major fight. Fans online had somehow - although Nico can now hazard a guess as to how - found out about the two of them, had dug into Talia, her background, her family, her job, and had found some pretty toxic posts on her social media. They had been old posts, and she had told Nico that wasn’t the kind of person she was anymore - and he had no reason not to believe her, had never seen or heard her act in the ways she had online in what she called her misguided youth - but someone in the PR department at the Devils had cottoned onto the topic, and had warned Nico of speaking out in her defence when the pitchforks started to raise.

He’d told her he supported her, but he couldn’t do so publicly - not without upsetting people within the organisation he had worked so hard to gain the respect of - and she had told him she understood. They hadn’t been together that long, it would have been a little unreasonable for him to put her above his work in the ways she was expecting, but she clearly doesn’t see it that way, now.

“Maybe not, but if I’d have known that being with you meant having my life invaded, my career ruined, I never would have followed you back here, Nico.” She sounds more solemn now - regretful, even - and as deep as her words cut, she says it like a piece of advice, “I just hope whatever poor girl you’ve got tangled up in your mess this time knows what she’s getting herself into.”

“And what’s that?” His throat feels tight as he speaks all of a sudden, his resolve in defending himself fading, and he tries to gulp down whatever lump is forming there but the feeling doesn’t budge.

This is what she’s good at.

Turning the tables. Reducing him to uncertainty of himself, of his actions, of his memory of their time together.

“A one-sided relationship with a guy who will never be able to put her first.”

There’s a point in every game he has ever had the misfortune of losing, as the seconds count down in the final third, where he has to come to terms with the fact that there’s no possible way for him to win. It’s sort of comparable to the way his insides churn when he’s on a plane and it drops into descent, like his body is falling at a different speed to his surroundings, or the feeling he gets in his gut when he’s hiking, and he dares to take a peek over the edge of whatever mountainside he’s trekking up, where his body can predict the fall, and his mind has set on there being nothing he can do about it.

This feels like all those feelings.

“Whoever she is, and I know she exists, she doesn’t deserve that. It’s not fair.”

Nico’s heart pounds in his chest, echoing and thrumming in his ears until all he can hear is the beat reverberating, ricocheting around his skull.

He can put Poppy first.

So many parts of their lives are intertwined, it would be so easy to make it work. They work together, they live close, he speaks to her more than he speaks to anyone else in his circle. They’ve spent more time together as friends than he has with any other girlfriend he’s had.

He’s wanted her for years, of course he can do it.

Except, deep down, he knows he can’t. Being in a committed relationship with someone is an entirely different ball game to a friendship, no matter how close he and Poppy have been over the years.

He knows there’ll come a point soon into the season where he has to knuckle down and focus, can’t let anything or anyone distract him, and he’ll close himself off. It’s what he has always done. He gets in his head, starts to carry too much weight that he can’t shift until that final buzzer blows - and he can only hope that it happens with his team in the playoffs. Winning, thriving, succeeding. And for that to happen, he can’t prioritise anything other than the game he’s already dedicated his life to, his training, and most importantly, his team.

It isn’t about what he wants.

What have you done? He thinks, his chest aching.

Talia is right.

Poppy doesn’t deserve that.

She doesn’t deserve him only being there in the physical sense, if she even gets that at all. Doesn’t deserve him getting snappy and stressed, doesn’t deserve him not being able to give her time, or give her attention or affection like he wants to, or like she’s worthy of.

“I need to go.” He manages to choke out with a shake of his head, shouldering past her to pick up his jacket - needing to be out of this conversation and away from Talia. “Leave the keys, I don’t want you here when I get back.”

He needs to see Poppy.

He never should have left her - he wishes with everything in him that he had soaked up the time he had with her before everything came tumbling down around him. And somewhere deep within him, there is a fragile, wilting piece of hope that clings to the belief he can make things right. He just needs her to hone in on it. If anyone can reach into the deepest cracks of his insecurities, can show him he’s overthinking things and everything is not as hopeless as he has made it out to be, it will be Poppy.

Poppy

The first time Poppy had ever fallen asleep beside Nico was at a movie night in Jack’s old apartment he shared with Ty Smith. Jack had invited more people round than could reasonably fit in their living room, and so everyone was smushed in - each chair and every inch of floor space used to its full capacity. 

Nico had attempted to save Poppy a space, to give him credit. He had scowled at each of his teammates who tried to throw themselves down in the tiny slot beside him - prime space, corner of the comfiest couch, facing the tv directly, a small table to the side where one could keep their drinks and snacks - only, by the time Poppy got there, he had barely gotten away with man-spreading to make room, so the small section of the couch between Nico and the arm rest had become her designated spot.

It was cosy, to put it nicely. He had to swing his arm over the back so that she wasn’t being assaulted by the hard dig of his shoulder with every laugh, and her closest leg was pretty much on top of his for most of the film.

She’d known the guys for almost a year - had been working in media, attending every game, home and away, and had integrated herself into the group pretty closely - and she felt pretty comfortable around everyone.

It wasn’t the kind of dynamic she had anticipated falling into when she first got the job with the Devils. She was supposed to start getting serious about her life - cracking down on mingling with co-workers and throwing herself into new social circles, and focusing on building a career for herself, climbing through the ranks and attaining the kind of success and happiness she could shove in her family’s disapproving faces - but the guys had charmed her.

Jack had been somewhat relentless in his pursuit of Poppy’s friendship. He rarely took no for an answer when it came to inviting her out. He was new to New Jersey - a much younger player in a slightly older team - and his rookie season had been rough, so it came naturally to Poppy to want to provide comfort. She introduced him to some of her friends, showed him her favourite spots close to his apartment, found him a decent barber, picked up extra fruit whenever she went to the farmers market near her parent’s house and took it over to his and Ty’s place when she came back home so she could mother him into having his 5-a-day as if he didn’t have access to the best nutrition coaches in the country. Despite her best efforts, Jack had weaselled his way under her skin in the way only a brother could.

Nico’s charm was entirely different.

Nico’s charm came in the form of convenience at first - in the oh I live that way, I can drive you and I have some time, I can do some media stuff for you type of way. Convenience blended into companionship - I haven’t eaten either, we should go for lunch together and I’ve been wanting to watch that movie, do you want to watch it with me?

It turned into grabbing food together, even on days neither of them were working - breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, even coffee or sometimes drinks if they could meet up with the rest of the team. It turned into him spending time at her place, whether it was helping her paint her apartment, putting up her new wardrobes, or just binging whatever crazy long series Poppy had decided to start over from the beginning - she provided him with a sense of familiarity and calm he couldn’t really find in anyone else he had met in his time in the states. She became his person, his home away from home, away from home.

And he became hers. 

There wasn’t as much she had to escape; her job not as strenuous, the expectations of her not as high, but when things built up for her - when her mother became overbearing, or her latest endeavour into a relationship crashed and burned - Nico was there. He’d make sure she had a distraction, made sure she was looking after herself, and, in turn, would look after her as well. He made sure she got home safe on nights out, or when they returned from a roadie and landed late - he would always make sure to see her off into the comfort of her own home before he went back to his own. 

And that first time she’d fallen asleep beside him, he’d done the same.

He’d wrapped an arm around her to make her as comfortable as possible for as long as he could, and when the movie had finished - when her face was burrowed into the side of his chest, soft snores falling from between her lips - he gently drew her back to consciousness with his hand stroking at her cheek.

She’d been a little startled, hand shooting up to wipe at her chin and thankful she hadn’t been drooling on him - although with the easy smile he was giving her, she had thought he of all people wouldn’t have minded. 

“Movie’s done, do you need a ride home?” His voice had been low and soft as not to worsen her apparent disorientation, and his hand was still lingering by the side of her face.

She had nodded, blinking away her sleepiness, and working her way up from the couch and onto her feet, stretching out her muscles as Nico did the same.

The two of them bid their goodbyes to the rest of the guys, made their way together to Nico’s car, and he had driven her back to her apartment, chatting on the drive about work and training. 

Poppy had been cramming to prepare for her interview for the Foundation at the time - had been getting herself seriously worked up, staying up late, getting up early, barely allowing herself any time for anything fun - and Nico had seen right through her. 

He’d stopped her before she got out of the car, had held her hand, rubbing at her knuckles with his thumb, and had told her that she should get some proper rest, and that she was going to absolutely rock their world in her interview in a few days time. And, knowing she was going to ignore any instruction he gave to make herself some decent dinner and go to bed early, had ordered her favourite Japanese takeout to be delivered a good half an hour after she got inside, with a text that followed telling her to sleep straight after she had finished.

She’d never expected to drift asleep with him on Jack’s couch - had never expected to open her eyes to the sight of his looking so warmly back at her.

And she hadn’t expected the same thing this morning, because, as her eyes drifted open to the intrusive light peaking through the cracks in her curtains, it wasn’t the first time she had woken up.

The first time had been to subdued movements, a slight groan of her bed frame, and the soft pattering of footsteps leading away. It had been to a hushed voice, the creak of her bathroom door, the flush of a toilet and the uttering of a name she had hoped she would never have to worry about again.

Talia.

The rest of his words had been uttered in his own language, but that she could understand.

She had acted purely on fight or flight instinct, laying back and pretending she was asleep - although as soon as she did, she regretted it, her mind racing at the million and one other possibilities she could have gone with. Sitting up, waiting for him to come out and asking him what was going on being the most rational.

But when had she ever gone with the most rational thought?

She tried not to react as she felt his presence, felt the soft press of his lips to her skin, or the placement of her bunny in her arms. Tried not to follow him as soon as he departed her bedroom, beg him to come back and whatever was going on could wait until the proper turn of the morning. Tried not to get up and go after him when the click of the lock to her main door echoed throughout the empty apartment.

And she tried not to cry as she laid in bed, overthinking herself back to sleep, thoughts racing to the point of exhaustion, and hoping when she woke up again it had just been a god-awful dream.

But it hadn’t.

The spot beside her in bed is empty, not even a crease in the pillow to prove he was ever there - only the t-shirt of his she still adorned, the one that when she takes a deep inhale, still smells like him, and the distinct aching between her thighs.

She finds more evidence of their night together in the bathroom, where she undresses herself with sore muscles and glances in the mirror to see the spattering of purple marks forming on her chest and neck. Her fingers trace over them lightly, her fleeting touch bringing vivid images forth of his lips pressing to her skin, practically able to feel the pressure of her flesh being nipped and bitten again.

He had been so attentive to her - so in tune with what she needed and wanted, and so ready to give her whatever that may be. He’d been gentle at some points, and purposeful at others, and every little thing he did, he did it with sweet disposition.

The kind of man who treats a girl like that doesn’t just leave her in the dead of night with no good reason, right?

Her mind races despite her body going into auto-pilot throughout her morning routine. Her shower is over in the flash of an eye, she strips her bed, starts her laundry, makes herself some tea and gets herself dressed - all the while weighing out all the possibilities of what could have taken him away from her, and what she would be able to understand. 

That quickly turns to her imagining the worst, and a tight, constricting feeling starts to consume her chest. 

There isn’t a single part of her apartment she can get away from the thoughts buzzing around her brain - her kitchen marred with the memory of what had happened on the counter, her couch, her bedroom, her bathroom - all carrying distinct memories of Nico that she needs to bench until she knows the truth.

She mistakenly thinks her escape might lie in her phone. There might be a text there waiting, explaining everything and relieving all the anxiety that has welled up in her very core.

Nia’s warnings from the night before don’t ring quick enough in her mind as the screen comes to life, the immediate barrage of notifications flooding in.

2 missed calls from Mom

Mom: Just calling to remind you of proper table etiquette in case it has slipped your mind, I won’t have you embarrass me in front of a Lyon.

Mom: Cutlery going from the outside in, hold your wine glass by the stem and dab with your napkin, don’t swipe!

Mom: Also let the man tuck your chair in and pay the bill, this 21st century woman nonsense is very unbecoming!

Mom: And I don’t want to have to bring this up but for the love of God, Poppy, have some class. I don’t want to hear mutterings of your promiscuity at the next luncheon.

Whoever taught her mom to text deserves a prison sentence, she thinks.

Tucker Lyon standing a girl up and ghosting her attempts to contact him is what’s unbecoming, not her trying to pay her half of the meal.

She can picture her mother as she reads the texts, sipping on her Manhattan on the couch in the great room, her dad already having retreated to bed at that time, and her having nothing better to do than sit and stew on her daughter’s sex life.

If she knew what was really going down last night, her mom would probably have a conniption.

Knowing she’ll no doubt be getting a call later that evening, Poppy swipes away at her text thread with her mom, immediately checking the notifications she hasn’t long received from her best friend.

Nia: hey if you happen to release yourself from Nico’s wandering hands at all today me and Kelsey are grabbing breakfast by my work!!

Nia: if you need refuelling we’ll be at Marco’s at 9 😘 

Perfect. Therein lies her escape. Breakfast with her best friends, where they can hopefully talk her down from the ledge she’s precariously placed herself on.

A catch up with her girls, and then she can distract herself with work.

Poppy: I’ll be there!!

“Hasn’t he text you or anything?” Nia asks, covering her mouth as she chews on her breakfast bagel, the three girls sat around a table inside their favourite cafe close to Nia’s office.

When Poppy and Nia had first moved in together, they rented an apartment in Hoboken, not too far, and their tradition of grabbing breakfast at Marco’s carried on despite Poppy living further down the river and working even further away in Newark. 

Kelsey had lived in Manhattan at that time, but she stayed over so often with the other girls that she practically spent majority of her week there, and so Poppy and Nia’s routine became hers.

Poppy had given the two of them a brief rundown of her night with Nico, a safe-for-work version of events, all leading up to the mysterious early morning phone call and swift departure.

“Nope,” she sighs, swiping to refresh her messages as if she hasn’t put her phone on loud just to be alerted when he does reach out.

“Have you text him?”

“Nope,” she repeats, putting the phone down and leaning back in her chair, running a hand through her already messed up hair. She’s going to have to throw it up if she wants to look any sort of presentable when she gets to work later.

“Is he usually this pathetic at communicating?” Kelsey asks, manicured nails swiping at a bunch of Sweet’n Lows like she’s trying to play Tetris with the packets. 

Kelsey hasn’t met Nico before, not that Poppy can remember.

Despite considering her one of her closest friends, their personal lives have never quite intertwined like that - not like hers and Nia’s.

In college, things were different. They were coming into their own together, figuring out just what they wanted their personal lives to be, and so Kelsey, Poppy and Nia would all share pretty much everything, just to have someone there to validate their feelings.

But that changed once they graduated.

Kelsey moved in with her boyfriend, Liam - who just so happens to be Poppy’s idea of hell-spawn.

The kind of guy her mother would probably love.

Liam worked on Wall Street, couldn’t go five minutes of conversation without talking about stocks or investment funds. His native language was risky money moves and belittling remarks, and he treated Kelsey like an accessory to parade around in public and discard in private.

Poppy had tried a few times to open Kelsey’s eyes to the way that it was, but it soon became apparent that she had to let her friend make her own mistakes, and some parts of their lives didn’t have to cross over.

They broke up around Thanksgiving, and Poppy had tried with all her might not to show her relief, but it has made her somewhat resentful when it comes to other relationships - like no one can be happy if she isn’t.

She knows it isn’t malicious, but she restrains from letting Kelsey all the way in, all the same.

“Not really,” Poppy lies, not wanting to clue her in on the Big Freezewhere he didn’t speak to her for months on end. It doesn’t entirely help her case. “I just don’t get why he’d sneak out to see her of all people, he told me they weren’t ever that solid, that he wasn’t happy with her.”

“Ooh, what if she’s pregnant?” Kelsey is entirely oblivious to the horrific realm of possibility she has just opened Poppy up to, evidenced by the casual chuckle and subsequent sip of her coffee. “Maybe she’s back to baby-trap him.”

Poppy thinks she would have to flee the state.

Nico is a family guy - if Talia is pregnant, he’d force himself to love her again, if he ever even stopped, for the sake of their gorgeous brown eyed, floppy haired baby, and push Poppy to the side just like he had before. And she’ll have to watch him from the sidelines, yearning for what she had just managed to touch the tips of her fingers to before it was violently yanked from her grasp. 

Maybe she’d have to flee the country even - move somewhere remote where she doesn’t even have the chance of being reminded of hockey, let alone of him.

Somewhere with no coffee shops that she’d enter, and the smell of fresh pastries would remind her of all the breakfasts they had together. No railways, where she’d be reminded of his love for model trains every time she came across the tracks. No weird club music that he loves so much, or dorky wizard franchises he chastises her for never having seen.

Maybe Antarctica. They only have penguins there. No real civilisation that she knows of. No brown haired, dark eyed Swiss Gods with deep, honeyed voices that make her knees weak and dimpled smiles that do even worse.

She wouldn’t be able to cope with losing him like that, living her life in an endless mental cycle of what ifs and maybes.

“Kelsey, I beg of you to read the room,” Nia chastises, swatting the girl on her arm before taking Poppy’s hand in her own. “Don’t listen to her, she just wants us all to be single at the same time.”

“Sue me for wanting to have fun! It would be just like college, you and me full-body plunging into the dating pool. Imagine the chaos, Pop, you don’t wanna be tied down to a guy hung up on his ex right now.”

“Dating pool?” Nia scoffs, turning to glare at her, “You’re hardly dry from your last relationship.”

“I’d rather be a grape than a raisin, Ni.” Kelsey chides back, and Poppy can’t help the twitch of her lips at the horrific comparison. 

“You’re really gonna listen to a girl who says that?” Nia asks, unable to mask the glint of humour in her eyes, and Kelsey bites back a smile, too.

Despite the ache in her chest at the thought of any of it - of Nico leaving her this morning, filling her up with empty words and false promises, potentially knocking up an ex girlfriend he is still secretly hung up on even though he told her otherwise - she manages to crack a full smile.

“You are terrible at analogies, Kels,” Poppy tries to hide the grin behind her cup, sipping at her tea and letting the warmth of it soothe the pain in her throat. 

“I’m trying to encourage you to be a strong, independent woman here!”

“She is a strong, independent woman,” Nia defends, “She also happens to be a chronic over-thinker with a deep seated fear of confrontation.”

“I don’t fear confrontation.”

“Then why are we here chit-chatting about hypothetical scenarios when you could just text him and ask what’s up?”

“Maybe ‘cause that’s scary?” Poppy scoffs, only half joking. “What am I supposed to say, hey I just so happened to eavesdrop on your private conversation before you fled my apartment this morning, and despite me not understanding most of it, I definitely heard you mention someone, so could you just let me know if your gorgeous model ex girlfriend is pregnant with your perfect specimen baby?”

“Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out, you don’t even need us.”

Poppy rolls her eyes.  

She could text him. Could be casual about it, a good morning or even an are you okay? Those don’t warrant the alarm bells she’s afraid of raising - the ones that blare out with the siren sound of run, this girl is unhealthily attached to you already!

But she doesn’t want to be the pathetic girl chasing after the guy sending her clear messages that he doesn’t want her.

It’s easier said than done not to overthink the whole thing - not to second guess everything he had said, or everything she had done last night.

She feels like she had rushed things. It was so impulsive, so charged, and after spending the majority of her week away from him, she just hadn’t been able to help herself. And that makes her feel like a hypocrite. She had told him that night he had first kissed her that things between them had gotten intense. It had been the whole reason for spending a few days outside of each other’s company, and in the first possible instance, she had thrown herself at him.

It was desperate.

And maybe that scared him.

It sure as hell scares her.

“I don’t know what to do,” She groans, throwing her head into her hands and scrunching her eyes shut to try and drown out the endless doubt. 

She feels two hands rub at either sides of her back, “Listen, Pop,” Nia is the first to attempt to console her, as always, and Poppy holds her breath for the harsh reality check she’s about to throw her way. “You know I am the one person who would usually be trying to convince you to cut your losses and run when it comes to guys who are no good, but this is Nico. I’ve watched the two of you ignore your feelings for far too long to let you get in your own way, now.

“And you’re forgetting I saw him last night, before you got there, there isn’t a chance in Hell he would have left you like that without a good reason. I don’t for a second think he’s still hung up on her.” Nia casts a side eye to Kelsey.

The only problem is that Poppy isn’t sure there’s a reason good enough. Not when it comes to Talia. Not when the memory of those months of radio silence is still so fresh for her.

“I have to go to work in a building where his face is plastered everywhere, Ni, I can hardly forget his entire existence until he deems me worthy of an explanation. Who leaves after a night like that without even a note or a text?”

“An idiot,” Kelsey mutters around her drink, rolling her eyes when Nia sends her another death-glare.

“I’m not asking you to forget, I’m telling you to wait.” Nia frowns, but her tone remains consoling and warm. “You need to stop letting what this thinks,” she flicks at Poppy’s forehead, “Get in the way of what this knows.” She points to her chest on the left side. “You know him. You know how much he likes you.”

She does.

She knows Nico, she trusts him.

She can only judge him based on his actions so far - the ones that tell her that he cares. He leads with his heart, it’s his most attractive attribute. He’s gentle and loving and she needs to focus on those things over anything else.

“Ugh, corny,” Kelsey drags, and despite her repeated efforts to discourage her, Poppy knows she isn’t being entirely serious. “If he has any non-stupid hot athlete friends though, I’m first in line when the two of you kiss and make up for double dates.”

Guilt pricks slightly at Poppy’s chest - for making her recently single friend sit here and listen to her complain about something so monumentally small compared to the breakdown of the long-term relationship Kelsey had just endured. Even if it was perceivably toxic.

“You’d make such a good WAG, Kels.”

It’s a poor attempt to make up for it, but it seems to console her friend all the same, a giant grin breaking out and flashing her perfect pearly whites.

“I know.”

Poppy tries to distract herself with work. Tries to make her way through her inbox of seemingly never ending emails and her list of ever-growing tasks. She types up lengthy responses, puts together a presentation, makes a bunch of phone calls she’s been putting off for God knows how long, sorts all her invoices out - she even sends a fax. In the year 2024. It’s her most productive work day she thinks she’s ever had.

She zeroes in on the ground every time she moves through the building. Ignores the pictures that line the walls of the Rock, pushes down the memories of all the times she’s walked these very halls by Nico’s side, and she thinks she’s done just about enough to clear her mind for the time being.

She hasn’t thought up some heart wrenching scenario in at least an hour by the time she’s wrapping up for the day.

She’s making her way back to her office after dropping some files off for Elaine when she catches sight of a mop of curls over the top of the chair by her desk.

Luke is sat in her chair when she enters, swivelling around and staring at the ceiling.

“You’re gonna make yourself sick doing that, you know.”

“You’re such a mom,” he scoffs, standing up and clearly trying not to sway, “You ever tried having fun? I think I saw a glue stick on a table out there,” he points through the door into the wider office space, where there are a few, less private cubicles and a common area. “We should go sniff them, let loose a little.”

“Is that why you’re here on your day off? To huff glue?”

“Yeah, I don’t get to let loose enough. Being a rookie in the NHL is hard, Poppy,”

“Bummer for you.” She pouts, mockingly, swerving past him as he rounds her desk and sits on the other side, flicking at the bobblehead version of his older brother that stands by her computer. “If you’re chasing a high can you do it with one of the other departments, it’s not a good look for the Youth Foundation.”

“I won’t tell if you don’t.”

When Luke had first joined the Devils, she hadn’t expected that she would warm to him the way she has - but, surprisingly enough, considering the fact they’re brothers, their relationship recently has started to mirror her and Jack’s.

Luke is funny. He’s sarcastic and a little silly, and it can be nice to have him around when work gets a little stressful. He doesn’t let the pressures of his own career outweigh those of hers, and, despite the gap in age, she actually enjoys his company.

But he never seeks her out like this.

Their interactions have always started through other people. Group conversations that dwindle to just the two of them, or he usually accompanies Jack to bug her and carries on when Jack’s ever-so-busy schedule takes him elsewhere.

She can’t think of another time he’s just shown up in her office alone.

Especially on his incredibly rare day off.

“Why are you actually here?” She asks, casting a suspicious but half-playful glare his way as she starts to pack up her things. 

“Came to see if you wanted to join us for dinner.”

“Aw Lukey,” she reaches over her desk to pinch his cheek, “I’m flattered and all but I’m a little too old for you.”

“Ha ha,” he swats her hand away, “Us. Me and Jack. Maybe a couple of the others if they’re free but you can pick where we go if you make a decision quickly, we were thinking a steakhouse.”

She narrows her eyes at him, expecting him to crack a joke about her being old, but he just looks back at her awaiting a response. “Why?” She drags out the question, her movements stopping completely.

“Maybe ‘cause humans need sustenance to live? What do you mean, why?”

“Why would you want me to tag along on your bro date?”

“Don’t call it a bro date,” Luke cringes, “Just remembered you were working today and we were in the area, don’t know why you’re being weird about it.”

“You’re being weird. You guys never let me choose where we eat. Don’t you remember that time we grabbed dinner when you guys drove me home and Jack told me to stop being a pussy about my seafood allergy ‘cause he wanted sushi.”

“Don’t blame me for the crimes of my brother, Poppy, he was obviously joking.”

“I had to eat tofu, Luke, I don’t find that very funny.”

“Are you coming or not?”

“That depends, how do you have your steak?”

“Well done.”

“Oh! Then absolutely not.”

“Remind me never to try to be nice to you again.” He scowls as they make their way out of her office, and she locks up behind the two of them.

“Gladly, it’s creeping me out.” She grabs at his elbow before he can carry on, stopping him in the otherwise empty common area where she knows no one is around to listen in. “Is something going on, seriously?”

Luke rolls his eyes, but she knows him well enough that it’s only done in an attempt to avert from her gaze. 

Bingo. He’s hiding something.

“I just thought you might want some company.” He shrugs, shoving his hands into his pockets and twisting his lips to keep from saying much more.

“Why?”

If Poppy wanted to spend her life getting a straight answer out of people for a living, she’d have become an interrogator. What is it with these guys and their inability to answer a simple question?

“Jack said you left the party last night with Nico.”

Poppy’s eyebrows scrunch so close together that she can feel a deep crease form between them. What on earth does that have to do with asking her to dinner? Or being overly nice to her?

Unless-

“You’ve seen him?”

“This morning.”

“Oh.”

All of her efforts from throughout the day seem to have been for nothing - an immediate rush of insecurities flooding her mind.

Where did he see him? What did he say? Was he okay? Was Talia there?

She feels like she can gauge an answer from the way Luke looks. Sheepish, almost, like he doesn’t want to say something he knows will hurt her feelings.

She had to have been with him. He wouldn’t just show up to her office like this if it wasn’t something that would seriously hurt.

She wishes she wasn’t the kind of person who did this - who filled in the gaps of conversations and always came out with the worst possible outcomes - but she can’t help it. She’s been doing it all her life, and there’s rarely ever an instance where her instincts have led her astray.

She knows it’s some weird part of her mind protecting her, but she needs to do something here. Nia’s words from earlier ring like a warning. Don’t let what her brain thinks get in the way of what her heart knows.

Her heart knows Nico wanted her. Knows Nico liked her. Knows Nico wouldn’t do anything to hurt her.

She needs to figure things out for herself and stop running, stop letting her mind fill in the gaps of a situation it can’t even comprehend to begin with.

She reaches her arms around Luke’s shoulders, stretching up on her tip toes to pull him into a hug before rubbing her knuckles into his curls, affectionately.

Luke Hughes is sarcastic and silly, and he cares enough about her to not want her to be alone if she’s going through something.

“Thank you for the offer, Luke, but I’ll be alright.”

“Are you sure?”

She nods, a tender smile tugging at the corners of her stubborn lips. It takes over her face, eyes glinting fondly and cheeks warming. 

“Yeah, you can walk me to my car if you’re that worried about me though.” She loops her arm through his elbow as they make their way to the parking lot, and when they get there, he makes sure she’s in her car and has set off before him and Jack leave.

As if her day can’t get any worse, the elevator in her building is cordoned off with tape and a sign when she gets home, and she has never regretted moving up a floor as much as she does when she’s trudging up 6 flights of stairs.

She’s exhausted. Emotionally and physically, and she just wants to throw herself into bed and pretend the last 24 hours were a terrible dream.

Only, as she rounds the final corner to get to her door, any hopes of that go straight down the pan when her eyes land on Nico, standing in front of her door with his hands buried in his jacket pocket.

He looks tired too - hair messed where he’s no doubt been taking his cap on and off for however long he’s been stood here, running a hand through the tresses until they’re all askew. 

His shoulders are slumped, and he doesn’t even greet her with that pretty smile he usually gives her.

His lips do curve up a touch - limp and half-hearted, not even enough for a dimple to form - but it doesn’t provide the comfort she had thought it would.

She feels anxious. A culmination of the day’s emotions washing over in one go. Sad, regretful, nervous, disappointed - all things she shouldn’t be used to feeling when it comes to Nico, but are all too familiar when she takes the last few months into account.

“Hi.” She gives a weak smile of her own.

“Can we talk?”

She wishes he’d have just said hi, back. That might have relieved the tightness in her chest just a little.

Nothing good ever comes of can we talk?

He steps aside as she approaches, maintaining a safe distance as she opens the door and enters her apartment.

The Nico from yesterday might have brushed past her, the graze of an arm or a lingering hand, but this Nico doesn’t. He barely even meets her eye.

He closes the door behind himself, watching as she discards her bag and keys to the console table on the side, and while she’s turned away from him, she tries to let whatever emotions need to come out cross her features where he can’t see them.

She needs to be cool about this, she thinks.

If she doesn’t get her back up, doesn’t get agitated, she won’t scare him off.

“Are you okay?” She asks once she’s turned to face him, not liking how he stands unmoving by the door. He hasn’t made any effort to settle in - his jacket still on and his hands still hidden in the pockets.

“Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that?”

She realises now that she can get a good look at him that the expression he wears is one of shame. Guilt. Apprehension. She needs to be careful and toe the line before he gets consumed by it, she realises.

She steps toward him a little, and he doesn’t back up - not immediately, not obviously - but he hardly welcomes her approach, either.

She doesn’t like feeling this way when it comes to talking to him - feeling uneasy and unsure, but there’s a part of her that’s tired of having to prompt him for answers.

He had been the one to leave this morning. Why can’t he just come out and tell her why?

“I’m alright,” she shrugs, not wanting to scare him off with the truth. “Super tired, though, can we sit?”

She wonders if he thinks about the same things she does as they make their way to the couch. Wonders if he can feel the scratch of her nails on his torso, or the brush of her lips against his, as they sit in the spot where not even 24 hours ago, their bodies had been intertwined.

He doesn’t sit right beside her as he normally would, and she finds herself missing the way his thigh usually brushes against her own.

She doesn’t know where to start or what to ask, and so she basks in the silence for a little - finding comfort in the fact that, despite the mess they’re currently in, they aren’t quite at the end yet.

But a part of her feels it coming.

She’d known it this morning if she lets herself listen to the rational voice in her head. As soon as she’d heard him say her name, as soon as he’d left, a part of her knew that was it, and maybe if she’d let herself believe it at the time - hadn’t talked herself down and convinced herself she was being irrational - she could have protected herself from all the ways this is going to hurt.

“I’m sorry.” He says, and when she looks up, he’s looking down where his large hands are now clasped together in his lap.

“For what?” She manages to choke out.

“Last night, I,” she digs her nails into the palms of her own hands to stop herself filling in the gaps as he figures out what he wants to say, but it’s no use.

He’s sorry for last night.

Last night, he made a mistake.

Last night, he was drunk, he was confused, he was just looking for something or someone to keep him occupied.

“I care about you so much, Poppy.”

That sentence shouldn’t be the one that fills her with dread, but it is.

“You’re my best friend, and I love you,” he does look up as he says this, eye meeting hers in an attempt to convey his honesty, but she sees more of the truth in his glassy gaze than she hears in his words. “This morning, I panicked, and I just needed some time to figure out what I want.”

No, no, no.

She’d rather he tell her what actually happened than do this. Than pretend he left because he doesn’t want her.

“I love you-,”

“You said that, already.” She can’t help the bite in her tone as she prepares herself for the hit. The I love you, but.

“You’re so important to me. Being your friend, it’s like it’s what keeps me sane lately.”

She chews at the inside of her cheek as she feels the tears start to well at her lash line.

“Poppy, I don’t want to mess up what we have,” he shakes his head as his gaze drops, dark eyes darting to focus anywhere but on her own, pleading and watery as she watches him slip away. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You don’t think this is hurting me?” She feels weak as her voice breaks, “You don’t think this is already messy?”

She reaches out to take his hands in hers, digging in to unclasp them, to try thread her fingers through, but he doesn’t make it easy.

“Nico, I love you, too, you know I do, we can figure it out, you don’t have to run away from me.”

It’s a desperate attempt and she knows it is, but she needs to know she tried. When she’s sobbing into her pillow and crying herself to sleep tonight, she needs to know she didn’t just let him go without a fight.

“I can’t give you what you want, I can’t be in a relationship, I’m no good at it.” 

Regardless of what she had told herself earlier, about taking what he says at face value, and trying not to fill in the gaps like she does so often with everyone else, she can’t help herself. When he says, I can’t be in a relationship, he means with her. He can’t be with Poppy. He would be no good with Poppy.

“Why are you doing this?”

“I told you-,”

“No, you said before that you’ve wanted this for as long as you’ve known me, you don’t just wake up and change your mind, not after-,” Poppy starts to feel panic building within her like a flipped over sand timer. Rising and rising until she starts to feel nauseous, getting harder with each second not to jump to conclusions. 

The voice inside her that tells her he got what he wanted and decided it wasn’t for him sounds caustic and bitter, and if she hadn’t wound herself up so much about this whole situation over the course of the day - the past week, even, or the months before - she might have been able to fight off the way it so easily convinces her.

“I have to put the team first, it doesn’t matter what I want, I have to focus on them, on hockey.”

She’s too caught up in her own emotions to notice how weak he sounds - glassy eyes unable to catch the glint in his. All she can hear, all she can see, is the minute hints of a cover-up - that she isn’t getting the whole story, that he’s lying to her, and that the excuse he’s giving is cowardly.

He still hasn’t mentioned the call, hasn’t mentioned Talia, hasn’t explained why he left her, why he didn’t say anything, why he didn’t come back.

“And you didn’t know that before?” She scoffs, pushing herself up off the couch and stepping away from him, “I can’t believe you would do this to me.” She wipes the tears from her cheeks as soon as they fall, but she can’t rid her skin of the feeling that they were there, her flesh damp and sore.

“I know we took things a little too far last night, but that doesn’t mean-,” She almost thinks he notices how bad that hurts her, referencing the night they shared as a mistake - an instance where they got carried away, and not where they followed through on years worth of built up tension and adoration for one another. She doesn’t even have to fill in the gaps, this time. Took things a little too far is clear enough. “We can still be friends. I want to be friends.”

“Friends?” Poppy jeers in disbelief, turning completely away from him now and missing the tears that drop from his own cheeks - missing the way his chest cracks and stretches open in a last ditch demonstration of his vulnerability, his desperation not to lose her completely. “You should go.”

“Poppy,”

“I can’t,” she tries so hard not to cry, knowing she won’t be able to stop, but the words come out in a choked sob, and her voice carries on in the whiney way she always hates. “You told me you wanted more, you said I was yours, and I’m supposed to just act like it never happened? Just accept you didn’t actually mean the things you said?”

“I meant them,” he says, defiantly, so sure of himself that it makes her head spin. “I wouldn’t-,”

“No, you didn’t. You’re a liar. You were either lying then, or you’re lying now. I don’t know which is worse. I can’t be your friend. I can’t pretend like you can that I don’t feel the way I feel.”

“Please, Mohn,” His fingertips just manage to reach out to land on her forearm before she shucks him off, wincing as if his touch has pained her.

“Don’t.” She takes an immediate step back, arms crossing over herself as a defence mechanism, body language screaming at him to go away, and she watches his pleading eyes drop to her arms just as she feels the cold of the metal there - so in tune with her every thought despite his denial of their true connection. Her arms move before her mind can make the decision, before it can remember what even sits on her skin, and her shaking fingers fumble to unclasp the jewellery adorned on her wrist. “You should take this back.”

Nico shakes his head, stepping back and away from the outstretched hand that holds her gemstone bracelet like it’s an actual danger to him. “No, that’s yours, Poppy.”

“I don’t want it.” She knows she’s the one that’s lying now. She wants the bracelet. She wants him. She doesn’t want him to leave. She wants to be his friend over being nothing. 

But she doesn’t want to hurt.

Looking at him hurts.

Remembering last night, remembering their kiss, the things he has said, the things he has done, it all hurts, and she can’t keep hold of a constant reminder of the pain, can’t wear it on her person at all hours of the day just to know deep down that the man who gave it to her will never want her the same way.

“I want you to leave.”

“Please,” he begs again, head tilting as devastation floods his features, brows pushing together, tears welling at the corners of his eyes, “We need to talk about this-,”

“No, you were right, we went too far, it was a mistake.” Her voice breaks as she says things she knows she doesn’t mean, but he’s already put it out there, so she doesn’t see the harm in echoing his own opinions. “There’s nothing more to talk about.”

She can’t look at him anymore, and so she drops her gaze to his hands, stepping and reaching forward and forcing him to take the bracelet from her before she rounds the couch and heads to the door.

If he isn’t going to give her the whole truth, she isn’t going to entertain part of the story, and she needs him gone so she can give in to the way her body wants to fold in on itself.

It takes him a minute to gather himself, but she refuses to look his way, waiting by the open door to her apartment and staring at the floor in front of her until his shoes appear.

“I do love you, Poppy. I’m leaving because I don’t want to upset you any more than I already have, and I’ll give you space if that’s what you need, but I’ll be here when you want to talk about this. I mean it when I say I can’t lose you.”

 She doesn’t say anything. She can’t say anything.

There’s a stabbing pain that’s building and building in the centre of her chest, and she doesn’t even think she can breathe in his presence.

He clasps a hand around her upper arm, and leans into her, his lips pressing a firm kiss into the crown of her head, and he lingers there for a moment before he retreats. 

She manages to push the door closed behind him, the click of the lock louder than ever, and waits a good few minutes in silence before her body is wracked with a silent sob.

The one time she had tried to be brave and fight her own intuition, and this is where it gets her.

So much for Nico wouldn’t do anything to hurt her.

Next Chapter

Taglist: @alwaysclassyeagle @bunbunbl0gs @idgaf-if-youre-here @youflowerr-youfeast @thearchersstuff @bellsdi0r @wonderheartz @jjgsunflower @butterflies35 @kenziepickle @josierosie @laheyxlover @mrsmattytkachuk (sorry if your tag hasn't worked btw)

[mossy-green-aka-ferrythem]

You know.

As much as I absolutely adore Shadow Generations.

I really hope they get back to making more original stuff for Sonic, you know, for a series that has prided itself on originality for quite a while.

Like I don't give a fuck if it's "Cringe" or whatever make Sonic do more goofy wild shit.

Making Frontiers a weird pseudo-open world game was a great idea, more of that please and less Cyberspace. Much less Cyberspace even I want original level layouts and original visual design again, and by and large, Cyberspace doesn't feel that fun to be honest.

The gimmick ideas that Shadow Gens had were truly fantastic, and I would love to see more original levels. Some adaptations of levels are my favorite ever, and the 2D sections in Shadow Gens feel amazing. Kingdom Valley is a blast and so is Chaos Island, especially Chaos Island even, I think that one is my favorite!

Also, as much as I absolutely love the tonal shift and the way Radical Highway has been turned into Black Doom's weird, warped dimensional zone, the more I replay levels, the more I can't help but find the levels that stay within their area the entire time my favorites, as seen with Kingdom Valley and Chaos Island.

Idk, I absolutely love this game, but I feel like when I replay Shadow Gens, I can get burnt out on it so quickly since there is so little of it, and also, while the game looks fantastic, if I am going to be a little bitch about one thing, it's that lighting and shading on some models look a bit weird. Which I think is a totally valid criticism. Lighting effects a lot, and it makes some things in the game contrast slightly too heavily with the surrounding environment, but with that being said, it's mostly a non-issue, just something that I think games with brighter, flatter color palettes handled better, to a certain extent. It's hard to articulate this point lol.

Anyways...

A big thing that concerns me, is that when I think about the concept of there being "Alternate Picks" for stages to end up being included in Generations, the old games have tons of options, even if they're not all the best picks, but after Colors? Can't think of much of anything for Forces, and while Frontiers did an excellent job putting a creative and original spin on things, it doesn't have too much that's distinct, I feel like they should have done more wild, cool shit like Chaos Island being an "Island above the clouds", and even Ares Island stands out as being an open space, it can't help but make Kronos, Rhea, and Ouranos look quite weak in comparison, especially with how similar Ouranos looks to Kronos Island, despite having some somewhat interesting locations and ideas sprinkled here and there.

My god I fucking love Sonic so much, I can just keep talking about it lmao

My main point being is that I love Sonic for it's originality, even the game that played it safe at the time, Sonic Colors, which is on the more childish side, even for a series already made for kids, had truly stunning visual designs for levels, all so distinct, and so many fun level layouts and ideas. I feel like Lost World, from what I have seen, kinda dropped the ball, because most of the ideas in that game feel like they've just been done before. Forces is worse though, because it's just not interesting to talk about. Hell, at least the train-wreck of 06 has P06 to back it up, while Forces? It has a mod called "Overclocked", which introduces a new plot and new level layouts, and even though Overclocked does a lot of good things from what I have seen, the sheer amount of things it does differently says a lot about Sonic Forces.

Frontiers is still a major step in the right direction though, even though it has some rather annoying hangups with Cyberspace.

Damn I really can just keep talking about Sonic forever lol

My big thing is I hope they come up with more original ideas. Even fans of the series seem to have caught themselves into a sort of thought pattern where they're kind of stuck. It's easier for someone to imagine something being cool in a Generations styled game, rather than making something new entirely, and while I love Generations, the entire point of this rant is that I crave new flavors.

So please Sonic, keep running forward, and strive to move onto new Frontiers.

[ask-commander-arild]

OOC Post:

Hi, there! I'm @jnix-2006 and welcome to my ask blog, ask-commander-arild!! I made this blog for @pkmoth's @motherbound-askapalooza, and I plan on participating the entire month of August, but if it does well, I may continue it!! But, bear with me, because I don't use tumblr much, so this is all very new to me, haha. Before we start, I feel I should give a little bit of introduction to what exactly this is. So, firstly, what exactly is an Arild? Well, Arild is an OC I created for the game Mother 3 (Heavy spoilers btw)! He can be seen below!

Art done by @pinkalliums!!! Go check them out!!

Say hello to Arild Eskildsen! A young Norwegian lad of 15 years old who, through a series of unfortunate events, was once a pigmask. I know his design may look a little... 2015, but the design quite literally came to me in a dream, and I would've been stupid not to use it. Now, as much as I'd love to go into detail about his backstory, I wanna save most of it for the asks. I guess the most basic gist is that he was taken from our time, currently in the 2010's but may change later, from a very young age, and made to be a pigmask. Yippee, child soldier! He goes on to be promoted to captain. But after yet another unfortunate event, he ends up being chimera-ified and he gets promoted to commander, but not of the pigmasks... Of what, you ask? Well, we'll get there. For now, here's him as a captain!

Art also by @pinkalliums!! Seriously, go check them out! >:)

Few things to keep in mind for this blog:

1. I don't have many artistic abilities, unfortunately, so this will be a text only blog. Some friends have kindly made a few pieces for Arild, and I will show them off, but for the most part, there won't be much in the way of visuals. If you feel like making art of him, feel free! I would actually love to see it!!

2. Quite a lot of the stuff here is going to involve my own headcanons for the Mother series, especially post-game Mother 3. For example, in my headcanon, Claus survives and becomes the leader of the army, rebranding it in the name of peace, and that is why Arild is a commander. Basically, since everyone has unique headcanons for the series, you can just consider this an AU.

3. There will be mention of a couple real life places that will have Mother-ified names. With any mention of Norway, the name will changed to Fjordland, on account of its many... fjords. Canada is also an important place within the story, and that I have decided to call Mapleland. Creative, I know. I figured I would bring it up to avoid confusion

4. Feel free to ask whatever! Though, obviously, just make sure it's on topic, of course. Silly questions are easy to answer and will usually be answered quickest! Lore relevant questions are a little trickier and may take me just a bit longer to respond to, but I will be happy to get to them!! Also, RP is okay with me, if you want to!!

5. When it comes to asking questions, please don't be weird or anything. Like... being a former pigmask, Arild is a plus-sized character, so a comment about his weight would not be great. More importantly, absolutely NO NSFW. This character is a minor, and that stuff is not okay to ask. I don't think any of this will be an issue, but it's good to mention just in case

6. I do not speak Norwegian, so if I want to sprinkle it in a little bit, I have only on option. Google Translate. I know, I know... it's not the best, but I will try my best to avoid mistranslations or misuse of phrases. I wouldn't want to be the new version of that one post about the Norwegian Butter Crisis, haha.

If you're still here, thank you for reading until the end!! As said, I've never done something like this before, so this intro is probably super chaotic in comparison to other blogs, haha. I am really excited to get started here! I've always wanted to do an ask blog, and I really needed an excuse to flesh out my OC, so I'd say this is perfect! I'd like to give thanks to all the friends, and my bf, who helped me out on this!! Thank you to Moth for setting this event up! Thank you to Hal and a few others for the art! And also thank you so much to my friend Red who helped me create this character in the first place! He didn't tell me what his tumblr was, but he is @/Doc_Glowstick on Twitter!! Alright, I think I've rambled enough now. I'll probably go through this and change it later, but for now, let the blog begin!!!

[sheyshen]

ok mostly full veilguard thoughts both good and bad, some spoilers sprinkled in but i'll try to stay vague where i can.

I give the game a thumbs up, so like, 8 or 9 out of 10 probably (i never know how to rate on a scale since i'm generally easy to please when it comes to games). i can see playing it again but it is a longer game so it might not be something i just go "hey yeah i'm gonna just go replay that really quick for kicks"

full thoughts under the cut:

to start out with I am a big fan of the lore, I did every quest every zone and had a lot of fun with it all, good and bad. tidbits about my rook since it does affect the story here and there and my thoughts on some things: Mateo is a transman, rogue, crow, elf, romanced lucanis, mainly did purple with a bit of blue options (much like my hawke)

starting with the good stuff:

-I loved the companions and how they interacted with each other and with the lighthouse itself. it made it feel very homey like the tempest in MEA, since they would move around and talk with one another. and that they could start relationships with other characters (even ones not in your team) it made it feel a bit more dynamic like these people are here with you not for you.

-I also enjoyed how they would have things to say that were to do with quests you completed or choices you'd made (kinda wish you could get them to trigger by stepping away and coming back even if it only works when they're solo. they do shift if you save and reload at least)

-I loved that you could canonly choose to be trans and it would have special options (like relating to lucanis and taash in different ways) and it makes me wonder what other options from the mirror open up in convos.

-I also loved that there were quite a few trans and NB characters who's VAs were also trans and NB. it was a really nice touch.

-the combat was fun, I do want to check out the other classes when i start a second playthrough (lets see if i'm strong enough to romance someone different cause i don't think i am! lol) and see what's different when playing someone who's cis or a human or a warden

-a lot of the controls were really familiar and easy to adjust to (aside from jump/climb being F instead of space, who decided that? do you know how many times i hit space expecting to jump and just slid instead??) so it was pretty smooth going from playing ffxvi to dav.

-the twists in the story were well executed and man did it make me cry in a few places. wish the one didn't lock you out of an entire vendor so early in but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ i'll just keep that in mind for my second playthrough, i never expect the first to go completely smooth anyhow.

-I also loved seeing some familiar faces though i wish it was a bit... well. more complex than what we got. (i'll expand on that below) but what we had? oh it was nice.

-the environment felt very vast and I loved that there was a lot to explore and find. and plenty of cats to pet.

-I loved Lucanis's romance, and while I do wish there was more, I'm pretty happy with what we had and what I can build on through art and fics (already having some ideas percolating heheheh) but I also seem to end up picking the romances that are more off screen anyhow (looking at you Reyes)

-The companion quests were also all really well done and felt unique. I liked that they weren't all just combat quests and some were more relaxing. and that you can just meet up with them while you're working on something in that area if you didn't bring that specific companion with you.

-in the end i actually didn't mind only having two companions with you. it felt off here and there because it's been such a staple to have 3 in the series, but it worked out well enough same for not being able to control your party members (mind you i'm not someone who likes playing turn based (why i'm struggling with bg3) so i can see that bothering people who play like that) the only time not being able to control your team really bugged me is when i was trying to get some action shots for drawing refs. i'll keep trying with photo mode maybe i'll get lucky XD

-btw photo mode is awesome

-the final push felt a lot like the suicide mission at the end of ME2, that's mostly a compliment. I'm a completionist so i had everything maxed out and done when i got to it so I was ready to go but i wonder how bad things can go if you didn't since there's a whole room for the fallen.

-i loved the final slides (the last one in particular made me cry) and it reminded me of the line at the end of rvb season 14 about telling stories. and honestly i loved that

-the little references to things really tickled me. kalluzeb, kotor, and dungeon meshi to name a few. I'm going to be keeping my eye out for ones i missed now that i can safely dig through the tags.

-there's a ton more things i loved but they get a bit more spoilery than I'd like to get with this post!

-oh yea! and no fall damage is for sure an amazing thing. i jumped off so much stuff before i realized it won't break your legs.

and the things i didn't like so much:

-motion sickness leaking through my seabands wasn't great. i had all the settings for it adjusted but some effects would still trigger it, not as bad as some games but it was still there.

-where i loved how the companions interacted i also didn't like the fact it relied on you returning to the lighthouse after every single mission. there was a lot of stuff i likely missed because i was so wrapped up in doing side quests or wandering around in a certain area rather than going back after each thing and poking everyone.

-I also wished that they would interact with rook more. It felt like rook was checking in on them helping with their problems and being a shoulder to lean on but never the other way around. (aside from varric)

-the pacing on the story was awkward in places, and felt like you had to go out of your way to find side missions and interact with companions rather than it be a fluid experience. it can be a complicated thing to integrate especially if there's a lot of shifting things around internally leading up to the game being finished so it's not a killer for me but can be a bit of a pain.

-not being able to import anything from the previous games (except the 3 from dai) and many of the letters you receive from the quizzy definitely feel like they just kinda wanted to wipe the slate clean and start new and I have some real mixed feelings about that. I don't mind a soft reset but i think it could've been handled better

-I do wish that the cameos we had had some. slight. variation based on previous choices. (using isabella as a main example, i wish she could've had like the red favor if hawke romanced her or didn't mention learning about family in kirkwall if she bailed in act 2) there's a few cameos i think would've made sense to have and references that wouldn't've been too hard to include (vaea was mentioned so it would've been nice to hear about fenris, and with us being in weishaupt it would've been nice to have some sign of hawke since they were there, even an anders mention from isabella. seeing cullen at the final push with the inquisitor (or whoever not dorian or solas y'all romanced). little things without needing to hire extra VAs or anything)

-could use the ability to place waypoints on the map. and the ability to dye gear. it'd just be a nice to have, i'm sure there's mods rolling out already at least

-I do wish the conversation options were a bit more varied. yea i like playing a sarcastic and kind character but I wish there was a bit more of the option to kinda be mean. i mean rook's kinda gotten stuck with a job they weren't planning on ever having let them be rude now and then, as a treat.

-while i loved the romance (as mentioned above) i did miss the ability to get a little smooch or something like in previous games (which is something i miss in other games with romances as well so it's not a nock on dav itself but still something i wished we had gotten) and that they were a little bit. more. not like explicit, but i would've liked a little kiss for good luck before the final battle kinda thing like they have in DA2

-The "virmire" situation felt... off to me, like it was done for shock value rather than a meaningful moment (similar to what happened with torian and vette) and that it was kinda out of the blue rather than something that made sense narratively.

-without spoiling anything major there were a few lore explanations I felt were a bit. unnecessary or could've been done better or expanded on better, or changes that felt a little strange to do that could've been better explained (like the crows)

that's kinda it for things that bugged me. nothing that would make me hate the game but little things that made me go >.> lol

One small hope I have is that they patch in a citadel dlc type of thing, something that has no impact on the story itself but is just kinda fun with your companions. have a little party at the lighthouse right before the final push like in ME3 >:3

There's a "secret" ending after the credits and a few things brought up throughout the game that make me curious where they'll go with the next game.

All in all i thought the game was really great and I can't wait to see my friends sharing their rooks and art and screenshots and stuff!

[circus-mcgurkus]

yap sesh about the best game to ever exist on Roblox: pokemon brick bronze

okay so. as a child without access to a 3ds and an unhealthy obsession with Pokémon, my only available options were listening to my 2 friends (only one of which actually had a 3ds) talk about Pokémon and role play and stuff. whatever. but ROBLOX!!! hell yeah. brick bronze was built to be an actual, fully developed Pokémon game, FOR FREE (with slight exceptions for game passes such as shiny/legendary hunting boosts). Even with these things that cost money (or robux, whatever) they didn’t actually impact the game that much. Shinies have no difference to their normal counterpart other than color, and they can of course be hunted with normal methods at standard odds. Legendaries had incredibly small chances to appear in any wild encounter, usually only after being "released" by completing a puzzle related to them. However, these puzzles very rarely ended without an encounter — you usually got one guaranteed shot at catching the pokemon, which you could save before hand to get as many chances as you'd need. Point being that the game is 100% enjoyable without spending a cent. (Don't talk to me about Ash Greninja.)

When it comes to the plot and story, perhaps my vision is blurred by the past and being a naive child, but it was amazing. You're a child of two archeologists who seal off a tunnel due to dangers, but that's not too important. You and your best friend Jake embark on your very own pokemon adventure: you are allowed to pick any starter from generations 1-7, and Jake always ends with an Eevee (Bastard - I wanted an Eevee). Before you leave the lab, your parents give you a parting gift: A Bronze Brick, attached to a necklace, for good luck. After leaving town, you’re almost immediately called back, with news that your parents have been kidnapped by the evil Team Eclipse. Cypress, the Pokémon professor, advises you to take the Bronze Brick to one of his associates in the next town over, to see what the last thing your parents left you was. You do, but the girl reveals herself to be a member of Team Eclipse, and runs off with the brick. You chase her down and get it back. Fast forward a while; you run into some more Team Eclipse shenanigans in the cities of gym 2 and gym 3; they’re trying to harness Groudon and Kyogre. You shut those two plots down, and meet the other rival: Tessa. The plots great, but I’m bored now.

The most interesting things are the small side things you can do: there isn’t a quest system in game, but there’s always little things slightly off the beaten path that you can find by exploring buildings and talking to NPCs. Chief among these are Legendary and Mythical encounters. Many, many legendary Pokémon are sprinkled throughout the world, for those brave enough to find them (or those smart enough to open the Wiki). Three legendary Pokémon live in one volcano: Groudon, who is encountered

Forgot I had this draft laying around. You guys can have it. I’ll do more PBB ramblings later

[chaewandz]

ROSE - chapter 12: niki or riki?

synopsis: after she turns 18, y/n’s parents arrange a competition for young suitors in her town to compete for her love, a family tradition that brought about her parents’ marriage. twelve men are selected, but who will win her heart?

“do we know what the party theme is?” niki asked, staring blankly at his kingdom-supplied wardrobe.

“no but it’s a party. have you never been to a party?” sunoo questioned, already fully dressed. niki sighed.

“not my kind of thing. but clearly it’s your scene…” niki mumbled, watching as sunoo posed in all kinds of angles in his mirror for no one but himself.

“you clearly need my help. let me see what they’ve given you.” sunoo gleefully stood up and clapped, skipping over towards niki’s closet.

niki pressed his lips together in a thin line, not sure how this was going to end up.

on the other side of the castle on the highest floor, princess y/n and her self-appointed ‘assistants’ danced around her bedroom, picking out different dress options.

“not that one- I wore that to a banquet last month.” y/n sighed, vetoing a light blue gown made of silk with little daisies sprinkling down the trim.

“okay what HAVENT you worn.” joonie defeatedly questioned, flopping onto y/n’s leather couch under her bay window.

“honestly who knows.” y/n admitted, laughing.

“alright I know you hate doing this but you’re gonna have to if you want an outfit…” youngeun suggested.

“ugh but it feels so….” y/n trailed off.

“princess-like? well yes!!!” sakura finished.

“fine.” y/n gave up, walking over to the telephone system by her bedroom door that connected to the castle guards.

“good afternoon princess y/n! how can I make your acquaintance today?” the guard on the other line cheerfully spoke.

“hello sir! could you please send up the wardrobe and makeup artists? we need some party outfits!” y/n requested.

“of course princess! they will be up in no less than five minutes along with some refreshments.”

“thank you so much!” y/n politely hung up the baby pink telephone and walked back to the girls, slightly embarrassed.

“come on y/nnie!! the wardrobe and makeup artists LOVE to assist you, it’s literally their job! in fact it’d be more disrespectful if you DIDNT ask for their help!!” isa pointed out.

“I guess that’s true… I just feel demanding.” y/n admitted.

“you should be excited!! also, did I hear that they’re bringing us snacks???” joonie excitedly wondered.

“are you only friends with me because of my snacks???” y/n accused, laughing.

before joonie could respond, a knock at the door cut through the girls’ laughter.

“that was much faster than five minutes- did they teleport here??” sakura asked, appalled.

“adora magic!” y/n giggled, getting up to open the door.

two hours later, y/n stood in the golden three paneled mirror at the back of her walk-in closet.

“I feel like I’ve worn too much pink recently..” y/n admitted.

“but it’s your color!” marjorie, y/n’s wardrobe assistant brightly declared.

y/n wore a floor length tulle dress in an ombré of pinks, it had a corset bodice paired with ruffled straps. it was gorgeous.

“thank you marjorie.” y/n smiled, bending down from the mirrored platform to give her a hug.

on the other side of the castle, niki and sunoo were restlessly playing games in their shared room. niki was now dressed in a black suit, the jacket had a sparkly beading pattern that sparkled when the light it just right. he (or rather, sunoo) chose to pair it with silver necklaces and a short dangling earring.

sunoo was also wearing a black suit, his had a black mesh vest underneath and he wore silver rings on nearly every finger.

after silently playing rock paper scissors for what felt like forever, they had now moved on to playing chopsticks repeatedly because it was the only game they could think of that wouldn’t mess up their outfits. before they began their next round, a bell rang throughout the castle, followed by a voice on the castle’s intercom.

“good evening gentlemen! I hope you had a successful time at selecting your outfits for tonight’s party! now if you would please report to the castle’s second floor ballroom, we can began tonight’s festivities! see you there gentlemen!” an excited guard spoke.

niki and sunoo nervously stood up and took one last glance at the mirror before leaving their bedroom and heading down to the second floor ballroom. they weren’t entirely certain of their way, they just followed the pattern of guards lining the halls.

the second floor ballroom was decorated wall to wall with golden and pastel shades. there was a dance floor located in the center of the room, and tables marked with name tags for each suitor. there was a buffet the length of two walls, covered in food. multiple waiters stood behind the buffets organizing plates and preparing to serve drinks. the princess sat on an elevated platform located at the front of ballroom, which she protested against non-stop, thinking it was far too much for a party.

as two guards entered through the double doors at the back of the ballroom, the six winning members of the blue team entered, smiling from ear to ear.

niki nervously played with his rings and slowly looked up at the princess, now standing in the center of the dance floor, hands nervously placed behind her back as she smiled at the suitors.

the six men now stood in a line before here, unsure of what to do next.

“good evening!” princess y/n grinned, looking at each of them. “shall we dance?” she asked, excitedly.

the men all nodded and y/n looked off to the side, signaling for her friends to join her on the dance floor.

“this is going to sound weird… but as I dance with one of you, the rest of you will dance with my lovely friends… does that makes sense?? it’s only so you don’t just awkwardly stand and watch me with dance with someone else!” she laughed nervously.

“also! it’s so we can get to know you!” sakura interjected, mischievously giggling.

the boys all laughed along, pairing up with the person stood across from them.

niki was the first to dance with the princess, grinning as he stepped forward to meet her.

“niki!” she said, placing her hands on his shoulders. “do you remember anything from the first time we danced?”

“I remember being terrified of you…” niki chuckled, making the princess laugh as well as he placed his hands around her waist.

“you were so nervous- but today you danced so well???”

niki shyly looked at his feet.

“oh not this again- niki we need to have a nice conversation face to face!” she laughed.

“if I must…” he jokingly rolled his eyes.

it was funny how the two of them immediately got along well, sharing the same sense of humor and banter.

“oh by the way- the first time we met you introduced yourself as riki but now I keep calling you niki… like even the guards call you that now…” she awkwardly admitted.

“I was wondering why you were doing that!! I just assumed you forgot my name…” niki confessed.

“honestly I technically did.” she laughed.

“wow… so I’m just that forgettable.” niki jokingly whispered.

“oh relax. how could I forget your inability to make eye contact with me while dancing!” she teased.

“that’s foul.” he laughed. “but look how good I’m doing now!” he wiggled his eyebrows at her, making her burst into laughter.

“you’re weird riki!”

“I thought my name was niki though?”

the two made jokes back and forth and kept laughing, dancing together longer than they were actually meant to.

this was because while the girls were dancing with the other suitors, they kept a secretive watchful eye on y/n and niki, each sharing a mischievous glance as they noticed the chemistry between the two. the four girls wordlessly agreed to continue dancing with the other suitors that y/n and niki could keep dancing.

“we have been dancing an awfully long time…” y/n curiously pointed out, minutes later.

“is this your way of telling me you’re tired of me?” niki accused.

“yes! I want to eat food.” she laughed.

“okay well you’re the princess, it’s your call!”

“I guess that’s true…”

“i promise I won’t be offended if you want to go eat food.”

“you will be offended though!” the princess pointed out.

“am I that transparent??” niki chuckled, pretending to be offended.

“oh whatever. I guess I can keep dancing with you. as insufferable as you are…”

“sorry what was that last part?” niki raised his eyebrows.

“I said as great and wonderful as you are!!” she laughed.

“right… right…” he nodded, suspicious.

after a moment of silence the two began laughing again. even making eye contact made the pair burst into laughter. they got along so well even though they hadn’t known each other very long.

eventually they quieted down and smiled at each other, not saying a word as they danced. just smiling at each other.

← previous masterlist next →

authors note: squad i wrote this one in one day that’s crazy it usually takes me forever.. FINALLY NIKI AND YN CONTENT!! And yes I added that thing where yn messes up his name BECAUSE I REALIZED I INTRODUCED HIM AS RIKI BUT IVE BEEN WRITING HIM AS NIKI LOL so that’s my bad oops

taglist: (open!!) @dahyvnz @emoworu @strwberrydinosaur @flwrsforriki @deafeningballoonnacho @faiirybread @captivq @bigtoewinwin @yeletbz @palajae @sd211 @shinsou-rii @nomurahayami @viagumi @sfthyuka @byvrn @hyunsllvr @sickandtired129 @2kool4yu @geniejunn @emyxx0

send an ask to be added or removed :)

synopsis: after she turns 18, y/n’s parents arrange a competition for young suitors in her town to compete for her love, a family tradition that brought about her parents’ marriage. twelve men are selected, but who will win her heart?

[bluegekk0]

what do you think about the pale king?

oh my dear anon, have you been on my blog for longer than 5 seconds? isn't it obvious? hahahah

i love him, he's my favourite character next to hornet and grimm. sure he gets like one spoken line in the game, and is dead by the time we meet him, but i just couldn't help but get attached even despite his horrifying actions

first it started with memes, you know, all the "haha baby murderer" thing with no substance, but the more i looked into him as a character, the more fascinated i became. there's a lot more nuance to him than i first expected, so many possible blanks to fill, and i saw an opportunity to create my own version of him. and over time, my love for the little shrimp just kept growing, to the point where i would consider him to be one step away from basically becoming my oc. obviously i can't really make him one, but he's as close to my heart as my own created characters

and as you can imagine, with your favourite blorbo comes a metric ton of projecting. i gave my pk a lot of my own personality traits. the aversion to loud noises and big crowds? the introvert personality? finding grimm hot? the passion for creating things and using it as a means to escape problems? all the bottled up emotions that he won't talk about in fears of burdening others and making it look like he's just feeling sorry for himself? yep. that's all me, more or less

does seeing people hate him make me sad? well i'd be a liar if i said "no", even if i understand where it's coming from. he's done horrible things, yes it was with the best intentions, but he's done them. do i excuse it? no, of course not, but i can emphasize with him to an extent. being put in the same scenario as him, where there's no good option and all possible outcomes end in pain and death? i really don't know what i'd do, and i imagine he was just as overwhelmed by all of it. again, i don't see that as an excuse, more as an opportunity to give him more depth as a character. after all, why would i hate him, if he does more than enough self-loathing himself? i see my au as a chance of redemption for him, yes, because i'm a sucker for second chances and good endings, but i also don't feel like he'd just get away with all of that scot-free. and how to make sure that doesn't happen? tons of self-hate and guilt, of course, with a sprinkle of a crippling fear of failure as a treat. in the end, you can move on from your mistakes, but you can never run away from yourself

as a side note, i also really like his design. he looks so damn stupid with that giant funko pop head, those alien looking eyes and the ridiculously massive fork shaped crown. he has this pathetic aura to him design-wise that i just love so much

in the end, my version of the pale king is so distant from the canon that some could consider him a completely different character, which to be fair, isn't really that far off. he really is my blorbo, and i would take a bullet for him. would i do the same for other pk interpretations out there? probably not. but that doesn't change the fact that i love him as a character and i'm glad there's other people out there who like him as well. makes me feel less lonely about liking this goofy shrimp man

[spawnofbhaal]

I'm realizing that, as good of a game as BG3 is, the lack of narrative cohesion that comes from having a central protagonist and central villain makes it feel more like a collection of D&D side stories than a true successor to BG2. It's like, here's a sprinkle of the Bhaalspawn experience (with Durge) without the slow progression of level 1 to level 30+ where finally throwing off the shackles of Bhaal (one way or another) feels earned and such a relief. Not just because of the way Bhaal's shadow hangs over the player character (also dead!Bhaal is somehow more intimidating than alive!Bhaal, go figure. You'd never catch BG3 Bhaal saying something meaningful like the "life is strength" speech), but because of how much grief other people in the world give your character because of their heritage. People in the world are constantly trying to use your character like a tool, exile them, capture them, torture them, or kill people they love. Being a Bhaalspawn isn't just a personal problem your character has to deal with, it's the source of *all* their problems.

Granted, BG1 and BG2 had the advantage of being two long games (plus expansions) that are really focused on telling a story rather than just one that's torn between telling six/seven stories. Which isn't to say that the overall feeling and experience of playing BG2 can't change a lot depending on what companions/quests you choose, but the overall plot is about one character---yours.

Of course, BG3 does some things incredibly well (or much better than unmodded BG, like giving players way more diverse romance options). And if you *want* the experience of playing through a game as separate characters who have totally different personal quests that are not intertwined with the ultimate big bad (other than the typical "save/rule the world" trope), BG3 is obviously the better game to play. But as someone who loves the whole concept of "Baldur's Gate" because BG1 and BG2 left such a lasting impression on me/literally rewired my brain . . . it doesn't hold up. I love my Durge but she feels like a shallow imitation of my Charname if I compare them.

[m39]

Decade of DOOMstruction(2000s): 2-7 maps WADs (source port)

Oh, boy! A full stack of WADs to check out today.

Let’s hope at least half of these will give me fun.

2000 – HELL FACTORY

Ah, shit.

This WAD is a perfect reminder of how much the early 2000s ZDoom WADs aged like milk. New sound effects that are louder than the rest of the game (although, this con fits perfectly with other types of WADs as well); unskippable cutscenes; stealth enemies that pop out of nowhere when they attack (including the hitscanners); cringy/pretentious dialogue (I don’t think it would be good even if the author was better in English back then); these are bigger issues that plague this WAD. These and it being somewhat confusing due to its hub-based design.

It does have good moments here and there, but personally? I think it will be better if you skip this one. There are better hub-based ZDoom WADs out there.

2001 – DOOM RESURRECTION

This WAD was a surprisingly better experience than I expected. It removes most of the ZScript-related problems (stealth shit was still there, unfortunately -_-), while adding some interesting stuff in between. I know I was expecting more fun with this WAD, but I think it exceeded my expectations.

If you don’t mind the stealth shit, you can check it out.

2002 – DARK 7

Christ on a bike! Another early ZDoom WAD?!

Well, the good news is – no more stealth shitlings… the bad news is that obnoxious, new sound effects are back… with a vengeance.

And I’m not talking about the ones from Doom 64 (since these are always good, even though here, these are incomplete). I’m talking about the rest of those, including the ambient noises that will make you want to rip your ears out after hearing generic announcement #whatever for the nth time on MAP04. I feel like none of them fits here, either due to not having their volume adjusted (weapon picking one being the worst case (I think it’s from Unreal but I might be wrong)), or sounding nonsensically (never put flak cannon’s firing sound into the Doom’s rocket launcher).

It’s sad to think that the rest of the WAD was IMO rather good (aside from two jumpscare explosions on the first two maps), but the new sound effects make a playthrough of it a half torture at best. It’s basically the same problem with Ruma – enjoyable only if you don’t mind these changes or mute them all together.

Honestly, you can skip that one.

2003 – THE BROTHERHOOD OF RUIN

Compared to the previous WADs, this one feels like a golden bar found in the pile of dung heap. And even without comparison, this WAD is still pretty good; and its Mesoamerican theme only helps even further. It has some cheap moments here and there (like crushers and traps/ambushes with hitscanners), but the amount of pros is overall bigger than the cons.

Worth checking out.

2004 – DOOMWORLD FORUMS 3

…

The hell am I supposed to say about that thing?

I don’t want to sound mean or anything, but this WAD is nothing more but a ZDoom slop made out of more annoying features of this port (at the time), sprinkled with unfunny, outdated humor that references stuff that happened in the Doom community twenty years ago, of which I recognize only the RTC stuff from the beginning.

The only highly positive thing I can think of is that the titular forums look rather dope.

You can skip this one. Only people who experienced these adapted events will probably enjoy it.

2005 – HI-TECH HELL 2 – ALIEN TECH

Well, here is something odd – a WAD made for Doom Legacy (it thankfully became compatible with ZDoom after a while).

Compared with other ZDoom-like WADs, this one feels like a milestone, probably due to the simple yet time-saving option to skip the cutscenes.

Other than that, it’s still a good WAD. Sure, it gets annoyingly loud sometimes (especially on MAP03) and the layout of it seems to get confusing in some places, but other than that, it looks great, and is not really that hard, even when enemies’ counter goes over 200 in three maps.

Not as good as Brotherhood, but I still recommend it.

2006 – VAE VICTUS 2

This one ended up better than I remember.

MAP05 might still be confusing and the new music tracks (at least the ones that I recognize) are kind of scuffed compared to the original versions, but other than that, I can’t recon more significant cons of this WAD. It’s really fun to play. Worth checking out.

That’s basically all I have to say about this WAD.

2007 – EPIC

And now, we reached the final, three WADs in this category; some of the best ones; all made by the same guy. But the question is, do they still hold up?

Well, for starters, this one is still a banger to play. While it is kind of janky (one of Eternal’s earlier works), it is the best WAD in this category that I've played so far. It is also the second WAD on the list with ancient civilization stuff AND a train level. What’s not to like?!

2008 – GRAVITY

This one is still great (as well). Sometimes I wonder if this WAD or Epic looks better, but it doesn’t change the fact, that these two maps have some of the most impressive-looking locations made in the late 2000s’. Some of you might complain that it’s not really hard, but even then, I still, fully recommend playing it. You won’t be disappointed (aside from Gravitown’s music… probably).

Also, it’s less janky than Epic.

2009 – HELL GROUND

Disclaimer: Forget about what said about the MAP07 boss in my review of this WAD. It is not bugged. I was just too stupid to realize I was supposed to shoot the left eye from the right platform and vice versa. Someone please assist me with [[YOUTUBE]]. I am a failure of humanity.

Seriously, though, I really like this WAD. It’s like almost everything fits in there; the music from American McGee’s Alice only makes it better. Some of the enemy encounters can get annoying and some music tracks don’t exactly fit and/or are too short, but the amount of pros is much, MUCH higher than the one of cons.

100% recommendation.

WINNER

Here is a little spoiler for the winner, folks: Each of Eternal's WADs deserves the second award for the best 2-7 maps WAD of the decade, but only one will earn it. And in my opinion, it’s Hell Ground that gets the second Pink Pack award. The other two Eternal’s WADs (along with the Brotherhood of Ruin and Vae Victus 2) are, of course, named runners-up.

I don’t know how to finish this part. All I’ve got to say is that there are 7 8-9 maps WADs to check again next, so there won’t be any slitting into two halves.

That’s all for today, people. See you next time, with 2000s’ episode replacements.

[bloxfruits7]

How to Get Free Fruits in Blox Fruits

If you’re deep into Blox Fruits, then you already know how valuable fruits are. They’re pretty much your ticket to unlocking insane powers and pushing through levels quicker than most. But let’s be real—buying them with Robux isn't always an option for everyone. So, if you’re asking how to get Free Fruits in Blox Fruits, you’ve come to the right place!

We’re talking legit in-game methods here, no cheats or hacks. Just smart gameplay and a bit of luck. Let's dive into some of the best ways you can score these fruits without spending a single Robux.

Hit Up the Blox Fruits Dealer’s Cousin for Random Freebies

First things first, you've gotta know about the Blox Fruits Dealer’s Cousin. This NPC is pretty much your best friend when you’re on the hunt for Free Fruits in Blox Fruits. The best part? Every two hours, you get a shot at grabbing a fruit from him based on your level. Yeah, it’s random. And no, you won’t always get the top-tier fruits. But hey, free is free!

Show up every two hours

Higher level = better fruit odds

It's a gamble, but worth it!

Hunt Down Those Sea Beasts

Now, if you’re down for some action and don’t mind grinding, Sea Beasts are your go-to for scoring some free fruits. These guys are tough to beat, but when you take them down, the rewards are sweet. Sometimes, they’ll drop chests that hold fruits. It’s not a guarantee, but it’s another way to snag those prized fruits.

Team up for better chances

Sea Beasts appear in the Second and Third Seas

Keep hunting, persistence pays off

Daily Rewards and Special Events = Easy Wins

Don’t sleep on the daily rewards and special events. They’re practically giving you a chance to collect Free Fruits in Blox Fruits just by logging in or participating in limited-time challenges. Events usually come with some solid prizes, and fruits often make the cut. It’s a bit of a waiting game, but it’s one of the most effortless ways to get your hands on fruits.

Log in every day for rewards

Watch out for event announcements

Participate in all the challenges you can

Boss Raids: The Grind is Real but Worth It

Feeling a little ambitious? Then boss raids are where you’ll want to be. These aren’t for the faint of heart—they take skill, strategy, and often, a good team. But if you manage to take down one of the raid bosses, there’s a chance you’ll score a fruit as part of the loot. It’s not guaranteed, but trust me, the grind pays off eventually.

Join or form a strong team

Prepare before the raid (seriously, don’t just wing it)

Keep raiding; the drops will come!

Treasure Hunting Pays Off Too

Let’s talk about good ol’ fashioned treasure hunting. Scattered across the map, you’ll find treasure chests hidden in various locations. Open these up, and sometimes, you’ll find fruits inside. It’s not the most reliable method, but if you’re out exploring anyway, keep an eye out. Every chest you open has a chance to drop a free fruit, and you never know when luck will strike.

Check every corner of the map

Don’t rush—patience pays off

Fruits can drop from chests

Final Thoughts

Scoring Free Fruits in Blox Fruits takes a bit of work, a sprinkle of patience, and some clever gameplay. Whether you’re hitting up the Dealer’s Cousin, taking down massive Sea Beasts, or just racking up daily rewards, there are plenty of ways to grab these power-packed fruits without burning through your Robux. Keep grinding, keep exploring, and those free fruits will start piling up!

[stellarblade24x]

Stellar Blade: Boss Battles - Ramp up the Difficulty!

In those tough boss fights with multiple phases, you gotta pull out all the stops. The difficulty ramps up big time during boss battles, demanding all your focus and skill. And hey, when you need a break from the intensity, consider copping some Xbox games to chill out with. Those fights are like tests you could easily fail. But yo, if it gets too rough, you can switch to an easier difficulty level anytime. It helps out and gives you a gameplay assistant, but it doesn't make things a walk in the park, especially against the toughest bosses.

Stellar Blade: Journey Through Despair and Hope

If you've tried Stellar Blade's demo, you know it kicks off with a bang. You play as Eve, part of an elite squad fighting off the monstrous Naytibas on a desolate Earth. And yo, after you're done with the demo, consider copping some PS5 games to keep the gaming vibes going strong. When Eve's team gets wiped out during a mission gone south, she's left as the lone survivor with a burning hatred for the Naytiba. Teaming up with a fellow survivor named Adam, they set out to help humanity's last stronghold, Xion, while Eve seeks revenge on the Naytibas.It borrows heavily from Yoko Taro's NieR: Automata, which can make it feel a bit predictable. While there's some initial mystery surrounding the Naytibas and humanity's plight, Stellar Blade reveals its cards too soon for its major twists to hit hard. The story lays it on thick at times, but it doesn't dive deep into themes like Automata does. But despite this, the world crafted by SHIFT UP is top-notch. From the get-go, you feel like Earth's already lost the fight. Cities are abandoned and overrun, wastelands are lifeless, and futuristic utopias are in ruins. Xion, especially, paints a bleak picture of humanity's struggle against the Naytibas and their faith in the Mother Sphere. Propaganda against the Mother Sphere fills Xion's streets, and characters like Eve are either hailed as heroes or met with scorn—there's no middle ground. It's a world of misery and despair. Eve's journey mirrors the player's, as she uncovers the harsh truths of this world, realizing that most fates here end in tragedy. Yet amidst the suffering, Stellar Blade sprinkles in moments of triumph and hope, reminding us that maybe, just maybe, things could turn around.

Stellar Blade: Puzzles, Platforming, and Intense Combat

Gotta give it up, as my character leveled up, the combat system just kept leveling up with me, and that's why I couldn't pull myself away from the console. Watching EVE pull off those sick moves is pure joy, and flawlessly executing the opponent's strategy and punishing their mistakes? Totally addictive. I won't say it's the absolute best combat system in recent action games, but it's definitely up there as one of the most fun I've played in modern titles. You just wanna throw down with everyone, even the optional baddies. The devs switch things up by throwing in hacking sequences and sections where we gotta go long-range 'cause we ain't got our main weapon. Plus, there are some movie-style scripted scenes to keep things spicy. Sometimes you gotta solve basic puzzles or do some platforming challenges based on skills. The whole vibe of the game gives off major Bayonetta and Devil May Cry vibes, spiced up with a dash of Sekiro's parry system.

Stellar Blade: A Top Game of 2024

And let's talk about those graphics—AAA level, no doubt. The locations are packed with details that set the mood, and the character models are on point, especially those idealized android bodies that look almost unreal. They really drive home the game's theme. On the flip side, the surface dwellers are often shown beat-up and augmented with mechanical stuff, creating a cool contrast in the narrative. All in all, Stellar Blade is above average. The story grabs you from the start, and the gameplay is tight and well thought out. Props to Shift Up for delivering, even though I had my doubts at first. Ended up being one of the top games of 2024, no question.

Stellar Blade: Customize Your Combat Strategy

The side content in Stellar Blade isn't just fluff—it actually helps Eve progress. There are different facets to her growth, from simple attack and health boosts to more customizable upgrades. Take Exo-Spines, for example—they're equippable to tweak Eve's playstyle. One might amp up critical strike damage, while another focuses on managing Burst Energy. Gears play into this too, tweaking Eve's stats and abilities. It adds flexibility, letting you tailor your approach to combat based on your strengths and weaknesses.

[safethaw]

Trex Vs. Others: The Composite Deck Showdown.

Alright, folks, it's confession time. How many of you have stood on your old creaky deck, beverage in hand, and dreamt of that perfect, pristine decking? Yep, hands up, me too! And if you've been snooping around the decking grapevine lately, there's one name that keeps popping up: Trex. But is this the real deal, or just another deck in the pack? Let's deep dive and find out more about composite decking material trex! The Trex Buzz: What's It All About? Okay, first things first: "composite decking material trex" is everywhere. And it isn’t just because it’s a fun word to say, though I do love a good tongue twister. No, it's got a lot more going for it. - Green Giants: Let's get real. We all want to make greener choices, right? Well, Trex decks are leading the parade, waving their eco-friendly flags. Made from recycled materials, it’s like giving Mother Nature a big ol' hug every time you step onto one. - Forever Young: Unlike me after a late night, Trex doesn't show its age. It’s resistant to sun-fading, doesn’t have a breakdown at the sight of a storm, and those colors? Composite decking trex still popping, year after year looks like a far better option. The Composite Crowd: What's Their Game? While Trex is strutting its stuff, other composite deck brands are tying up their shoelaces, ready to join the race. They have their strengths, sporting their own unique grains and a rainbow of color choices. But can they really stand toe-to-toe with our Trex titan? Salt, Chemicals, And...Deck Drama? Now, let’s chat about that winter beast: ice. We've all been there, facing an icy deck, and reaching for whatever we can to melt it away. Often, that 'whatever' is salt or some other chemical. But here’s the tea: these things can wreak havoc on your precious deck. Fear not, because we've got Safe Thaw riding to the rescue! Ditch those damaging chemicals and lean into this chloride and toxin-free ice melt. It’s like your deck’s personal bodyguard against the brutal winter, minus the sunglasses. And thanks to its innovative concoction – think crystalline amide core and a sprinkle of glycol – it's all about top-notch protection. Plus, no worrying about any sneaky short circuits or machinery meltdowns. Back To Battle: Trex Vs. The Gang Alright, time to compare notes. While many composite decking material trex boast eco-friendly creds and low maintenance, how do they fare when pitted against Trex? - Got Your Back: Trex decks come with a 25-year Fade and stain warranty. That's like promising to be there for a quarter of a century. Can the others say the same? - All About the Aesthetics: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but c'mon, Trex’s deep wood grain patterns and lush colors are kinda hard to resist. - Pricing Party: Okay, true, Trex might have you digging a bit deeper into your pockets. But sometimes, you’ve got to splurge a little for the finer things in life, right? Wrapping Up The Deck Debate So, where do we land in this decking dance-off? While every deck has its day (and strengths!), Trex might just have that extra sparkle. It's like choosing between a gourmet burger and a fast-food one – both will satisfy, but one’s a clear winner in the flavor department. Whatever you choose, remember to protect that deck from winter's mischiefs. Give it the Safe Thaw treatment. Here's to long-lasting, fabulous decks for all! Cheers! Read the full article

[amlao]

Peace vs. Problems

I have two wolves inside of me and one of them is a lover girl and the other is the sprinkle sprinkle lady.

One side tells me that the only way to keep my partner's interest is to be manipulative.

Never fully let them in.

Keep them guessing and chasing.

Keep my options open in my mind.

That if I start to relax and open my heart, give them things and spoil them, and unleash the adoring prose that stay locked down in my mind, that they'll get bored and complacent.

This side shames me when I start to let down walls and be the lover girl I (think?? I) really want to be. And it runs wild any time my partner is anything but obsessed with me.

"You look like such a fool right now. Driving over to his house just to sleep with him, texting him paragraphs about how much you adore him. Men need to chase. Men bond by fixing problems. Look at how he did services for his previous partners. Look at how he had to chase them and convince them to be with him. You have him hooked. You have him where you want him. Don't let him get bored. Create some chaos. Make him doubt himself. Exploit his abandonment issues, but just enough to keep him on edge,"

I don't want to do that to him. I love him. And giving in to acting that way wouldn't be authentic to me. Do we want a relationship where we constantly have to play games and can never fully relax and be ourselves, or do we want to find someone we can be our entire authentic self with and feel fully safe? And if letting my guard down and being loving and healthy and transparent drives him away, then so be it. The right person won't be driven away.

"Oh, you'll never find that. Men are all the same; it's biologically embedded in them. You are eternally at a disadvantage and you must always have your guard up. Think about your history: you've always kept men on-edge and they've never gotten over you. But times in those same relationships that you've begun to let your guard down, they take you for granted and effort goes by the wayside."

But that just means we were incompatible and their attachment styles were just as fucked up as mine. It is unnatural and inauthentic to pretend to be a moving target my entire life. It's exhausting and it's telling that I don't feel good or regulated before and after acting that way.

[wave2tyun]

IM SORRY FPR TAKING LONG TO REPLY MY DEAREST ALEX

but I hope you got to rest and I also hope you're doing fine:(C( you'll rock this semester, and if that's not the case l'lI gladly beat college up for you😾😾

and I’ve been good :0

I was so so scared about the job and ngl im still a little scared but everyone is being so sweet to me :( and willing to explain how to do the things there. Plus, it’s been kinda tiring but also really fun! I’m not rotting in bed and being depressive anymore, that’s a good start😀

And ummmmm I’m crushing on this boy but we don’t go to the same college and we don’t live in the same city. He’s kind of a low profile type of guy and I’m praying really hard to god let me have one chance with this boy bc I swear I’ve never been this interested IN A BOY like I am now😔

Anyways that’s enough how are you doing my deares Alex?

MY DEAREST LIA IT'S OKAYYYYYY!!!!😔🩷😔🩷😔🩷

i think it's natural to still be a bit scared about the job, it's just a matter of getting used to the environment and the workflow :0 you'll probably ease up after a few more days, and it will probably get a bit less tiring too as you start getting the hang of things, the fact that you're surrounded by kind people as you're learning matters a lot!! :D and cheers to your good start!!!!😼😼💓💞💖💘💓 i'm so SO proud of you for your progress🫂🫂🩷🩷 if those feelings start to come back, i'm here for anything!!!!<3

alsoooooo HELLO i need more details about the boy??????!!!!! how did you get to know him??? have you talked??? have you met????? i NEED you to give me all the deets!!!!😳😳😳

i did get some good rest and i am also doing fine!! :D these days have been pretty uneventful, just cooking, playing games, and trying to write!!! but i am honestly happy about it😌 i have a few more free days and i'm planning to maybe start thinking about my responsibilities from tomorrow asbshja (or maybe in 2 days.....who knows....). and also i just came back from grocery shopping and i got myself some hot chocolate!!!!😋 i don't know if you are a coffee enjoyer :0 but if you are let me put you on something:

put a packet of hot chocolate mix in a mug

add one shot of espresso and stir (or two if you're feeling frisky)

heat up 200 ml of milk (optional: once it's done use a milk frother to create some foam)

add the milk to the mug

sprinkle a little bit of cinnamon on top!!!

and VOILÀ!!!! you've got the best coffee ever!!!!😼😼💞 i started drinking this around christmas and i am so addicted to it- like every day i wake up excited just thinking that i am going to make this and drink it again adsbhjasbd

and just like you said about your job, i'm also still a little bit scared about this semester asbdsj but it hasn't even been that long since it started, and if take things step by step, i hope i will be fine. though i'm very stressed about a retake i'll have to do in march cause i don't want to fail this course and i don't know what exactly will happen if i fall behind on my credits....😭😭😭😭😭

[antilocaprine]

Frenrey w 23 or 50 (or if you feel you have the energy combine them? I feel they could be combined but it's your call)

(Kiss Prompt List)

50: ...out of love.

Gordon’s hair has mostly gone gray now, with white streaks from his temples and at the edges of his still-tightly-trimmed beard. He’s smugly proud of the volume of hair he still has. He doesn’t say this, of course, but Benrey can tell by the amount of time he puts into the combing and washing and trimming of it.

Benrey himself is going bald, mostly to make Gordon laugh and preen in comparison. He lets wrinkles form on his cheeks and brow, lets the bags under his eyes grow, and sprinkles some salt strands into his own dark hair.

They make quite a dignified couple, sitting on the front porch and looking out across the low mists wreathing the fields in the mountain town they moved to a decade after Joshua finished college and moved to Brazil. He’s partnered with some futuristic food company to work on the development of a new strain of cashews, and rides with the local gauchos in his time off. Gordon and Benrey talk to him several times a week on Gordon’s tablet, though Joshua whines about that at least once a month (“Dad, c’mon, let me get you a newer model, please”). But the tablet is the only thing left in the house that can load Benrey’s favorite old games, so Gordon refuses to upgrade.

Benrey thinks that feels a little like love.

“Did you see this?” Gordon says suddenly, and Benrey glances up from the tablet only to get a faceful of newsprint. 

“I see that you’re a grandpa,” Benrey grumbles and reaches up with one hand to push the newspaper back far enough that he can actually see the article Gordon is pointing to.

“Shut up,” Gordon says affectionately. “Tommy’s invested in the local news, we have to support it.”

“Tommy should’ve, uh, invested in something that’s better, then.” Benrey squints at the headline, then rears back, setting the porch swing (another mark in the grandpa column) to swaying. “Whuh - is that -?”

“Yes!” Gordon snaps, pulling the newspaper back and spinning it to glare down at the article. “Margaret Heinrichs is running for mayor!”

“She can’t even run a, uh, chili contest,” Benrey says.

“Exactly! And speaking of, look - look!” He holds the paper back up to Benrey’s face, one metal finger tapping aggressively at a line of text. “The firehouse is supporting her run! After what they said about the last chili cook-off!”

“Oh, what’d they say?” Benrey doesn’t remember hearing about this - though that may have been because he had to tiptoe around the house for two weeks after Gordon lost the cook-off on a technicality, even though all five judges agreed his chili was far better than Margaret’s.

“They said it was a disgrace,” Gordon says vehemently. “The chief himself told me that no one had ever enforced that rule before. Ten year’s residency, my ass - it’s fucking stupid!”

“It’s only been, what, eight years?” Benrey muses. “You gonna try again this year?”

“Fuck yes I’m gonna try again,” Gordon growls, newspaper crinkling in the tight grip of his metal hand. His flesh hand trembles a little these days, off and on, but the metal hand is strong and true. Benrey’s not sure how to feel about that sometimes.

“You gonna - same recipe?”

“No,” Gordon says, and gives him a feral grin. “I’m using a better one. Nuclear option or bust.”

Benrey’s eyebrows go up. “Oh, shit?”

“That’s right,” Gordon says, settling his shoulders against the porch swing’s backrest and smiling out at the thinning mist. “Grandma’s recipe.”

“Oh, shit,” Benrey chuckles. “Yeah, that’ll - that’ll knock their socks off.” He taps his foot against Gordon’s. Gordon snorts and taps him back.

“You and feet, man,” he says. “Always with the feet.”

“You love it,” Benrey replies automatically, and Gordon tilts his head toward him and smiles gently.

“Yeah,” he says. “I really, really do.”

They lapse into silence, and over the years Benrey has learned the different flavors of Gordon’s silences. This one starts out scheming, then transforms into something more wistful and contemplative. Benrey advances two more levels in his game, then decides he’s bored and hooks a foot behind Gordon’s ankle.

Gordon blinks and starts a little. “Hmm?”

“What’s your, uhhh plans?”

“Take down Margaret,” Gordon replies promptly.

Benrey huffs a short laugh. “No, I, uh. I meant for today.”

“Oh.” Gordon links his fingers and stretches his arms out in front of him, then catches the newspaper before it can slide off his lap. “I can’t just do that today?”

“Uh…” Benrey thinks for a moment. “I guess, but then we’d prob’ly have to, uh. Go into hiding or something.”

“Eh, Tommy could fix that for us,” Gordon says, waving a hand.

Benrey grins at him. “Okay, so, d’you wanna kill her?”

Gordon takes a deep breath and heaves a sigh that sounds like it comes all the way from his feet. (Yeah, okay, Benrey knows what he likes.) 

“I guess we shouldn’t,” he says. “Anyway, it’ll be way more satisfying to beat that hag at her own game.”

“Poison?”

Gordon snorts. “No, man, chili.”

“Poison in the chili?”

“Oh, now there’s a thought,” Gordon says, tapping at his lip with a metal finger. “But how to keep it away from the judges…?”

Benrey makes a dismissive noise, and Gordon cracks, cackling loudly enough that it startles a small flock of crows from the line of pine trees across the road.

“Let’s not even start,” Gordon says, lifting his glasses to wipe moisture from the corners of his eyes. “Don’t even - if I start thinking about how easy it would be to do, I’m gonna fucking do it, and then we really will have to leave.”

“Yeah, but - it’d be worth it,” Benrey says, leaning back and throwing an arm across the backrest. Gordon leans against it and sighs as Benrey curls his hand around Gordon’s shoulder.

“Nah, not yet. I like it here.”

They gaze out across the fields and toward the line of dark trees that the crows are circling back down into, still cawing reproachfully. Benrey’s tempted to change shape and go bother them, but he resists the urge. Sometimes when he changes back, he forgets to add the age marks - and he sees the look on Gordon’s face when Benrey appears, even for a moment, to be the same age he was the day they met. He’s not, of course - time moves forward for them all, even when it’s stopped - but Benrey’s appearance has always been under his control more than most.

“We should go make food,” Gordon says after a few minutes, but he makes no effort to move. Benrey runs his fingers up and down Gordon’s shoulder, and taps the inside of his ankle with his foot.

“Yeah?” Benrey mumbles, attention torn between playing his game one-handed and studying Gordon’s graying profile.

“Well,” Gordon says. “Eventually.”

The midmorning sun is finally breaking over the tall pine trees, its heat burning out the last wisps of mist. A car passes by on the county road - one of the newer models with hardlight tires. Benrey’s been in those, and he’s always a little disturbed by the silence. He much prefers the rattle and crunch of traditional rubber tires. At least then you know you’re connected to the road. Hardlight tires sound the same if they’re driving over a hill or driving off a cliff, and Benrey doesn’t trust what he can’t hear.

“D’you remember that brand of soda that we kept getting from those two vending machines? The ones outside Darnold’s lab?” Gordon’s voice sounds a bit distant, and Benrey’s grip on his shoulder tightens involuntarily.

“The one with the, uh, gamer colors?”

“Yes! Those ones.”

“I think it was, uh.” Benrey makes a face as he dredges his memories. “I think it was called Glub?”

“It was not.” Gordon’s voice is flat. Benrey shrugs.

“S’what I remember.”

“Is it? Fuck, how could I forget that?” Gordon’s voice trails off, and he leans further into Benrey’s side. “Fucking…Glub soda? Glub cans? Cans of Glub?”

“Can’t you Glub?” Benrey says, and he feels the memory ping in Gordon’s brain as he tenses, then laughs.

“That’s right - okay, I remember now. ‘I can Glub - can you Glub?’ We had Tommy going in circles.”

“You didn’t even like the flavor.”

“I didn’t! None of us did, it was terrible! No wonder no one outside Black Mesa has ever heard of it!”

“Well, scientists have no taste, so -” Benrey is interrupted by Gordon leaning back and whacking him playfully with the newspaper. He holds up one hand and struggles to continue. “So how could you tell if it was good or -”

“I will kill you,” Gordon cackles, and the porch swing sways wildly under them, the metal chains creaking. “Watch it, watch - you’re gonna break our fucking chair!”

“Oh noooo,” Benrey drawls, and goes for his own nuclear option to end the conflict. He wraps a hand around the back of Gordon’s skull and tugs him down into a teeth-clacking kiss.

Gordon laughs into his mouth and returns the kiss, quieting immediately. Benrey winds his fingers through the silver strands of Gordon’s hair and tugs gently. Gordon mumbles something unintelligible against his lips and cups Benrey’s face with both hands - one sun-warmed metal, and one blood-warmed flesh. The newspaper finally escapes to the wooden planks of the porch with a rustle.

Gordon disengages first, then smacks a kiss to the top of Benrey’s balding head. Benrey grins and tugs a lock of gray hair over Gordon’s shoulder, wrapping it around his finger and kissing it in turn - and that feels a little like love.

“So,” he says. “Margaret?”

Gordon’s face darkens. “Fuck Margaret,” he says. “Well, not - ugh, you know what I mean.”

Benrey snorts and runs a hand down Gordon’s arm to link their fingers together. “Yeah, I know.”

“C’mon,” Gordon says, and tugs their linked hands to pull Benrey to his feet, leaving the newspaper on the floor as he heads for the door. “I’ve got a chili recipe to find.”

Benrey raises their joined hands and presses a quick kiss to the back of Gordon’s knuckles as they head for the kitchen, and is only mildly surprised to feel metal against his lips. He hadn’t even noticed that it was Gordon’s prosthetic hand he was holding. They’re both Gordon’s, after all.

Soon, the kitchen will fill with the smell of browning meat, black beans, green chili, and spices. Soon, Benrey will be called upon to be the taste tester, and will have to come up with slightly different words of praise for each batch. Soon, Joshua will call and they will bicker over the tablet, and the upcoming cookoff, and the similarities of their two towns, separated by half a world. But right now, Benrey squeezes Gordon’s hand tighter, and admires the way the lines around his eyes crinkle when he smiles, and watches his silver hair dance as he whirls through the house, dragging Benrey after him like he can’t imagine doing anything without him.

And, well, okay. Benrey supposes that this all feels an awful lot like love.