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galactic-magick · 4 years

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Careful Not to Lose Her: Agnes x Reader

Request: Is it okay for me to request an Agnes x Female reader fic imagine where reader meets her for the first time and calls her beautiful? Like she just randomly compliments Agnes and Agnes is surprised by that and gets shy but returns it? And maybe the two start flirting with one another all the time and maybe reader stops for a bit as she spends more time with Wanda (helping her with the kids) and Agnes feels jealous and stops talking and reader is all confused and confronts her and Agnes admits her feelings for her are true? 😊 I'm happy ppl r writing for her lmao I love her! And maybe they share a kiss 👀 (sorry this was a long request hah)

Summary: You and Anges become very close, but when you have to help Wanda with the kids more often it strains your relationship.

Words: 1300+

Warnings: light angst

Author’s Notes: I wrote this imagining it happening in the 80s/early 90s era, but you can probably picture it whenever you want.

You hear the doorbell ring, and Wanda gets up and smiles, “Oh that’s probably just Agnes, I’ll introduce you,”

You nod, pushing yourself off the couch as well. You haven’t met many people in town yet besides Wanda and her family, so you’re interested to meet some more hopefully friendly faces.

“Hiya neighbor!” Agnes waltzes in. “Who’s your new friend?”

“Oh this is Y/N! She just moved in across the street,” Wanda says. “Y/N, this is Agnes,”

“Hey!” you shake her hand. “Wow, you’re beautiful,”

Her mouth falls open a bit, and her hand freezes in yours, “Well I…gosh you’re too kind,” after taking a moment to process what you just said, she bursts out laughing, “Not too bad yourself, hun,”

You grin, following Wanda back to the couches to chat some more. She and Agnes tell you everything you need to know about the town, who to befriend, who to avoid, and where to spend your time. Wanda introduces you to her twin boys and her husband when he gets home from work, who eyes you a bit suspiciously. Wanda assures you he just has a cautious personality towards new people, so you try to shrug it off and not take it too personally.

“Well, I think I’m gonna head out, maybe stop by the gym for a bit,” Agnes announces, heading towards the door. “Would you like to come, Y/N?”

“Oh! I mean, sure! But I didn’t bring any workout clothes…”

As if out of thin air, Wanda hands you a set, in your exact size and favorite colors.

“How did you-“

Vision sets a hand on her shoulder, “Darling I thought we talked about not using your pow-“

“Eeeeer you go! Have fun you two!” Wanda smiles, pushing you and Agnes out the door.

You look at Agnes as the door slams behind you, “Did I miss something?”

“Oh no, those two have always been weird,” she shrugs. “I’ve stopped asking questions,”

“Huh…”

“Anyway, let’s go! Don’t wanna miss the evening cardio dance class!” she takes your hand and leads you into the town square.

Once you arrive and change into your clothes, you meet Agnes in the corner of the gym, “Agnes I’ve never done one of these before, I have no idea what I’m supposed to do-“

“Oh, relax. No one does. It’s just for fun!” she playfully pokes your arm, “I only started coming because my ex-husband Ralph told me I should find somewhere to get all my excess energy out, but now I do it to have a good time,”

You nod as you hear the teacher of the class crank up the music and lead everyone in some warm-ups.

Surprisingly it’s just as Agnes said, and you end up having more fun than you’ve had in a while. You just move and dance around with her, singing loud and off key to the tunes, and laughing so hard that you’re afraid you’ll disrupt everyone enough to get kicked out.

Thankfully you don’t get kicked out though, and you leave the gym still laughing and very sweaty.

“Alright I’ll admit, that was pretty fun,” you agree. “We should hangout some more sometime!”

“Oh, yes please,” she chuckles. “I’m free anytime you need me to be,”

And just like that, you spent as much time with her as you possibly could. You went to classes with her every Tuesday, went on errands with her, and went out for dinner a few nights a week as well. You were inseparable, and it shocked you how it was so after so little time. You just bonded with her so well, and you feel like you can be yourself with her.

One day while you’re headed out to meet up with her, your phone rings.

“Hello?”

“Hey Y/N! It’s Wanda. So sorry to bother you, but would you be willing to babysit the boys tonight? I know it’s last minute, but something came up that I really need to take care of,”

“Is everything okay?”

“Oh yeah…everything’s fine, just, some things aren’t running as smoothly as usual, ya know…at work,”

“I didn’t know you had a job-“

“So will you be able to make it?”

“Yeah, I can be right over,”

You hang up the phone with a slight sense of unease. Something wasn’t right with Wanda, but you’re always open to helping a friend, so you try not to think on it too hard.

On your way over, you knock on Agnes’s door to tell her there was a change of plan. She’s disappointed, but she agrees to reschedule another time.

Unfortunately it’s not the only time this happens. Wanda starts asking for your help a little more often, and you have to cancel more meetups with Agnes. Sometimes Wanda sticks around and sometimes she’s gone, but either way you can tell why she needs so much help with the kids. They’re not awful by any means, but twins can be difficult for anyone, especially new parents.

Eventually you have to cancel so much that you just stop rescheduling, telling Agnes that you’ll just let her know when you’re free, but that time starts to exist less and less. Sometimes she’ll stop by the Vision household to say hello, but you’re not able to talk very much.

By the time Wanda lets you off the hook a bit and needs your help a little less, your friendship with Agnes is nearly gone. Whenever you see her in the grocery store or just around town, she avoids your gaze and turns the other way.

After a couple weeks of failing to get her attention, you’ve had enough. You aren’t going to let her get away that easily.

You knock on her door and ring the doorbell repeatedly until she finally caves and opens it, her face sadder than you’ve ever seen it.

“Why are you avoiding me?” you demand, harsher than you meant to.

“Well sorry I don’t want to hang out with someone who doesn’t have time for me anyway,” she scoffs.

“I do have time for you!”

“Oh really? Where was all that time for the past I don’t even know how long? Oh yeah, you spent it with Wanda instead,”

“I was helping her!”

“I’m not mad at you for helping her! But you couldn’t say you weren’t available at least sometimes?!”

“I was trying to be nice!”

“I’m sure you were,” she rolls her eyes. “But it wasn’t very nice to me,”

“Agnes, look, I’m sorry-“

“You know what? No. That’s not good enough,” she points a finger. “I like you, Y/N. I like you more than I’ve ever liked anyone. I thought we had something going, I thought we were special to each other. But I guess I wasn’t worth giving some effort back,” she starts to close the door, but you grab it first.

“Agnes, please,” you sigh, a tear falling from your eye. “I’m so sorry. I really am. What I did was wrong. I’ve always struggled with saying no to people who need help, but I know that isn’t an excuse to abandon anyone, and I won’t do it again. I like you too, and I’ll do everything I can to make this up to you,”

She looks at you a moment, taking in your words.

“I suppose I forgive you,” she finally says. You look up and smile. “And I suppose you can make it up to me by taking me on an official date,”

“Yes, yes, of course,” you nod vigorously, wrapping your arms around her in a tight hug. When you pull away slightly, you give her a quick kiss, barely a second, but enough to get a reaction. “Oh my gosh I’m so sorry, I should’ve asked first-“

Before you can finish apologizing for overstepping, she grabs you back and kisses you for real, hard and longer than you care to count.

#wandavision #agnes #agnes x reader #wandavision x reader #agnes brooch #agatha harkness #wandavision spoilers

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skylights2000 · 4 years

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Switch! (Gundham x Fem! Reader) Part 3

All of you unanimously agreed that you shouldn’t tell anyone about what happened unless you absolutely had to.

You owned a small workshop that specialized in woodworking. The place, though fairly popular, didn’t need too many people to run it. You had two employees working with you that you would have to explain the situation to.

Gundham ran the famous Tanaka Breedery with occasional help from his mother who had retired last year. Obviously, he would have to tell her. They may have to tell a few of their close friends if need be, but they would cross that bridge when they came to it.

You and Gundham also agreed that you wanted to stay at your own apartments. It would take some arranging, but you were both more comfortable with that.

Normally, when you packed a bag, it was for yourself. You’d never packed a bag filled with your stuff for someone else. Sure, you’d donated stuff before, but you’d packed up half your room. It may be a bit excessive, but you wanted Gundham to have everything he needed to take care of your body.

Thinking about it still felt strange and brought back that spark of anxiety, so you busied yourself with packing instead.

You also knew he preferred darker clothing, so you tried to keep that in mind. Your closet was split down the middle with colored clothes on the left and darker clothes on the right. You put as much of it as you could into the suitcase and zipped it up.

When Gundham got to your apartment, you exchanged bags, and you wished him luck, to which he responded with, “Make no mistake, mortal! I am still the great Gundham Tanaka! This is but a small setback in my mission to rule this world!”

The eccentricity of it made a genuine laugh spill past your lips. “Yeah, okay. Go get some sleep.” You smiled, nudging him towards the door. “It’s getting late, and you still need to get up early tomorrow if you’re gonna go to work in my place.”

Gundham waved his hand dismissively. “Yes, I remember. This ‘woodworking’ that you speak of. How difficult can it be?”

You raised an eyebrow, slightly offended by the disregard for what you did, but in the end, you just shrugged. “Eh, no need in arguing. You’ll see tomorrow anyway.”

With that, you stepped back into your apartment and closed the door.

Now it was time to face the next challenge.

Showering.

That was where things got a bit tricky, but you had a plan. You threw the suitcase Gundham had given you onto your bed and started to sift through it.

Gundham didn’t own many colorful things. What was there, you assumed had been gifts from Sonia. You snickered when you came across a pair of joggers with little images of Totoro with various expressions and poses. It was adorable, but definitely not something you would’ve expected from Gundham.

He actually seemed to have put a fair amount of thought into what he packed. Just as you’d done for him, he tried to leave clothing that suited both his taste and yours.

There was a LOT of black, but there were also some whites, reds, different shades of purple. You noticed a bag filled with various accessories, and when you picked it up, a note fluttered onto your bed. You picked it up, squinting slightly before remembering that your horrible eyesight didn’t transfer with your soul. It was strange to be able to see so well without glasses or contacts.

Mortal,

I have left these pentacles and charms to sheild your soul from the darkness that lurks within my body. Affix them to your bodily form each day, and they shall offer you protection from the Other Realm.

You reread the words several times, but each time, they were the same. You emptied the bag onto your bed and gaped at all of it. He expected you to wear ALL of this?

You put everything on your dresser, deciding to deal with them later. You found a pair of pajamas and headed into the bathroom.

You had some semblance of a plan as you turned on the faucet in the shower to let it get warm.

Taking off your clothes was one thing. Doing it with your eyes closed was difficult, but that still wasn’t as hard as blindly navigating your bathroom.

Your bathroom was a good size, not too big and not too small, but the counters were cluttered and you knocked over several things in the process.

Once you finally reached the shower, everything else went fairly smooth. You even managed to dry off without slipping and cracking your skull open, so that was a win in your book.

Getting dressed again was a bit of a challenge with no sight, but once you were done, you opened your eyes, blinking several times to adjust to the burst of light.

Gundham’s hair actually looked fairly normal when it wasn’t defying gravity with all the hair gel. You brushed it out and combed your fingers through it to get it to lay flat. You couldn’t help but notice how soft his hair actually was. It was nice.

You finished up, brushed your teeth, and headed back to your room. It had been a long day, and you fell asleep as soon as your head hit the pillow.

Another obstacle faced you when you woke up.

Gundham’s hair.

No matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t get it to look the way it normally did. You sighed loudly and pulled out your phone.

“Hello.”

“How the fuck do I handle your hair?”

You heard an equally loud sigh from the other end of the line before he answered you. “I will transport myself to your abode. I require assistance with your tresses as well.”

“Alright, see ya then.”

“Indeed.”

When Gundham got to your apartment, you were almost surprised by how normal he looked. He was still sporting several long necklaces, each one with a different rune or symbol, but considering how he usually dressed, this was as normal as it would get.

What surprised you the most was what he had done to your hair. This time, it wasn’t a good kind of surprise.

“What have you done, mortal?!”

“Me? What the hell did you do to my hair?!”

Your hair was in complete disarray. It was tangled to hell and puffed out like a cat’s tail when it got scared.

“You know what, I don’t wanna know. Just come with me.”

It took you almost ten minutes and a lot of complaints from both of you to get your hair untangled. Once that was done though, you dragged out the straightener you had.

“What is this contraption?”

“A hair straightener? I’m surprised you haven’t used one.” You held it out for him to inspect. “As the name implies, you use it to straighten your hair.”

“How does it work?” He asked curiously.

“Here, I’ll show you.” When he turned his head to watch you, you nudged him to face forward. “You can watch in the mirror, but you have to hold still, okay? I don’t wanna burn you.”

You gathered a section of hair and slipped it into the straightener. “These two metal plates produce heat, and when you close the hair in them, it heats it up and helps flatten it.” You explained as you worked, and once you were done, you let it drop into place. “See?”

He ran his fingers through the section of hair. “Fascinating.” He murmured, and you cracked a smile. You’d never see someone so mystified by a hair straightener. It was cute.

You straightened the rest of your hair and pulled it up into a high ponytail. If he was going to work in your place, he didn’t need any hair getting in his eyes.

You were still a bit nervous about him taking your place, but if people suddenly saw you two switch jobs, they’d ask too many questions. It was already strange enough that you’d swapped personalities. If anyone found out you’d swapped bodies too, it could turn into a serious disaster.

You didn’t have time to worry about it before Gundham turned to you with a frown. He dragged you over to the stool beside your vanity. “Sit.”

He fixed his hair in a surprisingly timely manner. It was quite clear that he’d done this many times, and you briefly wondered how long he’d had this hairstyle.

Once he was done, you looked in the mirror and nodded approvingly. “Thanks, Gundham.”

“There is no need for gratitude. I simply did not want you to leave here looking so atrocious.”

You lips twitched, and you clenched your jaw to keep back a scowl. “If you want a challenge, I could do a lot worse.” The fact that you said it with a smile made it all the more unnerving.

He glared at you. “Fool! What nonsense do you speak to threaten I, the great Gundham Tanaka?”

This was gonna be a long day.

#danganronpa goodbye despair #danganronpa killing harmony #danganronpa #gundham x reader #gundham imagine #gundham tanaka #fem reader #sonia nevermind

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marvelmadam08 · 4 years

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Baby Blues 14/?

Summary: Chris takes Alex out on a date.

Warnings: Swearing, nudity, Mature content 18+

A/N: I had to reevaluate some things, but I’m back now.

~~~~~~

8 Weeks (And 5 Days Old)

Ace's new favorite place to nap was on his momma, Alex couldn't even attempt to move away without waking him. Ace could sleep through almost anything except that. The doorbell? No reaction. Dodger or Chris making noise? Nothing. Alex moving him so she can pee? He screams bloody murder.

Which is how Alex conducted her video call with Sarah, her editor, in bed and Ace sleeping on her chest.

"He is just so freaking cute." Sarah pouts "And he looks just like Chris."

"I know." Alex turned the camera back to her face "So what's going on? What's the talk around the publishing house?"

"You or rather the fact that you aren't back yet."

"I've been a little busy."

Sarah laughs softly "They know, and they want to know if you got the baby gifts. And I think I speak for everyone when I ask: what's going on in that head of yours?"

"What do you mean?"

"Your next book. People are awaiting the next Alex Evans best seller."

Alex chuckled "I haven't thought about writing since Alexander was born. I wouldn't even know where to start."

"Well, maybe a spin off series from your last one? Everyone loves a different perspective."

"No." Alex shook her head "Doing that just feels like I've run out of ideas and I'm trying to hang on to my fifteen minutes of fame."

"Fifteen minutes my ass, and I say that as both friend and editor. I know you have something floating around in that head of yours and plenty of abandoned drafts on your laptop. I've seen your desktop."

Alex shrugged "I guess I could look through those. Maybe it'll spark something."

Down the hall Alex heard the front door open and close followed by Dodger running through the house, and Chris's voice.

"Al?" Chris called out

"In here. I'll talk to you later Sarah."

"Okay, think about what I said."

Chris came in and saw Alex and Ace lying on the bed, and the smile he already had on his face got brighter. He crawled up on his side of the bed, keeping himself propped up on his elbow.

"Would you like to go on a date with me?" He asked

"Hello to you too."

"I'm sorry, hi.” he leaned over Ace to give Alex a peck on the lips “Do you wanna go on a date with me?"

"Chris, we're married." Alex jokingly reminded him

"And I want to take my gorgeous wife out on a date tonight." He slightly pouts

"You must have another wife, because this one doesn’t plan on doing anything that requires a bra.”

Chris smirked “You don’t have to put on one. C’mon Al, you deserve it, you've been all about Ace since he was born. We need a night out together- alone."

Alex smiled "Baby as much as I love the gesture, it's last minute. Who's gonna watch Ace?"

"I called my mom and she said yes before I could even finish."

"You're serious?"

He nods "Go get dressed, I’ll watch the offspring." Chris pulled Ace out of Alex's arms, giving him soft kisses when he began to stir "Hey sleepyhead, guess what, you’re gonna hang out with Grandma tonight."

***

Getting Alex out of the house was more difficult than Chris expected. She changed twice, then Ace spit up on the third outfit, which wouldn’t have happened if Alex wasn’t trying to sneak him in the car. And then Alex went into extensive detail about Ace’s sleeping and eating schedule and the escape plan in case of disasters.

"Al, the the fourth time you've checked your phone. Ace is fine, if something went wrong, which it won't, my mother would call us." Chris assured her

"I know, I know." She sighed then set her phone face down on the table "I'm not gonna check it anymore."

Both Alex and Chris looked at the phone, he knew she would reach for it and she knew he would try to stop her. It only mattered who moved faster to grab it.

"I’m just gonna check my email."

Chris pulled her phone away before she could attempt to reach for it, then proceeded to shove the phone down his pants.

“No phones.”

“Fine, no phones.”

"Good, because I want your undivided attention." Chris lightly traced patterns on the back of her left hand, playing with the ring on her finger "Is it a crime that I want to spend some quality time with my beautiful, sexy wife?"

"Not at all, when she gonna get here?" Alex picked at the food on her plate

Although it was meant as a joke, Chris could see the sudden discomfort in Alex's eyes. "What's that about?"

"What’s what about?"

"You've been brushing of my compliments all night. Actually you’ve been doing it for a while now. Are you okay?”

She shrugged “I’m fine really. I’m just thinking about Ace right now. He did the cutest little thing the other day, he sneezed so hard that he woke himself up from his nap. And today when he was taking his nap and I was talking to Sarah, he was snoring the same way you do.”

“Are you getting ready to start writing again?” Chris smiled “That’s great.”

“I didn’t agree to anything yet, she just wants to know where my head is.”

He nodded “And?”

“I told her the truth, I’ve been busy with Ace and I haven’t thought about writing at all.” she sighed “And I think I’m blocked, both mentally and physically.”

“Babe your breasts are not broken.”

“Thanks, but that not what I meant.” Alex whispered

Chris raise and eyebrow “Then what do you mean?”

“What happened the other night when you stormed off? Was it me? Did I say something?”

“No, no it wasn’t you.” he shook his head “I’d gotten so use to you saying no, I jumped to conclusions.”

“Well I kind of gave you room to jump.” Alex huffed “I haven’t been feeling like myself lately, I look in the mirror and I don’t recognize myself. I looked in the mirror before we left and I still didn’t recognize myself without Ace napping on me. And physically-”

“What?”

“I know you’re trying but, you can’t tell me that I don’t look different since I had Ace.”

Chris chuckled and moved his seat next to Alex’s.

“What are you doing?”

“About to whisper everything I’ve wanted to do to you for the past few weeks.” Chris’s eyes darted down to low cut neckline on her dress “Al-”

***

Alex fumbled with the keys in her hand, unsure if it was because ti was dark or because of Chris nibbling on her ear. He slipped his hand between the slit on the dress.

"Can I get the door opened first? You wouldn't want the neighbors to see would you?"

"I don't know we've never had an audience before." Chris kissed along Alex's exposed skin, his hand squeezed her thigh. "Could be fun."

Alex gasped "That mouth of yours is gonna get you into trouble."

Chris's fingers skimmed along the lace of Alex's panties "Hello Trouble."

Alex pushed the door open, she nearly fell forward until Chris caught her by the waist. They manage to stumble their way into the kitchen. Chris sat Alex on counter, slipping his hands underneath her dress and hooking his fingers on her panties.

"I see date night went well." Chris's mother announced when she entered the kitchen

"Oh shit- hey Mom." Chris cleared his throat and awkwardly stood between Alex's legs, his hands still on her ass and his pants getting just a bit too tight in the groin area

"Thanks for watching Alexander for us on short notice." Alex straightened her dress out, pushing Chris hands back

"Any time, he was such a sweetheart." Lisa assured "I just put him down, so be quiet, because if you wake my grandchild I'll be furious."

"Yes ma'am." Alex half laughed still embarrassed from being caught

"I'll let myself out. Goodnight."

"Goodnight." Both Alex and Chris waited to hear the front door close before breaking out into fits of laughter

"I can't believe we forgot she was in here." Alex covered her face with her hands

"Me either." Chris moved Alex's hands from her face, then leaned in, pressing his lips to her neck "You wanna keep going?"

"Yeah." Alex pulled the at knot keeping her dress closed, the top half slipped off her shoulders and down to her waist. “Now where were we?”

Alex pushed her hips forward, she could feel Chris's raging erection on her thigh. Chris kissed and massaged Alex's breasts, he enjoyed the small whimpers that left her mouth with each flick of his tongue.

"Chris..." Alex pulled at his hair

“Ah!” Chris pulled away from her, covering his eye

“What happened?”

“You- squirted me in the eye.” he laughed

“I what?” Alex felt something wet trailing down her chest “Oh I’m leaking.” she gasped “Oh, I’m leaking!”

Chris wiped the excess breastmilk from his cheek “And you have surprisingly good aim.”

"I’m sorry babe, I didn’t mean to." Alex hopped off the counter giving Chris another kiss before rushing out of the kitchen "Don't move I'll be right back."

“Where are you going?”

“I gotta pump.”

Chris groaned “Don’t we all.”

#chris evans x reader #dad!chris #mature #marvel fanfiction #black reader #chris evans x black ofc #100 days of productivity #voteearly

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arctic-the-archaic · 4 years

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Day 3: Solitude/ Cuddles

Commander Fox liked his solitude.

Who could blame him? The man had to run a battalion, protect and police the whole of Coruscant, deal with the bantha osik that was Republic Senatorial politics, and about a hundred other things. So, when he caught a few minutes to himself, he took them.

It helped him vent. He could just think, and be calm until the inevitable comm call came in. Usually they ranged from ‘Commander, so and so patrol has encountered an excess amount of criminals, requesting your presence.’ to ‘Commander! There’s been shots fired at the Senate!’. Only for it to be two idiot Bounty Hunters and some Senate Commandos deciding it would be fun to have target practice when on duty! (That was the first time Fox had ever lost his composure in public.) Or something along those lines for each one. Sometimes it was actually serious. Not very often though.

Currently, Fox was sat in his office with the light off, hands clasped together and elbows propped up, allowing his forehead to rest again his hands with his eyes closed. His helmet and gauntlets rested just off to his left, ready to be put on at a moment's notice. If someone gave him a pen and a piece of Flimsi, he could easily replicate his office all the way down to the scuffs on the durasteel floor from his pacing… with his eyes closed.

He sat up and reached into a drawer under his desk, pulling out a bottle of Vintage Andoan White and uncorked it. He didn’t bother with a glass, just knocking back the bottle for a moment before setting it down and swallowing, savoring the burn at the back of his throat. Kriff, I need to thank Thire for this. I don’t care if he refuses to let me live it down.

He rubbed at his eyes and groaned, Fekking flimsi-work. Have to file everything in triplicate because of regs. I don’t get enough to sleep.

He downed more Andoan White before setting it down and standing up, moving over to the window and crossing his arms over his armored chest as he stared out at the dark Coruscant skyline. His eyes trailed over the skylanes, walkways, landing pads, and buildings, remembering past situations. He could recall each one down to the millisecond, and in his times of solitude, he often pondered what he could’ve done different and what outcomes could’ve come.

Commander Fox liked his solitude.

What he didn’t like was when it was prematurely interrupted.

There was a knock on the door. Fox didn’t even turn around as he said, “Come in.”

The door slid open and soft footsteps sounded for a moment before they came to a stop behind him, by his desk. Because of his position, he couldn’t see the reflection of the interrupter of his solitude in the transparisteel window so he didn’t know their identity. And then a soft, accented voice washed over his ears.

“Commander Fox….?”

Fox’s body went rigid for a moment before he whirled on his heel and saluted, staring at a point behind the intruder on the wall. Blast. Should’ve looked first.

“Senator Chuchi, Ma’am. What can I do for you?”

Chuchi frowned slightly. Surprisingly, she wasn’t in her elaborate Senate garb, she was in a simple tunic and pants. That threw Fox off, he’d never conversed with a Senator in such an informal setting, let alone with them in such informal attire.

“At ease, Commander. There is no need to be so formal. No one is here. Please, my name is Riyo.” The Pantoran woman smiled softly at him.

Is this some sort of joke? “Ma’am, this isn’t exactly regulation.”

Riyo continued smiling, tilting her head ever so slightly. “Indulge me, please. But that is not an order.”

No no no— “Then, it’s Fox, Riyo.”

“Thank you, Fox.”

Now you’ve gone and done it Foxy-boy. He mentally groaned. “Not a problem, Riyo. What were you here for?”

“Some of your men say you haven’t been sleeping.” The blue skinned woman said, crossing her arms. “I came to check on you.”

Fox knew exactly which Troopers were on guard duty for the Pantoran Senator. And he also knew which Troopers were going to get extra patrols for the next standard month. The Commander sighed, crossing his arms. “No offense, but why bother?” Alpha-17 taught us, in situations like this, just treat the civvie like another brother.

Yeah, but good ol’ Alpha didn’t plan for you to be interacting informally with a fekking Senator did he? Much less Riyo Chuchi, the most beautiful woman in the galaxy. A more derisive part of his mind scoffed.

I’m well aware of that, but how about you don’t think about a Senator like that?

Yeah, too late bud.You’re talking to yourself in your head. We think the same thing.

“.....are about you. You’ve been so helpful. And so accommodating. You and your brothers deserve more.” Riyo said quietly.

Is she serious? She is isn’t she? I can’t believe….. no one has ever said that. To me especially. “I…. thank you. Riyo. No one has ever said that. Especially to me.”

The Senator smiled at him in the darkness of the office. “It’s my pleasure Fox, now, sit down.”

Fox raised his eyebrows, an expression he made when he was curious. “I’m sorry?”

“Just on the floor, I’m going to show you a better way to de-stress than alcohol.” She gave him a knowing look and stressed the final word.

Congratulations Fox. You were caught drinking by a Senator. May as well do as she says. He slowly sat down under the window and pressed his back against the wall. “Ok…..”

Riyo smiled, and then sat down next to him, gently grabbing his hand and intertwining their fingers. Fox almost immediately felt tension ebb from his body. The kriff? No way the effect she has on me is that bad. Impossible.

His thoughts were derailed as her head laid on his armored shoulder, and Fox actually felt himself begin to relax. Guess that’s not true then….

On the outside, Fox was calm, but his mind was a mess. His carefully crafted mentality was being annihilated by a Senator, a Senator! Granted, that Senator was Riyo Chuchi, the Pantoran woman who absolutely refused to get out of his thoughts, but that wasn’t important.

“De-stressing, Fox?” Riyo murmured.

No. Quite the opposite.

That’s bantha osik and you know it!

Force, I hate when I’m right.

Fox didn’t reply for a moment, and then he let go of her hand; He could tell she was worried he was going to get up, so he quickly wrapped his left arm around her shoulders as he had planned to and pulled her into his side. Riyo smiled contentedly, laying her head on his shoulder again (though he couldn’t imagine how plastoid was comfortable, she seemed fine), and yawning slightly. He reached his right hand over and grabbed her own, laying their intertwined hands in his lap. He smiled to himself, gently brushing a thumb over the Pantoran’s knuckles. This really is nice and calming.

“Yes Riyo, de-stressing.” He muttered, laying his head atop hers, but she was already asleep.

Fox later yelled at himself for this lapse, though it started happening every few weeks, then once a week. Fox always yelled at himself afterwards, but it slowly turned from ‘What the kriff is wrong with you?’ to ‘Why the kriff didn’t you get her to stay?’

No one questioned why the Commander started appearing in Senator Chuchi’s guard detail more often.

No one questioned why the Senator would always light up when she saw the familiar armor of Fox appear.

No one questioned why Jek and Rys got assigned to lower-level foot patrols for a month.

But what they did question, was when the kriff had Fox started smiling?

#wholsesome #stress #night #CommanderFoxWeek #Star Wars #Writing

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essays-for-breakfast · 4 years

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Together, Always

Kiane Week Day Six: Promise

Everywhere the eye turned, a colorful bouquet of flowers decorated the forest. Trees seemed to bow under the load of thousands of roses, dandelions, and daisies. Daisies in particular, in garlands, stacked in bunches, or blooming between the grass blades. An uninformed guest might believe chance had let the flowers sprout from the earth for this special day, but Diane knew better. Creating flowers from thin air was an easy feat for the Fairy King.

With a little more time on her hands, she would have wandered through the flower garden for an hour or two, but for now, she had to make due with the view from high up on the Great Tree, the heart of the Fairy King’s Forest.

Diane stepped away from the window carved into the bark, brushed the hem of her dress back into place, and reminded herself that today had finally come. The realization didn’t want to settle in. Every other moment, she looked over her shoulder in expectation to find the Demon King or Cath Palug there. But the dream refused to dissolve. No one played tricks on her eyes or mind. The white silk and velvet hugged her fingertips, entirely real.

Today had finally come.

“How do I look?” Diane asked and turned on her heels. The elegant slippers left the faintest discomfort on her toes. Unsurprising after a life of worn-out boots.

Matrona placed her hands on Diane’s shoulders and fixated her gaze. “Wonderful. I’m so proud of you. And I’m sure your parents would be too if they were here. Are you excited?”

“Are you kidding? I can’t feel my knees anymore. I’ve waited for this day for a solid two centuries.”

Matrona laughed. “I can’t say I know how you feel, but you’ve looked more composed when fighting a horde of Demons. Relax. You’ve earned this.”

“I’m not sure this a good idea.” Diane’s eyes darted back towards the window. The sun neared its midday peak. So soon… “Scratch that, it’s a terrible idea. How many guests have we invited? It must be the entirety of Britannia at this point, and each and every single one of them will stare at me. We should have held the ceremony in private, just like Ban and Elaine plan to do. Why did I agree to this? Why didn’t you stop me?”

“Diane, look at me.” Diane released an uneven breath and then looked at her former mentor and the closest person she had to a parent. “The only reason these people will stare at you is because you look wonderful in this dress. You want to unite the Giant and Fairy Clan, don’t you?” Diane nodded. “Then give our people a symbol to hold onto and remind them that a bond between two different clans works. That it really works.”

“But won’t our people be appalled when I’m so small? Most of them have never seen me shrink to human size, not to mention the fact that none of them know what a marriage even is.”

“There’s nothing to worry about. We went over this a thousand times. Our people respect you for what you have achieved, not for your size. And should anyone do so much as cough at you the wrong way, well, I haven’t forgotten how to throw a solid right-hander, human size or not.”

“Thank you, Matrona. I wouldn’t know what to do without you.”

“Stop talking nonsense, you would lead these blockheads just as well without me. This wedding tradition humans have might be a little strange and overblown if you ask me. But after a war, a little excess of splendor and happiness is just what all of us need. Ready?”

Diane swallowed. Sweat ran down her neck, and she tucked a loose strand back behind her ear.

“No,” she said. But she straightened her back despite the lump in her throat and gave Matrona her arm. The firm grip offered her something to focus on other than her racing heartbeat.

Half-leaned against Matrona, Diane managed the first steps on the moss-covered ground. If only she hadn’t agreed to hold the ceremony on top of the Great Tree. The mighty boughs formed a clearing large enough to hold five hundred people, sure, but the familiar music of the earth seemed awfully far away. What if Diane stumbled? What if she fell from the tree and broke her neck?

No time to think about all the horror scenarios that were throwing images around in her head, there the curtain of magenta-colored leaves waited for her. Matrona pushed the vines aside, and the glimmer of daylight replaced the dimness from inside the tree.

Rows upon rows of people had gathered between the massive boughs, a crowd of Giant heads and shimmering Fairy wings in green, yellow, and milk-colored shades. Course leather and finest silk hugged as members of the Giant and Fairy Clan stood or hovered next to each other, and in some cases on the shoulders of the other. Amidst the colorful parade, the handful of humans near the front almost disappeared. Unlike with their traditional weddings, no one had set up chairs or benches. And apart from an aisle aligned with daisies, the top of the Great Tree could not have fit another person. The tree’s magenta-colored leaves created a ceiling, grander than any human hall, and bathed the porcelain faces of Fairies in pink hues. Six hundred pairs of eyes stared at Diane.

But all the people blurred and vanished the moment she caught sight of King. He floated in front of an archway of ivy and dog roses, dressed in the white suit he had sown and re-sown to perfection over the past week. With the four ornate Fairy wings and the tidy locks in the color of fall leaves, he looked too good to be true. The biggest smile adorned his face when he and Diane locked eyes.

Only Matrona’s grip around her hand prevented Diane from storming forward and throwing her arms around him. The Great Tree’s scent of ever-lasting spring tingled her nostrils, enough to make her tipsy. A good thing she had declined the bottle of ale Meliodas had offered her this morning. To calm the nerves, he had said. Ha! Such methods might work for Ban, but Diane was already losing faith in her feet without the added punch of alcohol.

She straightened and listened to the heartbeat of the earth, several hundred yards below. Beat, pause, beat. She had practiced this part of the ceremony with Elizabeth countless times. Just one foot in front of the other. Sixty paces, and then she could hold his hand and never let go again.

The quivering in Diane’s legs ebbed as she walked down the aisle and decreased the distance between her and King. And although her toes throbbed in her slippers, she managed the way without a stumble. Meliodas and Ban grinned at her from King’s right side. Both looked surprisingly regal in their matching capes; indigo for Liones and crimson for Benwick. Ban had even found a shirt to cover his chest, a rare sight on the best of days. On the other side of the altar, Elizabeth and Elaine had taken position as Diane’s bridesmaids.

And then, finally, Diane reached King’s side. Matrona offered him Diane’s arm and sat down in the first row between Gerheade and Zalpa.

King squeezed Diane’s hand. “You are beautiful.”

His gentle fingers felt so natural when intertwined with hers. As if they always belonged there. “You’re one to talk.”

They both turned towards Gowther, who regarded their hushed exchange with a smile. King and Diane had appointed him as their wedding guide – or priest as humans called them – the instance Elizabeth had discussed this role with them. No one fit this task better. With a nod, King and Diane signaled Gowther to begin.

“We have gathered here for both an historical event and a deeply personal affair,” he began. Since he had memorized around three dozen texts regarding human marriages in the past week, he didn’t need a book to regurgitate passages from. “Never before in the history of Britannia have the Giant and Fairy Clan forged a bond of the kind these two people in front of you have knitted. Mistrust has always stood between the five clans, as historians tell us. Mistrust will always stand between different clans, they argue. Let us prove these stories wrong. Today, we celebrate the union of the Giant and Fairy Clan, a sense of respect and comradery forged in the fires of the Holy War. Today, we celebrate the union of their leaders, who have ensured the survival of their people through the battles they fought as members of the Seven Deadly Sins. Today, we celebrate the union of two people who have overcome all odds and whose love endured centuries of separation and hardship. Many of us have watched them a portion of their way towards each other. And now they have asked us to be their witnesses as they dare to make the most important step. The promises they exchange today will forever resonate within all our hearts. Diane, Queen of the Giants, will you begin?”

Diane collected her missing confidence in Gowther’s encouraging look. And when she turned towards King, her King, her one and only love, the words tumbled out of her mouth all on their own.

“Even when I had nothing, I had you,” she said. “You were my friend in times of isolation, my light in the dark, my teacher and protector. It’s only through you that I became the person I am today. You’re the sole reason I’m still here. Back when we were kids, I never told you how I felt, but I want you to know this: King, I love you. I love you so much that I feel like half of me is missing every time you aren’t near. Whatever happens, I promise to always stay by your side and support you in any way I can. No gods or armies or loss of memory will stop me. From this day on, I’m yours. The same as I have been for all these years. Will you be mine?”

Tears shimmered in King’s eyes when he nodded. “I promise.”

“Then,” Gowther said, “Harlequin, King of the Fairies, what do you offer in return?”

“Everything I have and everything I am. Diane, I’ve always loved you, and to have met you all these years ago is the most wonderful gift of my life. You gave me shelter when I had nowhere to turn, you showed me a warmth and a kindness I had never seen before. It’s only thanks to you that I learned to forgive and not judge others by their looks or their past allegiances. Nothing can ever compensate the happiness bursting my heart every time I’m near you. I’ve made mistakes, I’ve let you down, and I have taken your memories from you. But if you will give me another chance, I promise you will always have a home to return to and a shoulder to lean on and a hand to hold yours. No matter what the future brings, I’m yours. From now until my final breath and long after that. Will you be mine?”

Diane’s heart raced in her ribcage, and through their interlaced fingers, she felt King’s heartbeat in sync with her own. “I promise.”

While they battled their tears and the desire to fling their arms around one another, Gowther continued. He needed to adjust his glasses twice before the calm returned to his voice, and even then, joy swung with each of his words. “As symbol of your union and your undying bond, you will now exchange the crowns of your clans. From this day forward, you will lead your people as one and begin an era of peace and understanding.”

On cue, Ban and Elizabeth stepped forward, each with a velvet cushion in hand. With shaky fingers, Diane took the circlet of unrefined copper from Elizabeth. A multitude of jewels adorned the crown, rubies, garnets, and other stones found deep within the earth. Elizabeth placed a supportive hand on Diane’s shoulder before she returned to Elaine.

Ban likewise handed King a flower crown with a hundred blooms in all colors of the rainbow. And although Ban saved himself a snarky comment, the nudge of his elbow hit the mark. Freed from his stupor, King placed the flower crown upon Diane’s head. Then Diane tiptoed to return the favor.

One of her slippers escaped her foot, but she barely noticed.

“You may now—”

The rest of Gowther’s word remained unheard because Diane threw her arms around King’s neck, and he bowed forward to seal her lips with a kiss. Their first kiss as a married couple, the taste of raspberries and gold Osmanthus and an unparalleled joy.

Cheers erupted from the crowd, applause from the hands of human, Giant, Fairy, Demon, and Goddess. A shower of magenta-colored leaves rained down on them. Their wedding bells took on the form of the wind and the beat of the earth, a most marvelous chime Diane only heard once in her life while she held King, and he held her.

She stroked his hair while deepening the kiss.

Today had finally come.

#kianeweek #kianeweek2020 #nnt #nanatsu no taizai #nnt fanfiction #my writing #king #diane #king x diane #kiane wedding #my take on the wedding #has anyone actually written this scene before?#or is everyone waiting for Nakaba to show it?#why are my paragraphs so long?!#why does everyone monologue so much?!

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emsylcatac · 5 years

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😬💗💓💞👀 for Ladybug and Adrien (ignore my previous ask, I don't see the 'lastest' part)

(Aw to be honest I wasn’t even surprised that you would have had a hamster and a ring as your latest emojis haha.)

Me clowning again my own game to write a longer than it should (almost 2k words) older Ladrien AU story? It is more likely than you think…

(Note: I had this kind of idea in mind before Miracle Queen so Fu is still the guardian there; yes I just used the emoji story as a pretext to write it. Hope you’ll enjoy!)

Thanks again to @botherkupo for beta-reading this one (yes I’m making my longer stories beta-read now haha) it really helped!! ♥

* * * * *

“What are you looking at?” Ladybug asked, watching over Adrien’s shoulder.

Adrien continued to read the document he had in his hands. “Nathalie’s university classmates’ list and the position they now occupy.”

Ladybug frowned. “Do you think this could help?”

He sighed, this time raising his eyes to hers. “I don’t know, but at this point I’m ready to look anywhere…”

They both gazed at each other tiredly.

Four years ago, when Hawkmoth had been arrested and his miraculous taken away from him, Mayura had managed to escape. It hadn’t been hard for Ladybug, Chat Noir and the police to put two and two together and understand who was hiding behind her mask. Yet there hadn’t been any sign from her since then and no sentimonster had been sent. Ladybug still patrolled Paris from time to time as a safety presence for the citizens and to try to spot any sign of abnormal activity.

Chat Noir… wasn’t exactly there anymore. If you asked Ladybug, she would tell you that he had to leave the city for personal reasons, but that she had hopes that he would come back were Mayura to be active again.

If you asked Adrien, he would tell you that Master Fu had asked him to give his miraculous back. His own insecurities had at first whispered to him that the guardian no longer trusted him with the black cat miraculous due to his relationship to the villains. Now, he understood that Fu had been sincere when he had told him: “I don’t want you to fight your family. I already feel responsible and guilty enough that you had to arrest your father. And it wouldn’t be fair of me to ask you to continue this fight. Not when you could move on and… be happy.”

Adrien had tried to argue that it wasn’t fair to not let him choose either, but he couldn’t really have the last word on the matter. He now knew that Fu’s intentions were genuine… even if a bit excessive.

Everything had been quiet since then. Until five months ago. Adrien remembered that day precisely—or rather that night. It had reopened wounds he thought healed. The police had called him around 4:15am; there had been a break-in at the prison his father was held in. Gabriel Agreste had escaped. After investigations, the obvious conclusion was that a sentimonster had been responsible for the act. Mayura was officially back, and accompanied by the man who had once been Hawkmoth no less.

A few weeks afterwards, Ladybug had come to his apartment. She had questions and hoped he’d be able to help, given his relationship with Nathalie Sancœur and Gabriel Agreste. While there wasn’t a lot he had the answers for, he was more than willing to help his former partner to arrest both terrorists once and for all.

There hadn’t been any new attacks, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Especially since it felt like something bigger was being planned. Ladybug would therefore swing now and then to Adrien’s, or he would meet her somewhere to work on the case.

So here they were, five months later, trying to trace back anything linked to Nathalie’s past that could provide a potential lead.

“Maybe…” Adrien said. “Maybe she is still in contact with one of these people, and for some reason they agreed to help her? Or maybe some just… know more about Nathalie and where she would likely go…” He trailed off, unsure of his reasoning.

“Perhaps,” Ladybug answered thoughtfully.

They both stayed silent after that, each lost in their own reflections.

“I think we should take a break,” she finally said. “We’ve been at it for hours.”

Adrien chuckled quietly while closing his eyes and letting his back sink into the sofa. Taking a break. Right. That was a dangerous path to go down with Ladybug.

Taking a break with her meant talking about something else than work-related topics. It meant sharing pieces about their lives. Getting to know each other. Laughing together. Sometimes, it would just mean watching a movie. With her letting her head rest on his shoulder. Or getting nearer to him, just slightly enough for their knees to brush. Casually touching each other more and more with time; a shoulder, an arm, a hand… All in all, it meant getting closer. And closer. And closer.

After a few years apart from her, it was like he was rediscovering her a second time. She was still the same person he knew from when they were younger, but she was also so different. She had matured. Grown into the even more beautiful and amazing person that she was now.

Adrien soon found out that it wasn’t so hard to fall in love with the same person all over again. No matter how hard he tried to avoid it. But Ladybug wasn’t making it easy. It was like… she, too, was falling for him. And that surprisingly enough, she didn’t mind.

They had been like two hearts dancing around each other for a while now. While fifteen year old Adrien would have been ecstatic at the idea of dating Ladybug in secret, twenty-two year old Adrien knew better. It would be… too complicated. Too unrealistic. Too dangerous. She, the protector of Paris and he, the son of the very terrorist she had fought against. And… she didn’t know that he was Chat Noir. Had been Chat Noir. And somehow, he still respected Master Fu and Ladybug’s wishes for secrecy more than he probably should. So he hadn’t told her, but it didn’t make him feel less guilty about it.

“You don’t know who your partner is,” Adrien had said half-jokingly, half-seriously one day after they had almost (almost!) kissed. (Or it had felt like they were about to kiss anyway; he would never really know since he had decided to pull away and pretend it hadn’t happened.) “He could be anyone you meet in the streets. What if I was him?”

She had giggled in response. “I don’t know, what if I had a secret identity? What if I was someone you already knew?”

She’d had this careless, wide grin on her face, full of joy and mischief that was screaming that she didn’t see the problem that he saw. Or that she really thought he was joking but didn’t care much about the outcome anyway. His heart had pounded in his chest just to watch her looking at him so gleefully and— in love. Now he could recognise it for what it was.

Was this girl the same that had wanted to stick to the rules so badly when they were kids? It seemed like growing up had rendered Ladybug more lenient. Maybe she was getting tired of having to always do ‘the right thing’ all the time. He couldn’t really blame her.

Adrien sighed and stood up while stretching. “Yeah. You’re right. Let’s take a break.” He had to admit that they indeed needed one.

He walked towards the kitchen table. “Do you want some tea? Coffee?”

“Tea would be great.”

He filled up the kettle with water and let it heat up. He looked back at Ladybug. She was watching him with a soft smile. Good job at avoiding falling more for her, he thought.

They stayed silent for a few seconds while gazing at each other, the only sound in the room being the gentle rumble of the kettle.

Ladybug took a step closer to him. “How have your days been since last time?”

Adrien blew a relieved sigh. This was a safe enough topic. “Fine,” he answered. “A bit hectic, if I’m being honest. I’ve had lots of courses with reports and group projects to work on.”

She smiled. “Yeah, I’ve heard that you haven’t been lucky with your teammates. That they haven’t been doing a lot.”

“No, they’re not much help,” he replied before frowning. “How do you know that, by the way? Are you spying on me?”

She chuckled, taking another step forwards. “Maybe. I have my ways. ” A secret and teasing glint entered her eyes. “And my informers.”

Well. This is starting to get dangerous again.

The kettle got louder and louder, indicating that the water was warming up as it should.

Yet he still found himself approaching her.

“Oh?” he said, raising a brow. “And what use are these ‘informers’ of yours for? Do you not trust me enough that you feel like you need to hire spies?” He gave her a small smirk.

“I’m simply concerned for you and your well-being, is all,” she answered with a wide and way too amused grin, coming closer so they were now standing in front of each other.

He gazed down into her eyes, towering just above her because of their height difference. “Careful,” he said quietly, “or I will really start to think that you do know me when you don’t wear your mask.”

“Maybe we don’t see or talk to each other much anymore, or maybe we’ve never met. Who knows?” She gave a small wiggle of her eyebrows.

This is already too dangerous.

“Is it really important,” she murmured, “since…we’ve learned to know each other… like that?” Her gaze slowly descended from his eyes to his lips.

He gulped. “Ladybug…” he said in a warning tone, yet he found himself looking back at her lips. He didn’t know how long he would be able to resist their appeal. Especially since she was making a very good point. “We shouldn’t be doing that,” he whispered.

“No, we really shouldn’t,” she whispered back, eyes stubbornly fixed on his lips.

“We should stop.”

“Do you want to?” she murmured oh so quietly, while her face was getting impossibly closer to his.

The water was boiling very loudly now.

“…You?” he breathed, not wanting to admit his truth and hoping she would stop even if he knew deep down that it was in vain— that it was too late. His heart was reverberating in his chest so much now.

She captured his lips with hers in response.

And he let her do it— responded to her kiss even. It was soft and gentle, just a brush of lips against lips. It was exhilarating to finally be able to taste her for the first time. Slowly, ever so slowly, he brought a hand to cup her cheek. The only sound that could be heard was the loud rumble of the kettle in the background. Until suddenly, a resonating “click” ended it all.

It was as if a dam had broken. Ladybug tangled her hands in his hair, bringing him closer, and deepened the kiss. He responded in kind, letting his other hand rest on her lower back. While they were lost in each other, tea long forgotten as they allowed themselves to be together at last, he wondered: what now?

But he soon found that it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know what would happen afterwards. If they would look at each other in shame and regret, or with joy and sparks in their eyes. If their relationship was possible or if it would just be a one-time kiss. (It didn’t feel like it.) If there would be repercussions. All that mattered was Ladybug, her lips, her tongue now, and how they were just content to bask in their kiss and in each other.

(Ladybug and Adrien never knew what the tea would have tasted like, but love had always been sweeter anyway).

____________

Thanks for the ask ♥

5 emojis and 2 characters game 😊💩😱😻👀 (/!\ I already received a lot to do – thanks by the way – so don’t feel like you have to send me new ones, I just leave the link here in case someone else want to participate to the game as well).

#ask #zinnianana #oops i derailed again #what can i say #it's la la la #ladrien #but older ♥#ask game #emoji ml story #myshitwriting #ladybug #adrien #yeay it's cheesy i know sue me

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lee-do-hwas · 4 years

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dodanru university oneshot

@bookishserendipity03 requested a platonic dodanru university fic so here it is! i’m sorry for taking so long, but this went in a direction i wasn’t really expecting and it ended up longer than originally planned. it’s around 3k words and mostly fluff + a lot of lee do hwa (because i love him). thanks for reading!!

When Eun Dan Oh finally found Haru amongst the seemingly endless crowd of familiar faces at Seuli University, it felt like a miracle. She’d searched for him ever since she’d been reborn, even if she hadn’t quite known what (or who) she was looking for at first. They spent hours walking around campus in circles, recounting the events of their previous lives and catching each other up to speed on their current character setups. Eun Dan Oh was relatively the same in this story. She was the sole daughter of a wealthy businessman and engaged to a fiance who would never love her back— the author really hadn’t put much effort into that one. The main difference now was that instead of a heart disease, Dan Oh’s conflict revolved around taking over the family business. She was cutthroat, goal oriented, and constantly focused on how to get ahead in the world. In contrast, Haru was a psychology major and Oh Nam Joo’s stoic but sweet best friend. He was always in the library and spent most of his time tutoring other students. Compared to the eccentric and naive Oh Nam Joo, he was the “mature” friend who kept both their heads on straight. It wasn’t lost on Dan Oh how suspiciously close Haru’s setup was to his actual personality.

The author’s newest comic was an attempt at more mature storytelling, following the lives of various university students as they made their way through the trials and tribulations of adulthood. To put it simply, it was drama bait. But the dramatic tone of “These Fragile Hearts” gave the characters way more freedom than the predictably cheesy plot of “Secret”. Not only were there multiple protagonists this time, but a much larger cast of named supporting characters meaning…they were safe. Eun Dan Oh’s days were no longer numbered due to a heart condition and Haru wasn’t unnamed Student 13. Outside of Dan Oh’s ongoing family theatrics and Haru’s chemistry void romance with Yeo Joo Da (now a biology major and nothing more than an extra herself) they had all the time in the world to meet up in the shadows. Even on stage, they had a lot of scenes together— sometimes entire conversations. They were fine with playing their parts. In comparison to before, they practically had all the alone time in the world.

Eun Dan Oh became a regular visitor of Oh Nam Joo and Haru’s cramped studio apartment. They only had one pullout couch, a coffee table, and a few foldable chairs, but that was more than enough furniture for three people. Oh Nam Joo was surprisingly chill with Dan Oh’s presence after she was introduced as Haru’s “friend from middle school” and eventually just gave her the extra key so she could let herself in. If she got off first, Dan Oh usually hung around and cleaned up to keep herself busy until Haru got home. After inevitably helping him lead his overly emotional (and sometimes drunk) roommate to bed, they would head out every night without fail. Some nights they went on roadtrips in an attempt to map out just how far their small, fictional world went. Others, they sat in front of their tree and stared up at the stars. Whether their time together was full of conversation or entirely silent, Eun Dan Oh appreciated all of it. Haru was the one to finally put into words how it felt to be in such a fortunate situation, how lucky the two of them were to have one another after going through so much: extraordinary.

It felt greedy to ask for more. But something was missing. Something that felt like it should have been obvious given the fact that Eun Dan Oh remembered almost everything about both “Secret” and “Trumpet Flower”. The small gaps in her memory mocked her, just specific enough to feel significant. After she found Haru, most of her memories came back in waves. There were only a few things that didn’t click and Dan Oh hated it. What could she still be missing? Sometimes she encountered a new, vaguely familiar face and wondered if they were the key to unlocking everything. She’d stomp over to the large library near her apartment and scour the shelves for an explanation. Maybe it was another lifetime she’d lost. Maybe it was something even scarier. Whatever it was, Eun Dan Oh didn’t want to be caught by surprise ever again. Even finding the hardcover copy of “These Fragile Hearts” hidden deep within the psychology department’s library didn’t help much. For days and then weeks, Dan Oh kept an eye out for something strange. She all but gave up…and then one day an extra ran past her, the angle of the sun’s rays just bright enough to shield his face. Someone who was probably not only nameless but also faceless. Without knowing who he was she knew. This was the person she’d been looking for.

After that day Eun Dan Oh kept her eyes out for any and every extra that walked by. She could recognize almost all of them after a week of people watching. There was one girl who had a very obvious (and unrequited) crush on Oh Nam Joo, another student who loved to feed the pigeons every morning, a man who held the door for the main characters during almost every scene without ever being acknowledged otherwise, and many more. None of them had names. Dan Oh went out of her way to speak to them but of course none of the extras she befriended were ever the extra she was looking for. When Eun Dan Oh did finally find him, it was entirely by chance.

“Watch out!” A student carrying a large pile of books and loose leaf paper flew down the library hallway and directly into Eun Dan Oh’s line of sight.

The man scurried out of the way just in time to not knock her over, but his stack of books wobbled precariously. Dan Oh couldn’t even see his face behind the comically tall barrier of reading material. In a single moment, her curiosity got the better of her and she made the decision to try something dumb. Moving one finger closer, Eun Dan Oh poked the stack of books. It immediately toppled to the ground and into a pile beside them.

The man sighed and stared at his books dejectedly. “I can’t believe this…I’m gonna be late to my nine thirty.”

He ran his fingers through his fluffy blondish-brown hair and glared at the pile through huge, circular glasses. He was…pouting? His facial expression could only be described as similar to that of a kicked puppy. Eun Dan Oh almost felt bad. He quickly looked back up at her with panicked eyes.

“None of those hit you, right? Are you okay?” Both his hands were in his hair and he looked like the picture book definition of “stressed college student”.

Eun Dan Oh stopped staring and crouched down, handing him the book closest to her with a smile. “No, I’m fine. What’s your name?”

“I’m—uh, why do you ask?” he replied meekly. So he didn’t have a name. Eun Dan Oh looked him up and down once again.

This wasn’t one of the extras she often saw around campus. The pastel pink button up and grey jeans he wore both seemed to be in pristine condition, as if he hadn’t worn them for even a day. He wrung his hands together awkwardly and refused to look Eun Dan Oh in the eyes. Just based upon their first meeting, she could tell this character didn’t have many friends. He was probably a studious type, only around to ensure that the main characters were conveniently partnered with a genius during group projects. Nothing particularly interesting stood out about him until Dan Oh glanced at the papers scattered around them. Was that sheet music?

“Do you play the violin?” Eun Dan Oh asked suddenly.

“Yes…?”

“Do you have an older brother?” She picked up another book, some manhua with a smiling couple and cherry blossoms on the cover. “And do you read cheesy comics like this often?”

The boy scoffed. “Cheesy? I’ll have you know these ‘cheesy’ comics actually give really good pointers on how to navigate young love, and you sure weren’t complaining when I let Haru borrow one back in high sc— wait. Who’s Haru?”

Eun Dan Oh covered her mouth with both hands and gasped. Everything fell back into place.

“Lee Do Hwa?!”

Her shout rang throughout the halls and several students looked up in annoyance. She didn’t care. How could she have forgotten him? Lee Do Hwa, the second male lead of “Secret”, one third of A3, and most importantly, one of her best friends. She threw herself into the taller man and hugged tight.

“I finally found you! I can’t believe it took this long!” Her words were high pitched and brimming with joy.

“Wait,” Lee Do Hwa briefly pushed her away to get a better look and his eyes widened in recognition. “Eun Dan Oh?!”

She bobbed her head excitedly. “In the flesh!”

Lee Do Hwa looked around the room with heightened awareness, slowly putting the pieces of his past back together. “Shit. Does this mean I’m not the main character?”

- - -

Haru was just as excited to meet the freshly reborn Lee Do Hwa— almost enough to forgive him and Eun Dan Oh for getting banned from the library for excessive noise. Dan Oh could hear him fussing through the phone the moment she announced the good news, undoubtedly rushing to clean his flat and cook a meal big enough for four people. When they arrived the once unnavigable space was spotless and a military sized pot of spaghetti was cooking on the stove. Dan Oh didn’t even remember them owning any dishes that big. Haru wasn’t one to be underestimated on a regular day, but a worried, nagging Haru? The author themself probably feared him.

Lee Do Hwa immediately made himself at home, plopping down next to Eun Dan Oh on the tiny couch and sighing dramatically.

“Haruuu!” He whined. “I haven’t seen you in ages and this is the greeting I get?”

A light turned off in the bathroom and Haru’s head of wavy black hair peeked through the doorway. He wore neon green rubber gloves and had probably just finished deep cleaning every corner of the room.

“Dan Oh, is that you?” Haru dusted off his baby blue hoodie and looked up, mouth gaping. “Lee Do Hwa?!”

“Are you that shocked? I know I’m not the adorable second male lead anymore but can’t a man wear glasses every once in a while?” He started pouting again. Eun Dan Oh rolled her eyes.

“No, it’s nothing bad,” Haru smiled reassuringly. “You just look…different.”

Do Hwa fell into Dan Oh as if he’d been shot in the chest. “That’s even worse! Just say I look like a nerd, it’ll hurt less!”

Haru sauntered into the living room and squoze his way into the middle of the couch, immediately putting distance between Eun Dan Oh and Lee Do Hwa. Do Hwa's pout only widened.

“You look like a nerd.” He stared at his friend’s face for a few seconds. “And your hair’s brighter now. It’s basically blonde.”

“It’s chestnut brown…” Do Hwa replied heavily as if the words pained him.

“No, it’s blonde.” Eun Dan Oh said, reaching over to pat his hand with a smile. “And you do look like a nerd—”

“First you tell me I’m an extra and now this? Is nothing sacred?”

“That being said, I think it looks cute! And we missed you! So who cares if you look like a labradoodle.” She reached her arms around Haru for a group hug. Do Hwa hummed annoyedly.

“I guess I missed you guys too. Even though you keep rubbing your happy relationship in my face.” Do Hwa said, completing the hug. Haru squirmed in place and patted his friend’s head awkwardly.

- - -

In the days following their reunion, Lee Do Hwa had somehow weaseled his way out of a two year lease to, in his words, “the shittiest apartment known to man” and made preparations to move in with Haru and Oh Nam Joo. Eun Dan Oh couldn’t begin to explain how he managed something like that. Oh Nam Joo shouldn’t have even remembered him in the first place? But they’d hit it off immediately and under a week later Do Hwa was sleeping on the pullout couch. He claimed it was his natural charm, but Dan Oh was pretty sure it had something to do with the fact that they were lifelong friends in a past life. No other character really remembered anything past Do Hwa’s name, but that didn’t stop him from giving a running commentary before and after every scene.

Eun Dan Oh’s fiance in “These Fragile Hearts” was, of course, Baek Gyeong. As always he didn’t like her back, but unlike before her character was almost entirely to blame for it. Where he was kind and vulnerable, Eun Dan Oh was cold and constantly toeing the line between oblivious and downright cruel. There were more scenes than Dan Oh could count where Baek Gyeong planned a lovely dinner or picnic for the two of them only for her to stand him up for work. It wasn’t surprising that his character arc revolved around a secret romance between him and the much more affectionate Shin Sae Mi (and yes, they were the main couple). Eun Dan Oh had absolutely no interest in dating Baek Gyeong, but every time the two leads exchanged knowing glances right in front of her she wanted to gag. They could at least flirt in private! Why was infidelity okay just because it was the main characters sneaking around?! When Lee Do Hwa found out her predicament, he laughed so hard he got a stitch in his side.

“Oh my god, stop talking. Please, I’m gonna fucking choke,” Do Hwa wheezed out in between his laughter.

“Is my life a game to you?! I have to watch Baek Gyeong and Sae Mi make googly eyes at each other everyday. Everyday!” Eun Dan Oh exclaimed, throwing a fluffy pillow at the taller man’s head. “My character’s too cool to get cheated on, I made my own uncle step down from Eun Enterprises with one threat and a glare. But somehow I’m too blind to see the extremely blatant PDA going on right in front of me? What kind of writing is that!”

“Maybe you just don’t mind it? Your character’s kind of in a metaphorical love affair with work so—“

“Please don’t ever call it that, I’ll actually gag.”

“And in their defense…” Do Hwa started, clearing his throat. “Aren’t you kind of in the same boat? You and Haru are like, fated soulmates. And you go on secret journeys every night. And basically live together.” He smiled knowingly and Dan Oh shoved him to the other side of the couch.

“Me and Haru have tried breaking up with our canon counterparts a billion times. We used to do it every other day in hopes they’d remember somehow. Baek Gyeong and Yeo Joo Da just aren’t self aware yet so until then we have to wait.”

Lee Do Hwa nodded and opened his mouth to reply before shutting it. He suddenly looked up to stare at Eun Dan Oh.

“Yeo Joo Da?” Do Hwa’s eyes were wide and Dan Oh was sure that if he were a puppy his ears would be raised in attention right about now.

“Yes, Yeo Joo Da. Her and Haru are the second most important couple in the entire comic.” Eun Dan said, frowning sympathetically. Do Hwa forced a laugh to relieve the tension.

“That sounds…boring.”

“You know I can hear you, right?” Haru’s muffled shout came through the bedroom door where he was studying. Lee Do Hwa shrugged.

“I mean you’re not wrong.” Dan Oh agreed. “They’re super vanilla, who wants to read about a couple with no conflict?”

“Do you think—“ Do Hwa looked down. “Do you think I should talk to her? Introduce myself?” Eun Dan Oh scooted closer and pat his shoulder. She honestly felt for him. At least in ”Secret” Yeo Joo Da was aware that Lee Do Hwa existed. There was no telling how much she knew of their past life or if she’d even be able to remember Lee Do Hwa between scenes. But if Do Hwa was anything, he was likeable. Dan Oh knew that if he put his mind to it he’d make himself known soon enough.

Lost in thought, Dan Oh didn’t hear the telltale sound of Haru opening his bedroom door and coming out to the living area. He gently moved Eun Dan Oh to the side and inserted himself firmly in the middle of the couch once again.

“I think you should do it.” Haru said, opening his notebook and getting right back to studying. “You have a name now. That’s a start, right?”

Haru was smiling brightly at Lee Do Hwa and Eun Dan Oh could tell he was trying to convey his approval and other unsaid emotions in just that look. How thankful he was to have Do Hwa around even if he didn’t say much, how well he personally understood such a tragic situation. And just like Haru had Do Hwa and Dan Oh back then, Do Hwa had them now. They were the Three Musketeers and even if Yeo Joo Da didn’t recognize him at first they’d help him through it. Just the three of them had done things way more difficult. They’d changed fate multiple times, in comparison this was nothing.

“Thank you, Haru. It’s not that I still like her but…She’s important to me, you know? I still feel kind of responsible to make sure she’s okay. I know that’s selfish of me.” Do Hwa sighed and stared at the ceiling. “Why are feelings so complicated. I wish I could just have an affair like everybody else.”

Eun Dan Oh grabbed the pillow and reached across Haru to whack Do Hwa again.

“Asshole.”

“But you guys love me!” He pouted.

Haru hummed but didn’t make a single move to stop Eun Dan Oh’s onslaught of pillow attacks. “I guess you’re right about that.”

Eun Dan Oh finally put her weapon down and glared. “If not for the fact that I love you and it would make Haru sad, I would smite you where you stand.”

Lee Do Hwa stuck out his tongue, only to hop off the couch and dash away when Dan Oh grabbed one of Haru’s three inch thck textbooks. They chased each other around the cramped apartment and Haru closed his notebook in defeat. His studying would have to wait until another time.

#extraordinary you #dodanru #i'll post this on ao3 soon but idk how to use it yet #my writing

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blueboxesandtrafficcones · 4 years

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The Gift of One’s Self

Day 3 of 2020′s 31 Days of Ficmas. Thanks @doctorroseprompts!

Prompt: Shopping

Rating: T (discussions of sex & sex toys; no “use”)

Pairing: 13xRose (AU)

Summary: Sparks fly when just before Christmas Jane comes into the adult toy store where Rose works, leading them to reevaluate what they think they’re looking for in a partner and making the connection of a lifetime.

2020 31 Days of Ficmas masterlist

AO3

---

Rose stood behind the cash register, humming along to the Christmas music piping through the store. It was her first Christmas season in several years not spent at Henricks, and though she was still in retail, the boutique adult toy shop she’d joined in August had an easier-going pace; though business had picked up in the last few weeks as December drew near, it didn’t come close to the frenetic pace of the department store.

Especially not at ten in the morning on a random Tuesday.

The bell above the door tinkled, forewarning the entrance of a customer, and she straightened from where she’d been slouched on the counter, pasting on her best customer service smile. “Good morning, welcome to Handled With Love, can I help you today?”

The woman bee-lined towards her, eyes wide and directed towards the ground, and Rose held back a sigh. She was late twenties like Rose, also with peroxide blonde hair, and the overpowering air of someone who had never seen a sex toy before, and didn’t want to now. Her cheeks were already crimson, and likely not from the reasonably moderate temperature outside. This’ll be fun.

“Hi,” the woman muttered, peeking up at Rose as she reached the counter. “Erm, I’m here for a pickup – Amy Pond? It’s Hen Night stuff. She called to say I was coming. Jane Smythe?”

“Yes, of course, hang on.” Rose verified the details in the order book, glancing at the woman’s proffered ID long enough to confirm the name. “Thank you.” Turning, she dragged the prepared bag out from under the back counter, settling it before the woman with a thunk. “Shall I review the order with you?”

The woman, Jane, had found enough courage to lift her head, but was staring at the sample-size lubes in front of the cash register with more than a hint of fear. “Er…” Fumbling in her pocket, she pulled out a piece of paper. “Can you just…”

Rose accepted it, laying it on the desk and checking off the items compared to the order. “First time in a sex shop?”

“That obvious?” Jane flinched. “Erm, yeah. I don’t really… do that.”

“What, have sex?” Rose’s eyes widened in horror, darting up to look at the woman, cringing inside. “I’m so sorry, that was completely inappropriate. Forget I asked.”

Surprisingly, she relaxed slightly, offering Rose a tentative smile. “It’s okay. And, yeah, basically. I’m… I’ve never had an interest in it. Amy called it something- but, honestly, I’d already tuned her out.”

“Asexual. Means you don’t experience any sexual attraction.” Her own cheeks heated a little; part of the reason she’d taken this job (against her mother’s objections) was to lose some of her prudishness, wanting to be more comfortable with her own sexuality. That had meant a crash course in all things preference and gender related, all kindly included as part of her on-boarding. “Nothing wrong with that.” Checking off the last item, she folded the list back up and handed it over. “I just need you to sign here,” she slid the order page over, “as confirmation of pick-up. It’s all paid for already. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Jane bit her lip, warm brown eyes darting around. “Well… actually, I need a hen party gift, and Amy suggested I try something here. But I know nothing about any of it. Like I said.”

Rose gave her another warm smile. “I’d be happy to help,” she agreed. “D’you have a car you want to take this to first, or keep it behind the desk until you’re ready to go? Just so you’re not lugging it around the store.”

“I’ll take it to the car,” she said with gratitude. “Excellent idea. I’ll be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tale.” Gingerly grabbing the bag, she gave Rose a grin and trotted out the door, holding the bag away as if it was a bomb.

This’ll be interesting, if she comes back.

She did, and Rose spent over an hour helping her – it didn’t take long to find something for the bride-to-be, but to Rose’s surprise, halfway to the register the woman confessed that she was maybe open to finding something for herself. It had taken all of Rose’s experience in retail to not react to that, and eventually, helped her pick out something fairly tame that was a good ‘starter’.

Jane crossed her mind occasionally throughout the day, bringing a smile to Rose’s face – it had felt good, to help someone get more in touch with themself, and when she slid into bed that night and pulled out her own favorite “massager” (thank you employee discount!), her thoughts drifting towards the other woman and her toy, she realized she’d been attracted to her.

Oh. Switching off the vibrator Rose sat up, staring blankly at the wall. Is that what this is? With the exception of an experimental phase shortly after the crashing and burning of her relationship with Jimmy, she’d never really considered the idea. It wasn’t that she was opposed to dating girls, she’d just… never really done it, other than a few drunken hookups. Is that what I want?

She had lots of questions, but no answers – the most pressing being, Will I ever even see her again?

Jane sat on her bed, knees curled up to her chest, staring at the innocent-looking wand sitting in front of her. Asking the shop girl about it had been instinct – purely a delay tactic, not ready to leave her presence but not sure why. She’d felt funny, talking to her – like she had a menagerie inside her stomach, her palms sweaty and shaky.

No, not ‘shopgirl’. Rose. “Rose,” she said out loud, savoring the feel of name on her tongue. The woman’s face flashed before her eyes, Jane’s heart jumping at just the thought of her – but it wasn’t just her face. An odd pulsing feeling low in her hips had cropped up every time Rose had smiled at her, pink tongue peeking through pearly white teeth; even now, Jane’s stomach swooped at the thought.

“This has never happened to me before,” she informed the vibrator, feeling a need to defend herself – against what, she didn’t know. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” That was a lie; like any good scientist, she’d googled the sensations as soon as she was home, and been informed she either had some untreatable disease – or a crush. A crush. I’ve never had one of those. That was a lie too; she had, once, at uni, but it had been fleeting, easy to squash and a distant memory.

This, so far, hadn’t. In fact, the more she tried not to think about the shopgirl (Rose), the more she did; her bright eyes, her kind smile, the snug fit of her jumper…

I think I’m in trouble.

It took Rose the better part of a week (and three good wanks, not that she’d ever admit that) for Jane to fade to a background thought. Throwing herself into Christmas shopping and planning had helped, and by the end of the second week, she’d written the “incident” off as little more than a lapse in judgement, and perhaps excessive vanity or narcissism, given their similar appearance.

In fact, she’d worked so hard to remove the encounter from her memory, that she’d managed to stop her heart from leaping every time the bell chimed. Which meant that when it went off first thing the Monday before Christmas, she didn’t look up from the inventory she was stocking, merely calling, “Welcome to Handled With Love, I’ll be with you in just a mo’.”

“Take your time.”

The familiar voice startled Rose so badly she dropped the armful of inventory, and after ducking down to pick it up, came face to face with a blushing, grinning Jane with an armful of dildos. “Hi,” she said, somewhat breathless, before trying for something more in the realm of professional. “Erm, hello. What brings you in today?”

“Hi.” Jane looked as delighted to see her as Rose felt, butterflies taking flight in her gut. “I- erm- thank you for the recommendation, before. I’m interested in… expanding my collection.”

“You are?” Rose cleared her throat, trying again with less surprise. “I mean, you are?” I’m never going to get through this if I have to keep repeating myself. It was almost immediately clearly that while she’d been ignoring the slight attraction she’d felt, it had developed into a full-blown crush on its own.

Jane nodded, twisting her hands in front of her. “Maybe something a little more advanced?”

Rose fought desperately to reengage her salesclerk brain. “Sure. What did you think of your previous purchase? What did you like or not like?” Looking down at the armful of artificial cocks she still held, she dumped them back in the box haphazardly. “Shall we?”

Jane blushed and stuttered her way through the next twenty minutes, shyly admitting to having actually tried with the toy several times but getting disappointing results. Rose was kind and encouraging, gently guiding her towards a different sort of product she thought might help.

The entire time she tried to work up the courage for what she really wanted, dithering over signing the credit card slip in an attempt to delay the inevitable.

“Is everything all right?” Rose asked, wide eyes concerned and feeling like they could see straight through to her soul. “I haven’t pressured you into this, have I? If you’re not happy-”

“It’s not that,” Jane cut her off, tucking her hair behind one ear. “I just… I’m nervous it’s not going to, you know, work. For me.”

Rose nodded. “Sure, I get that. So, our return policy really only applies to things not opened or used – for sanitary reasons – but…” Reaching behind the counter, she pulled out a business card, scribbling quickly on the back. “This is my information, if you’re really not happy I personally guarantee you your money back within 30 days, & I’ve written it here for you. I care more about your happiness than the sale. Okay?”

“Okay.” Jane accepted it, knowing she would never make use of the generous offer – as far as she was concerned, the only thing more embarrassing than buying a sex toy was returning one. Dropping it into her purse, she knew it was now or never. “This might be completely inappropriate-”

“It’s okay, go ahead,” Rose reassured her when she paused.

“Thanks. Erm, the problem may be that I don’t know what I’m doing, with this or the other thing.” Jane licked her lips. “Do you do demonstrations?” In for a penny, in for a pound. “Or personal assistance?”

Rose’s eyes widened, and when she didn’t say anything for several seconds, Jane started to pray for death, but before she could take it back, the other woman said, “Only if you buy me dinner first.”

They stared at each other.

“I’m kidding about the ‘you paying’ bit, but… I would like to get to know you better. Would that be okay?”

Okay? Okay?! Jane was practically floating. “Very much so. Maybe dinner, drinks…” she trailed off, sure her face was scarlet, heart ready to beat itself out of her chest. “Mind you, I’ve never done this before.”

“So you keep saying.” Rose’s lips twitched. “How about this – we go Dutch on dinner, I’ll bring a bottle of wine, and if I can’t sufficiently demonstrate the effectiveness of your purchases, I’ll refund them personally and buy you breakfast.”

“Deal.”

They shook on it.

A year later

“Open it, open it, open it,” Rose chanted, bouncing on her knees. They’d decided Christmas morning was just for them, having been at Jackie’s the evening before and going to Jane’s family for lunch, leaving them to enjoying their first Christmas together in their new, shared flat.

“All right, all right,” Jane laughed. “I’d say keep your pants on, but…” she trailed off with a wink, eyes lingering on the ample skin Rose’s skimpy nighty didn’t cover. Not that she was any more covered up, in boy shorts and a tank. “What do we have here?” Tearing at the paper, she was only slightly surprised to see the logo of their favorite brand of adult toys. “You’re a sex fiend, Rose Tyler.”

“Shut up.” Her girlfriend just grinned, waving for her to continue. “You’ll like it, I promise.”

Jane finished removing the paper to find a pair of pink, fuzzy handcuffs still in the box, and laughed. “Are these a gift for you, or me?” She leaned forward, kissing her in thanks. “I do like it, though how much depends on your answer.”

“Both of us, obviously,” Rose replied, tickling her calf. “But turn it over.”

She did, laughing harder at the Blu-Ray of the 1952 movie Houdini – she’d mentioned in passing being a fan of his tricks weeks earlier, and apparently Rose had been listening. “Okay, I love it.” Setting the gifts down, she leaned towards Rose again, this time cupping her cheek and giving her a slower, deeper kiss. “Happy Christmas, my love.”

“Happy Christmas.” Rose opened her eyes, smiling softly. “To many more.”

“Hear, hear. Now, that’s the last of the gifts and we’ve got several hours before we’re due anywhere. What say you we break these in?”

They raced for the bedroom, and in the end, they both won.

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lindoig8 · 3 years

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Mother's Day and Birthday

Saturday, 7 May

We spent most of the day around the caravan. Heather has a very sore toe (apparently broken) from boot pressure from our Walk and that makes walking painful so resting for a couple of days was probably good. It also gave us a chance to catch up on a few things as well as getting back into something I haven’t done for well over a year. I used to do most of the puzzles, particularly the Cryptic Crosswords, in the Age, but haven’t done them for ages. But I had saved about 100 pages from the paper and have done about 10 of them in the past few days. I have only completed 2 of them, but all the others were done except for the occasional word. If I have the following day’s page, I can cheat the answers, but I think that only happened once because not all the pages are sequential. It has been fun and a change from so may other puzzles.

We did another Supermarket/booze shop run on Friday and refuelled the car while we were out. We purchased a couple of large cuts of meat during our foray and cooked a fantastic roast beef and roast vegetable meal for dinner. We used our double-sided frypan again – it is so versatile and we use it for lots of things. I will post a photo of it because I have mentioned it several times and I doubt if many people understand what it is. It is hinged at the back, non-stick inside with a little drip tray behind the hinge – not big enough but it allows some steam to escape and runs off a bit of the excess fat. It has very strong magnets in the handles to ensure it remains closed – but we need to be careful because it is easy to get one’s fingers pinched when the magnets slam the top shut.

Sunday, 9 May

It was Mother’s Day as well as my birthday and we had planned a big day. We had lots of nice kind wishes on Facebook, on Messenger and in phone calls with the kids and all of that was very nice. But we also had a great lunch at a Station about 40 kilometres out into the desert from here. It was at Ooraminna Station and it was simply wonderful. Weather was perfect, mid-20s with a gentle cooling breeze whispering past us on the wide verandah.

There was a surprisingly big crowd there, some tourists, but lots of locals too – quite a few people knew each other and there were some Mother’s Day lunches going on too. The menu was not extensive, but I enjoyed the duck and Heather had a delicious steak – I know it was delicious because I helped her finish it! But the setting was superb, in a bit of a valley, ringed by dramatic rocky hills, simply gorgeous and we spent time just taking it all in. After lunch, we explored the area nearby – horses, goats, chooks, a duck and a guineafowl all around the camping/glamping area – and we visited a delightful billabong with a few birds and heaps of pretty butterflies. It was all quite idyllic.

There were a few dozen of these resting on the damp soil beside the tranquil billabong.

Another feature of the place is that it has been the location for a few films, including The Drover’s Boy (that one was never actually finished). A complete mini-township was built as the filmset for this one and it is still there, albeit in a slightly decrepitstate. We arrived a bit early so stopped off at the filmset and wandered around like true Wild West pioneers. I will post some photos. It all looks pretty dilapidated, but I am sure it was intended to look a bit that way.

On the way back to town, we stopped to take some pics near the airport. When we arrived in Alice Springs, we noticed a lot of planes there and I counted more than 70 from several different airlines, all parked close together, obviously mothballed until international borders reopen and allow them to fly again. I wonder what level of maintenance is being done on such a big agglomeration of aircraft to ensure they stay in tip-top condition during the hiatus?

We had also booked to have dinner at the brewery next door. They have a beer hall on one side and a restaurant on the other and we had booked for the restaurant. We arrived to see masses of people flooding the restaurant with an appallingly tuneless singer blasting the area at 100+ decibels. Our reserved table had been commandeered by a bunch of other people so they said we could sit in the middle of the area where people were lining up to place their orders for drinks and food. It took ages to even get someone’s attention to find us a table, and Heather lined up for half an hour to order our drinks - and then had to argue with the morons behind the bar who claimed not to have what we wanted, despite it being in plain view. They kept trying to persuade her to order something else. In th meantime, I was in the food queue that didn’t move an inch, possibly due to the people who were pushing in further ahead of us. Only one register was working and that was adding to the bottleneck and the staff were chatting with known customers so nobody else was getting anywhere. Heather eventually got our drinks and replaced me in the food queue while I guarded our decreasingly-bubbly and warming flat bubbles, with people milling around our table and staff bumping furniture into me as they shifted tables to accommodate more people at the other end of the venue. When Heather finally got served, she was told that 'they were busy' and it would be at least an hour before the food would come – and by then, it would almost have been their closing time. We gulped down our bubbles, tucked our over-priced bottle of wine under our arm, and drove across town to buy fish and chips. We ate them sitting up in bed watching a DVD and we had finished our meal and the 'dishes' well before we would have got anything had we stayed next door.

It is hard to imagine any greater contrast between our delightful, relaxing lunch and the shambolic rowdy mob at dinner. I would recommend Ooraminna to anyone, but I wouldn't return to the brewery for anything.

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rokutouxei · 4 years

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the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

ikemen vampire: temptation through the dark theo van gogh / mc | T | [ ao3 link in bio ]

The challenge seemed pretty simple: to try to befriend the university bookshop’s most sour employee, Theo van Gogh. As a literature major with a boatload of book recommendations on her back, it ought to be a simple task indeed. But as she uncovers what lies between Theo’s pages, the more she finds it harder to become closer to him without having to put the feeling directly into words. What can she learn from Theo about what it means to stay—and how can she teach Theo about what it means to let go? | written for ikevamp big bang 2020!

[ masterpost for all chapters ]

CHAPTER 18 OF 22

how intricately love crosses love; love makes knots; love brutally tears them apart. I have been knotted; I have been torn apart.

- Virginia Woolf, the Waves

Her phone receives three calls in the span of an hour.

The first one is from an old friend, who rings to ask her how she’ll feel like being neighbors again. Her friend is planning to apply to the university’s MA program, and that she’ll be dropping by within the next week to submit some requirements for the application. She’s asking if she’s free, and if they could hang out a little before she goes home. She bites the butt-end of the marker in between her teeth as they’re talking, scribbling out onto the date on her calendar tacked to the wall. It’s a great phone call.

The second one is from the school she’s going on exchange to. A lady with a thick (but lovely!) accent tells her that they’ve finished signing the paperwork she needs to submit for her student visa. That the document is in her email, and that they’ve forwarded the hard copy to the Office of Student Relations, saying that she should pick it up at their office by the end of the week. She nods and thanks them as they big goodbye. When the call ends, she flutters with excitement.

It’s that last call that’s a little more troublesome.

“Busy today, aren’t we?” Vincent comments with a small laugh, their little conversation about the finalized date for the exhibit cut short once more as she excuses herself to take the call. She awkwardly grins at him as she heads out of the studio, ducking into the living room.

“Yes?” A beat. “Oh, yes. Yes it’s me.” Silence. The smile that was originally on her face upon recognizing that it’s one of the OSR staff organizing her trip disappears quickly. “Is… that really the only schedule available, sir?” More silence. “Oh, no, that’s not—” a pause. “I see. I’m sorry. Yes, I understand.” She bites her lip, looks across the house through to the kitchen, eyes gluing distractedly onto the unwashed coffee mugs on the sink. “Of course. Yes. Thank you. This is noted. I’m sorry. Yes.”

She puts the phone down. Stares at the “ended call” screen before she looks up again, catching Vincent’s stare from the studio doorway. He smiles at her. She smiles back, but she feels so weak.

She turns back to her phone with a sigh.

She has a solution for at least one of the phone calls: the first one. She rings up her friend the next day and proposes a drinking party.

Says she’ll bring her other university friends to introduce to her, and they’ll hang out, then maybe share in the good energy (and the misery) of being in the same university—likely soon, we’re manifesting it!

They agree to crash at a place downtown for the night, everyone pitching in for an Airbnb in the middle of a school week. She invites Dazai, and Isaac, and Arthur; they each invite some other familiar faces, Napoleon, Leonardo, and Sebastian, of course—her friend’s brother.

She doesn’t know if she wants to invite Theo.

Only because it’s been… weird.

She’s sure she wants to invite Vincent, though, and inviting him is tantamount to inviting the other, so she does anyway. But because fate is a cruel tutor, the exact reverse of what she has wanted to happen, happens.

Vincent apologizes profusely, saying he’s in the middle of a rather time-sensitive painting (something about painting while the paint is not entirely dry, and his timer is set to just about tonight) so can she bring Theo instead?

And she knows the drill. Theo does not say no to Vincent.

Theo, of course, could just lie to his brother, a little white lie about coming with her to the little Korean barbecue drinking party they had planned tonight, to introduce her group of friends to her childhood friend, who was in the campus lately because she had applied for an MA in the very same department.

But Theo doesn’t.

He goes with them, just as Vincent had expected him to.

Gets in the small van and listen to Arthur and Dazai sing along to the annoying song on the radio way too loudly, the windows rolled down, she and her friend laughing at the boys making a ruckus, her friend’s quiet, stern-looking older brother focused on driving them out of the campus.

Theo wonders if he should’ve lied, after all.

But he knows that even if he knew that he should’ve, he would have come anyway. Because he knows himself. Knows that he will be lying to everyone else and denying it with his whole chest but in truth, he knows that he is just buying some more time with her. Even if that is time spent sitting at the end of a grill table flipping meat as the rest of the table laughs and makes a cacophony of noises, half-drunk on cheap alcohol. Even if that means just sitting next to her as the long night passes, silent in their fullness, not speaking, not breaking the illusion that everything is alright, that she won’t be leaving him soon, that there’s so much brewing in his chest and he still…

Doesn’t have the courage to tell her a single word of it.

Her hands are numb with her nerves, but the night goes… surprisingly well.

She and Theo hang around each other, passing barbecue and utensils, but they do not… have an explosive argument like she feared they would have. She reminds herself that they have nothing to argue about, that nothing had been done wrong. Still, she doesn’t want to make a scene out here. She’d told her friend she was going to introduce her university friends, and a shouting match in an airbnb isn’t exactly what friends do.

Instead, she pretends like nothing is different. Like nothing had changed drastically over the past few days. Teases Arthur and Dazai as they huddle each other and have excessive amounts of PDA that would have been unacceptable if they were actually a couple. (“They get a free pass because they’re fuck buddies?” “Mmhmm, somehow it doesn’t count.” “Who said it doesn’t count?! This is scandalous!” “Arthur did. …Wait a minute.”) Gapes at Sebastian and his very obvious mental hard-on for Napoleon, who is busy discussing with him something about a historical note on food rituals in the 1600s, or something—she really isn’t paying attention. Texts Isaac with a winky face waiting for him to finally get here like he promised he would.

Ignores the one person she wishes she could talk to right now but does not have the courage to.

And just as Theo makes his way out to the porch, maybe to sober up, maybe to get some time to himself, her friend, face already flushed with alcohol, a silly grin plastered on her face, elbows her lightly, “So, which one of these cuties is the one you’re pining for?”

“Give me a minute,” she says, as she gets up on her feet to follow Theo walking away.

Somewhere in between pizza and the first two or three rounds of beer, Theo goes out to the terrace for a little bit of silence. He’d expected her three usual suspects to come—Isaac, Dazai, Arthur—but he hadn’t expected a crowd, especially not of people he barely knew. The whiskey that Leonardo guy had handed to him was pretty strong, too. He’s still standing straight, but his mind is already spinning in circles.

On one hand, seeing her act so normal gives him some sort of relief. This is what he wanted for her. He wanted to step back, fold the dog-eared parts of his heart back onto itself so that he doesn’t notice them—the bookmarks of affection he’d left along the edges of their friendship’s pages. And sure, pulling away was a feat on its own, particularly because he knew she was leaving, and that made him want to spend even more valuable time with her, but—

This is better for her. He knows that. He understands that. And he’s willing to give that to her.

Besides, she said so herself. She no longer wants anchors.

But on the other hand, seeing her act so normal, so oblivious when he’s torn himself open to give her peace of mind leaves an undesirable taste in his mouth.

But it’s not like he could tell her.

Theo’s just about downed the rest of the whiskey in his glass when she comes out to the porch, the sight of her face like salt to the wound.

It takes him all his strength to smile.

“Mind some company?” she asks, and he shakes his head, leaning against the barrier carefully. “Too loud inside?”

He laughs. “The whiskey was crazy.”

She nods. “Leonardo has a ridiculous alcohol stash. A wildcard during drinking parties.”

She closes the door behind her and leans against the balcony next to him, taking a deep sigh. She’s close enough to him that Theo can smell the faint citrus of her perfume.

Theo doesn’t know what to say but he knows he wants to talk to her.

“Nice shirt,” he says, eyes trained on the pastel yellow linen of the off-shoulder blouse she’s wearing. “Color suits you.” She smiles—even if it hurts a little—and shrugs to emphasize them when he points it out.

“Thanks,” she says. “Finally the season to wear bright colors, you know.”

In his mind, she is still beige coat and black boots in the middle of fall. But even that feels like an entire lifetime ago. The months have gone by in a haze. Theo begins to feel the weight of regret—of letting it pass by out of his grasp—sink inside his gut.

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” Theo says off-handedly, eyes turned to the ceiling. “Busy?”

“Yeah,” she says, with a half-sigh that’s dragged out of her. She takes a breath and leans her back against the veranda as well, but she looks downward, instead. At the corner of his eye, he catches her pursing her lips as if choosing what to say. “Paperwork.”

“Welcome to bureaucracy,” he jokes, and the two of them laugh.

But just a little.

As if they both knew they were hiding something else underneath the laughter.

“How’ve you been?”

It’s a simple question. One they’ve asked each other a million times before. One that doesn’t have to feel as heavy as it does right now.

“Okay,” she says, but her voice falters. “Could be better.”

Theo hums. She knows that means me too.

“But it’s going great, you know. For both of us.”

That makes him turn.

“With, with the exhibit, right?” she follows up, caught off guard by his gaze. “And with the scholarship, and you’re on your last class, aren’t you? Pre-thesis?”

“Hopefully,” he says.

She smiles at it. “Will be, I promise,” she says.

For a moment, the two of them stand there next to each other in silence. Which should have been normal and comfortable between them, but today…

Today is different.

With another sigh, she decides to just go for it.

“Can I just… get straight to the point?” she asks, as if cautious.

Theo nods, even when his heart is twisting into knots.

“Why have you been ignoring me?”

When she says it, it sounds like her voice is crumpling with the weight of the words.

Theo doesn’t dare look at her. Eyes open but still trained at the ceiling, he says, “I haven’t been ignoring you.”

Her face scrunches up, for the briefest of moments, into a potent kind of anger. An expression that clearly spoke then what the hell have we been doing?! without even a word. Then, it dissolves into something gentler, like defeat. “I’m not mad… just tell me if there’s something wrong?”

A plea for help. Theo hates how transparent he’s become to her, over the few months. Theo wonders if she has something she doesn’t have the courage to tell him either.

“Nothing is wrong,” he insists, closing his eyes as if it makes saying it easier. “It’s just been busy. Like you.”

“Then can I ask why you’ve been upset?”

“I haven’t been upset.”

Theo doesn’t like the feeling. The lie is acid in his mouth. He can avoid questions, he can dodge them, he can make up the most convoluted reasons to divert them—but he does not like lying.

He isn’t lying. He’s not upset.

He’s distraught, and that’s not the same thing.

“Arthur says you’ve been out of character.”

Somehow, the idea that she’s been keeping tabs on him doesn’t make him feel any better. “You know how Arthur is.”

“Arthur doesn’t lie.”

Theo quickly snaps, turning toward her with narrowed eyes. It makes her recoil. It’s an ugly feeling. Theo thinks he deserves it. “Are you saying I do?”

With a deep breath, instead of shouting back, she only shakes her head. “I’m not. You don’t.” She bites her lip as she turns her eyes back to the ground. “…though I kind of wish you were.”

“What?”

She doesn’t answer. Not right away, anyway. Theo looks at her and tries to figure out the expression on her face. It contorts, half-pain and half-pity.

He doesn’t know for who.

“I don’t want to leave like this, Theo,” she says after what feels like forever, her voice as fragile as snowflakes. “It’s like I’ve lost you. I don’t want to lose you. I don’t know where you are. Something happened that made you drifted away. I don’t know what it is. I can’t fix it if I don’t know what it is. I don’t—do you know how important you are to me?” She pauses, out of breath. When they make eye contact, they both look away. “You are important to me. So if something happened, tell me.”

Nothing ‘happened’, he wants to tell her. Something ‘happening’ implies that there was something that changed the way things are. But nothing changed. It’s always been like this from the start. That she was going to go, and he was going to stay.

Nothing happened, it’s just his stubborn heart refusing to shut up or speak up. He doesn’t know which is worse.

Theo doesn’t want to speak because the last time he had spoken they had fought over the one thing that is the most important to her. He doesn’t want to speak because he doesn’t know what it is that he can say.

She takes his silence as a denial.

“Does this just not mean as much to you as it does to me?”

“You’re my friend,” is what he says. Not an answer, but a response.

“Then why won’t you tell me?”

From the inside, there’s a sound of glasses clinking. Someone must have initiated another shot for everyone. But the cheerful laughter that rolls out the window does not lessen the weight of their conversation.

Maybe it makes it worse.

“Dazai says you don’t want me to go.”

The lilt of her voice says curiosity, not anger. That relieves Theo only the slightest bit.

He doesn’t look at her. “That’s a lie.”

“Then why did it make you so upset?”

“I told you, I’m not upset.”

“Not-upset enough to avoid me for weeks?”

“I wasn’t avoiding you.”

“Look, Theo, if you just—”

“You want to go away, so go away,” he says, sharply. He doesn’t like where this conversation is going. He doesn’t want to tell her. He doesn’t want to be someone holding her back. Maybe if he tears at the string holding them together hard enough, she’ll be able to sail away.

But what he said only makes her fold even deeper into herself, distress written plain on her face. Like something snapped inside of her. Guilt begins to tear at him, but this is the only way he knows how to do this. It will hurt, but these are only growing pains. “Are you still holding that against me?”

“I’m not holding it against you.”

“Yes, that’s probably exactly why you brought it up,” she says, her voice now louder. “All of that, all those days and weeks together and you’re still clinging on to that conversation at the rooftop, aren’t you? We don’t need to see eye to eye on it, Theo.”

“I agree, we don’t.” Every word she says in that broken voice makes it harder and harder for him to not just tell her the truth, but he knows he can’t. It will cost them both too much. “I’m still allowed to have my thoughts on it.”

“Right, right.” She laughs. A dry sound. “So you would feel bad, then, huh? That I got offered the finishing course? That I’m considering staying there. Forever. Finish my degree there. Maybe work there. Is that it? Are you going to get mad at me for that?”

For what feels like the billionth time tonight, he says: “I’m not mad at you—”

“Do you know how much this hurts?” she interrupts, but this time her voice is small, like it’s hiding in the back of her throat. She could shout at him all night but it’s this tone that makes Theo hurt the most. “I just thought you’d be a little more supporting, you know, you’re my friend, after all, but…”

“I do support you. I won’t be stopping you from leaving,” he says.

“Then why does it hurt?” she blurts, and it’s obvious on the look on her face that she hadn’t meant to. She turns her back to him, crossing her arms in front of her chest. She takes a few shuddering breaths in the silence Theo doesn’t dare get in the middle of, and continues, “why did it seem like you were disappointed?”

Theo stops. Genuinely doesn’t know what to say, just stares at her back in front of him, feeling like she’s already disappearing out of his grasp. That if he reaches out to her right now he won’t be able to reach her—so he does, stretching a hand to see if he can still touch her, the soft cotton of her cardigan—

And he does, and it makes her turn toward him, anger in her eyes.

“I’m not disappointed,” he says. It’s all he can say. It’s the only truth that his mouth can form a shape around. “I’m very proud of you.”

And somehow—somehow that makes it worse. “Then act like it!” she says, tears already stinging the corner of her eyes. “Don’t just push me away and then expect me to be fine with it.”

“I wanted to give you space and let you focus on what you have to do.”

“I didn’t want to focus you out of my life, Theo!” she says. She looks at him like a wounded beast, pain radiating everywhere. “You don’t get to decide what things I add or cut off from my life, you do know that right?”

The thing is, he could admit right now. Could just tell her that he’s been running himself sick wondering if he should tell her. But he doesn’t want to tell her. Why would he, when all she’s ever really wanted was to go away? Why would he when all she’s wanted was to be free of anything that’s holding her down, and he doesn’t want to be that.

He wants her to go.

He does. Or maybe he doesn’t. It doesn’t matter, because he knows what he has to do.

He’s always been the one that stays.

Which is just a prettier way of saying he’s the one that gets left behind.

Her voice takes him back to the present, the sound of it sinking in his brain.

“Did you ever stop to consider what I’d feel about this?”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re my friend, I wanted you to be by my side and—”

“I’m sorry.”

“—it’s not that I couldn’t have done it on my own, but—”

“I’m sorry.”

“—you don’t know what’s going on in my head all the time and I don’t know what goes on in yours,” she says. “Theo, what if I told you I loved you?”

He falters for just a moment, but then he says: “I’m sorry.”

Silence. She looks at him for a long moment, her eyes glassy. No tears fall.

Maybe if they begin to roll down her cheeks, she might just get him to say it.

The tears might get him to hold her face in his hands, wipe the tears away, tell her he loves her too, tell her he still wants her to go.

But before they can, she turns away from him and goes back into the room, shouting as she enters: “Oookay, I’m too sober! Give me some more of that gin!”, and the door closes behind her with a small click.

Theo stands outside on the porch in the late spring night, with no words left in him.

They stay away from each other for the rest of the night.

Theo wakes up just as the sun is about to rise. Napoleon, Leonardo, and Sebastian seem to have taken shelter in the house’s other bedrooms—but he, Arthur, Dazai, Isaac, her friend, and her have camped out in the living room to sleep.

Theo’s eyes scan the room. Professor Newton arrived late last night but joined in just as he’s promised. Her friend had clung all night to Newton like a flirty leech, and the usually-reclusive man had no choice but to stay still and… well, stay flustered; Theo wakes up to him draping his jacket over her friend, as he tries to leave ahead of everyone else to make it to his morning class.

Across the room, Dazai and Arthur are also already awake, watching something intently on Dazai’s phone, giggling and with their hands held together in between them over the blanket. Theo doesn’t know at this point if they are lovers or really just fuck-buddies, but he yearns anyway—to be able to have the courage to connect like that.

And next to Theo, she is asleep, huddled under a blanket with a silly print, a large cartoon penguin sitting on top of an iceberg. The penguin has its arms raised wide, open, laid upon her side like protecting her from danger. From him. And Theo—Theo is about to reach out his hand and brush off the stray lock of her hair that’s now dangled in front of her face, trying his best to not wake her up with his movement.

She makes a small sound, and Theo’s heart stops for a moment, but then she does not wake up.

She’s right there next to him, and she hasn’t left, and it’s still spring, so she isn’t leaving soon, but Theo already feels so lonely. To whom will he recite the interesting lines of poetry that he encounters? To whom will he discuss all sorts of philosophies with, sitting in the alcove, waiting out the rain? Who else will be at the bookstore every week, aggressively haggling for books that already are in set prices, who else will team up with Arthur to make his head hurt? Who else will ring their little bike bell when they pass the bookshop at odd hours of the day?

His hand grazes just the tops of her cheeks as he tucks the stray lock of hair away behind her ear. He imagines the flush of it, should she be awake. But she is not awake, and he gets to be alone in his loneliness. His touch hovers there for just a moment, memorizing her warmth, before he pulls his hand back, and turns away.

Across the room, Arthur is watching, and shaking his head in defeat.

#the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart #ikemen vampire #ikevamp theo

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world-without-authors · 3 years

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15th anniversary of our madness!

Yes, you read that right. Today, April 13th 2021, marks the 15th anniversary of when I was crazy enough to bring out the idea of a crazy roundrobin crossover on the Moony Witcher Forum.

When on that day, April 13th 2006, I made a post with the general idea for Mai Dire Fine I never thought I would be starting a saga that would be still ongoing 15 years later.

But here we are, with me and Aelit still working on its latest sequel of sorts, The World without Authors. Compared to back then, our writing skills improved a lot (Mai Dire Fine was not a good story) and, while there’s always more we can still learn, we are proud of our improvement.

So, where are we? We published recently the 10th chapter of The World without Authors, which is currently around 69.000 words – we’re already closing in towards Blank Sprite‘s length (77.000) and that’s just part of the first arc, Scattered Shards. Adding in the previous stories, we’re past 320.000 already.

Even with The World without Authors‘s “all-stars” cast, we still only have a total of five characters from Mai Dire Fine, only three of which (Sergio, Nikki and Kathleen) were part of the main cast as the other two (Faith and Virgilia) were introduced towards the end… well, technically there’s a sixth character, the mysterious “Professor”, but his identity is spoilers as of now. I believe there might be enough hints between The World without Authors and my older behind the scenes post for you to be able to guess his identity already, but the reveal is meant to be a nasty surprise that will set up the second and third arcs, Venezia Immortale and The Dove and the Crow. Yes, we’re planning (well… sort of planning) that far!

But enough of that, let’s head to the celebration specials!

Unfortunately, the Q&A session was a complete failure. We didn’t receive any question by the deadline, but the mailbox is still open! Feel free to ask us anything, we’ll make a Q&A post as soon as the question come in, and we’ll keep it updated every time new questions arrive.

We still have a few more goodies, though. The first is a bit of an experiment on my part, I took one of my early PPC missions, A Very Awkward Exorcism, alongside a couple scenes from the interlude set chronologically just before it, Planes, Guns, Clones and other usual PPC Stuff, and gave them a complete makeover into a comic. Yes, I made what I believe might be the first full PPC mission in comic form! You can download it in PDF format (Trigger warning for rape, contains some partial nudity) here. I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Another thing I made is a special anniversary illustration, in which our characters, and a few we borrowed, from all over our works enjoy some partying. With all the things happening due to the Unravel they deserve some off time, don’t you think?

Let’s start with the back row, left to right.

First one is Ai Minase, from Koikatu. She has the distinction of being the “adopted canon character” of The World Without Authors – while we have other canons working with Strike Dove, she’s the only one who became part of the main cast on a deep level. While Hayate Yagami, her crew, the Razgriz and Long Caster also work with my main cast, they’re more of external allies. Her dress looks a bit like a tablecloth, but that’s a canon-ish outfit of hers: while she never wears it in her route, it is in her character card in the slot that gets used during dates in normal gameplay.

Next to her we have Keiko Caterina Turbo, Sergio and Nikki’s daughter with her own PPC spinoff, Wings of Canon: Second Strike. She is also the only survivor of the Second Strike cast, having lost Shiro and Saki in the Unravel, and as such the role of representative of her series is all on her. She also doesn’t like skirts, at all, why do you ask?

Then we have Hajime Irene Turbo, Keiko’s half sister/alternate incarnation from the timeline in which Sergio got together with Ami instead. She’s an original The World without Authors character, but still related to characters from my previous works. Fun fact: Keiko and Hajome’s birthday, April 13, in indeed based on the day and month we began Mai Dire Fine. If we consider HQ Standard Time (the PPC’s timeline) to coincide with the real world, they turned two years old today.

Next is Hajime’s mother, Ami Tanegashima. Mentioned first in I don’t like luxury cars to pave her way for her posthumous role in Blank Sprite, we can consider her the representative of my Blank Sprite original characters here. She’s now stuck with the absurdity of not only having a daughter she never thought she could have, but also of said daughter being currently only four years younger than her. Considering Ami’s small frame, there will likely be plenty of times in which she’s mistaken for Hajime’s younger sister… also, now that she’s 20 years old and of drinking age in Japan, she discovered she actually likes alcohol. And can deal with it surprisingly well despite her light build (as opposed to Sergio and Nikki who both can’t hold their liquor)… yes, she had more than a few glasses here. Luckily, she doesn’t drink very often.

Toasting with her is Aya Kibokami, the “fragment” that split off Madoka Kaname at the end of Blank Sprite. As such, she’s here as a representative of canon characters of Blank Sprite. Due to a certain scene of Madoka Magica, in which Madoka expresses a desire to go out drinking with her mother (who really enjoys drinking) once old enough, there is fanon of her eventually developing the same taste for liquor. While we’ll likely never know if the canon Madoka would, Aya is the other heavy drinker of my cast and here is depicted finally having a toast (or two… or a few…) with Ami to celebrate the success of their “Save Sergio and Homura from their spirals of self-destruction by making them defeat Vera and save Madoka together” master plan.

And, of course, fussing over Aya’s excessive drinking we have Kuroko Tenshimi, AKA the “split fragment” of Homura Akemi retaining the memories of the Blank Sprite Incident. While her and Aya haven’t featured yet, they did make it to the Unraveled World. However, I don’t plan on making them part of the main cast yet (in fact, I’m planning to reduce the amount of characters we’re following as the cast is getting too big), and I’m actually considering having them star in their own The World without Authors spinoff, but nothing set in stone yet. Oh, and fun fact about them, they did already have a bit of starring of their own as they were the hosts of the Third PPC HQ Hunger Games. How Nutmeg TV managed to get hold of them for that will forever remain a mistery.

Next, a character very few of you are likely to be familiar with. Nina De Nobili, the title character of the Nina, the child of the Sixth Moon book series. Acting as a representative of the Mai Dire Fine canon characters here, she’s been chosen since, as I said in the past, we started Mai Dire Fine on her author’s forum, and even received encouragement from her to keep writing at one point… despite the fact we were basically butchering her work. However, everyone has to begin somewhere, and Moony Witcher (real name Roberta Rizzo) knew that, so I’m glad she didn’t shoot down our hopes – I might not be here now with a 300.000+ words saga under my belt otherwise. Nina is not planned to reappear in the Unraveled Worlds, as she’s from a series intended for children that wouldn’t mesh well with our current plots.

The little guy sitting over the counter doing karaoke is Conan Edogawa from Detective Conan (anyone insisting on calling the series Case Closed can leave now). He’s again a canon character featured in Mai Dire Fine, but there are plans to involve him and some other characters of his series in the third arc. Also, as you can guess by Nina’s reaction, he’s a terrible, terrible singer.

Leaning on the couch we have Hiro Shirogane, our Gundam pilot. He’s a fully original character created for The World without Authors whose original concept was made by Aelit, although I was the one developing his backstory and relationship with Miksa. I admit that for a while we weren’t too sure about what to do with him, but I hope his current subplot will be enjoyable.

And now, the front row. Leftmost is Hanami, Nikki’s alternate from Kathleen’s alternate timeline (and as such a The World without Authors original). She’s been adopted by the Kinomotos (as she’s also an alternate of Sakura) and is now living with them. Something that debuted in this illustration are the glasses: those are her timeline’s Sergio, and she doesn’t actually have a need for eyesight correction. She had the lenses replaced with fake ones, and wears them due to them being one of the few things she has left of him, though they’re also a good way to differentiate herself from her “sisters”.

Then we have Sakura Kinomoto from Cardcaptor Sakura herself. If we go by name only, her first appearance in my works would be Mai Dire Fine, but that particular Sakura ended up becoming Nikki so it is safe to assume her first appearance was actually in the first mission of Wings of Canon, my main PPC spinoff, titled Don’t Forget The Canon, and she has been confirmed alive in the Unraveled World, in which she is now legally Nikki and Hanami’s younger sister. As in the comic I posted above, her hair is actually lighter than Nikki or Hanami’s as most CCS media have her with a light shade, but Nikki and Hanami both derive from the 1998 anime that had a darker brown as Sakura’s hair color.

Next to Sakura is Syaoran Li from the same series, who instead did appear as himself in Mai Dire Fine. He was badly OOC though, and if the The World without Authors incarnation of him does remember Sergio, things might a bit tense between them at first… though, hopefully, just until he gets explained that no, the “Sakura” Sergio was in love with was actualy Nikki and there’s no need to be jealous.

Then we get to Kathleen Leone. She is not the Mai Dire Fine incarnation of the character, but an alternate made for The World without Authors. Despite that, she started considering the main timeline Sergio as her own brother even before he had to kill her timeline’s, due to the latter’s descent into madness. We haven’t been able to give her much space until now, due to the action being mostly in the air, but that will change soon. I won’t spoiler anything, but Chapter 11 will be a big turning point in the story.

Of course, holding arms with her is Faith Leone, Everything I said about Kathleen applies about her too, as they’ve arrived in the Unraveled World together. We haven’t shown much on our plans to develop her so far, but trust us: we’re going to both fill in more of her bakcstory, and give her chances to shine soon.

Cutting the cake together we have Sergio Turbo and Nikki Cherryflower, both of which made their first appearances in Mai Dire Fine and appeared in all sequel works. For as much grief the Unraveled World is bringing them, it is arguable they’ve gained more than they have lost, as they’ve both got their families back thanks to it. Fun fact: their outfits are loosely based on the ones they wore during Chapter 7 of Blank Sprite.

Last but not least, Corolla. Introduced in Don’t Forget The Canon, she’s my most successful character. Defined by Aelit “Kathleen, but written well” way before we started working on The World without Authors, it isn’t a suprise they synergize so well together… much to Sergio and Nikki’s dismay. Here, is she more excited for the cake, or because they are cutting it together like it was a wedding cake? Probably both.

And that’s it, 15 years of writing, condensed in one image. We hope you’ll keep following us in the future!

#world without authors #blank sprite

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let-it-raines · 5 years

Text

Catch Me If You Can (13/?)

298 days. That’s how long Killian Jones was away from a baseball field. It’s less than a year, only part of a season for him, but it might as well have lasted a decade as he alternated between physical therapy and spending an excessive amount of time sitting on his couch.

But then he came back and won the World Series.

It’s something no one saw coming, and it’s certainly not something anyone who knows about his arm would predict. Now it’s a new season with new possibilities, and anything could happen. On-field reporter Emma Swan will be there to cover it all even if she is not his biggest fan right now.

Asking her out live on-air will do that.

Rating: Mature

A/n: I obviously can’t make it through an entire MC story without changing the aesthetic I made at the beginning. Oh well. Happy Monday! Here are new words! As always, the MVP trophy goes to @resident-of-storybrooke for reading through all of these words ⚾️

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-/-

Killian Jones keeps hazelnut coffee creamer in the refrigerator of his apartment for her.

She made one comment about it, about how that’s how she likes her coffee, and the next time that she showed up to his apartment, it was there, waiting for her. He didn’t tell her, didn’t make a big deal about it or point it out to her. It was simply there waiting to be used sitting in the fridge in a spot that she knows he carefully cleaned out just for her.

It’s the smallest thing, nothing really, but it’s so damn considerate that it made her heart swell.

He does that to her.

She’s not used to people doing small things like that for her, but Killian is always doing little things like that.

And it’s not what she should be thinking as she watches him throw out his forty-second pitch of the game against Blue Jays, but it is.

Honestly, though, she’s either going to think about the fact that he really listens to her when she talks, or she’s going to think about the clench of his heavily stubbled jaw, the way that his hair falls messily over his forehead, the way his sea-blue eyes turn dark as night, and the muscles in his biceps as his fingers moved swiftly against her center as he made her come undone on top of the leather of his couch with Black Sails playing in the background.

Killian’s voice had gotten gravely as he spoke to her, dirty whispers and encouragements, and every bit of her body felt electrified. She was so ready, so damn desperate to have the rough pads of his fingers moving against her, to have his delicate touch teasing her breasts, and to have his lips attached to her neck as he thrust into her in easy motions that her mind has been conjuring up for a few weeks now.

She wants to fuck her boyfriend and feel the heat of him covering every inch of her.

And they can’t seem to find the time.

Granted, it’s only been six days since they pretty much dry humped – and a little bit more – on his couch, but it’s felt like so much longer. Killian got called away to practice, and that seems to be all that he’s done since. They had the series against the Sox, which Al seemed to really be stressing about more than usual, and despite the fact that they won the series and are currently number one in the league, the entire team seems to be on edge.

And, honestly, she can tell that it’s having a negative impact on the team considering how badly they are losing this game right now.

“I’m pretty sure Jones has a hickey on his collarbone,” Ruby speaks into her earpiece, and Emma is so damn glad that she’s not on camera right now for the way that she knows blush is painting her cheeks.

Jeff rolls his eyes from where he’s sitting next to her, the camera turned off and resting by his feet, but he’s very obviously still got his own earpiece in.

“I don’t think so, Rubes.”

“No, no, I think it is. It might be an old one. Do you think he has a new girlfriend? Or maybe just an overly enthusiastic one-night-stand?”

New girlfriend, yes.

But Ruby doesn’t know that. And she can’t. Not quite yet. And not over a system where several people can listen to their conversation, Walsh included. David decided that he’d fly several people to Toronto for this series as some kind of practice run and learning experience for what games are like on the road, and she absolutely cannot wait until they get to go home so that she’s not around all of these people this often.

Ruby, Jeff, and David – absolutely fine. Walsh – not fine at all.

He’s still got such a stick up his ass, and she prefers not to see his face. He’s the one who broke her heart, who betrayed their relationship, but sometimes he acts like she’s the one who ended them and cheated on him.

Definitely not.

Asshole.

“That’s really not our business,” she sighs, sinking a little further into her seat as her eyes scan over the field. It’s surprisingly cool outside today, and she’s really regretting wearing a dress instead of her jeans when her favorite pair is sitting inside of her hotel room.

“It’s kind of our business.”

“You’re just nosy,” Emma laughs, wishing she could change the subject. “Technically, our job is to only cover how these guys play, but it does help to know about their personal lives. If Killian has a new girlfriend, I’m sure it’ll be discovered soon enough. He’s never exactly been private in the past.”

Okay, harsh, Emma, she thinks to herself. She knows that she’s trying to cover a lie, but damn.

“Maybe he’s changed his ways.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Is this what you guys always talk about when you’re supposed to be working?” David asks, his voice coming in loud and clear over her earpiece.

“Yes,” Jeff mutters next to her, and she reaches over to slap his shoulder as Killian throws another ball. “They are the height of professionalism.”

“Jeff, if you’re finally going to speak, maybe don’t rat us out.”

“Maybe I don’t speak because you two never give me a chance.”

“Damn,” Emma mutters, winking at Jeff, “who knew you were going to be like that? And David, these games are very long, and I work for so little of them. Of course we talk. I hate my road trips where I’m by myself sometimes. That’s usually when I go bug the players in the dugout.”

“That makes it sound like I need to see if I can find more things for you to do. Maybe we can get you to commentate on a game.”

“Hell yes,” she says a little too loudly, the people around her looking at her like she just committed murder or something. “Can you really do that?”

“I can talk to a few people. I can’t guarantee anything, but maybe we can test you out on a few smaller games later in the season.”

“You’re the actual best.”

“Well, I figured I was already the best since we’re family, and you love me.”

“That’s beside the point.”

“It’s most definitely not,” David sighs, and she just knows that he has a smile plastered onto his face. “Speaking of family, Mom is coming into town on the twenty-first. I know that’s a busy week for you and that we’re sending you to London right after that, but I think we’re going to do a big dinner at the house.”

“I can make time. I didn’t know she was coming into town.”

“It was a last-minute thing since we couldn’t decide on the date that worked for all of us. I’m sure she’ll call you about it soon, but I know that she expressed concerns that she would be charged an arm and a leg for calling you right now since we’re technically out of the country.”

“She most definitely won’t,” Emma laughs all the while Arthur catches a ball in the outfield and the fourth inning ends, all of the players running back to their dugouts. “But yeah, that’s fine. Just let me know, and I’ll be there. I’m sure she’s still upset that I haven’t come to visit as often as you have, which doesn’t even make any sense considering you’re her child and I am not.”

David clicks his tongue, and she grumbles to herself knowing where she messed up in that conversation. “She’s not your mom like she is mine, Emma, but you’re our family. You know that.”

She does. She really does. Just…childhood hang-ups that are likely never going to go away. Maybe one day. She loves Ruth, loves David, and it’s only when she thinks about it too much that she doesn’t refer to David as a brother. Fully accepting love has been hard for her for a lot of her life, but she’s working on it.

“I know. Sorry.”

“You know,” Ruby sighs, “for someone who got onto us for talking while working, you sure seem to be doing a lot of that.”

“I’m the boss,” David huffs.

“You just keep thinking that, buddy boy.”

-/-

The Yankees lose that day, but they’re 38-22 for the season so far, and things seem to be looking up if they keep progressing the way they are.

But Emma knows that it’s a long season, and they’ve barely begun.

-/-

Killian: Do you have dinner plans tonight?

Emma: I’m literally eating with David and Ruby right now. Why?

Killian: I figured we could sneak out and find a restaurant together. I could take you on a proper date.

Emma: Is this proper date your version of being a gentleman?

Killian: Now, darling, you know I am one.

Killian: Eat with David and Ruby. I’ll figure out a way for us to go on a date that doesn’t involve my apartment at some point, yeah?

Emma: That sounds really nice. Though I do love your apartment. Especially that couch.

-/-

One of their producers ended up not coming on the trip with them, so Emma managed to snag her own hotel room instead of sharing one with Ruby. It’s not that she would have minded sharing when that’s one of her absolute favorite things, but she likes that she can sit on her bed and watch what she wants to watch on television without anyone bothering her about it.

Sometimes a girl needs her peace and quiet, and when she’s spent all day around massive groups of people, that’s kind of what she needs right now.

And something to drink.

She’s really damn thirsty, and bathroom sink water isn’t really cutting it for her right now.

Sighing, she gets up from the bed and grabs her wallet and her hotel room key, slipping her feet into sandals as she leaves the room and goes in search of a vending machine. They’re usually so readily available, but for some reason, nicer hotels don’t have them. Like rich people don’t want a bag of chips in the middle of the night.

What’s the point of being rich if you can’t eat junk food whenever you want it?

Emma checks the entirety of her floor, as well as the five floors below her, before resigning herself to only checking the main floor of the hotel to find herself something to drink. If all else fails, she’ll just ask someone at the front desk or walk down the street to whatever convenience store she can find even if that’s not that safe. She’d rather be mugged than pay the price of the drinks in her mini fridge.

Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration.

As she’s walking down the back hallways away from the lobby and the breakfast area, she passes the pool, not thinking anything of it until she sees a splash from her view in the tiny glass window pane over the door that looks into the indoor room.

Killian.

That’s Killian swimming laps in there.

For a moment, she debates whether or not she should go inside, whether that’s invading his privacy, but then she’s pushing the door open and closing it behind her, purposefully moving away from the door so that no one from outside can see her. This is very much them interacting while out in the open even if she doubts several people are going to be walking by the pool past ten at night.

And if they do, she and Killian are simply two people who decided to go for a late-night swim.

She just happens to swim in shorts and a camisole, and her body is completely dry because she hasn’t stepped foot inside of the water.

It’ll make a lot of sense to whoever walks in on them.

(She hopes that doesn’t happen.)

“Yo, Phelps,” she yells when Killian comes up for air at the side of the pool that she’s standing on.”

He blinks up at her, his mouth gaping like a fish, which seems appropriate, before he’s shaking his head and his hair out, the water droplets falling all over the concrete floor, and propping himself up on the edge of the water.

Heat pools between her thighs at the sight of water falling over Killian’s tanned skin, the dark hair on his chest curling in different ways than usual, and his muscles more defined even under the awful florescent lighting in this room. The want that she’s been feeling for weeks now keeps piling up, the untamable desire to be connected to Killian in more ways than just emotionally ramping up, and she already knows that when they have sex, it’s going to be different than it has been before.

That freaking terrifies her.

But she’s also more than ready.

It’s been a whirlwind six weeks, and she’s still trying to catch her breath.

Judging by the way Killian’s chest is heaving, she imagines he is too. More literally than figuratively.

“Swan,” he says on a sigh, reaching up to push his hair back off of his forehead, and that definitely doesn’t do anything to her at all, “what are you doing in here?”

“I was on a quest for something other than fifteen-dollar diet coke to drink, and I happened to pass by the pool. What are you doing in here?”

“Exercise.”

“Didn’t you get enough of that today?”

“Eh.” He reaches up to scratch behind his ear, a water droplet tracing the veins in his forearm. She really likes the veins in his forearms. That’s such a particular thing to like, but it’s a good thing to like. “This is relaxing to me, and it’s low impact. Archie recommended it for me for my shoulder.”

“Well, that’s good. You want to keep taking care of that shoulder. It’s the money maker. You played well today even if you guys lost.”

“Both an insult and a compliment all at once. Amazing.” He crooks his finger toward her, his brows waggling across his forehead while his smile stretches from one side of his lips to the other. “C’mere, love.”

“No,” Emma laughs, crossing her arms over her chest, the chill of the room tightening her nipples. “You’re wet, and I am not getting closer to you.”

Killian actually pouts, his bottom lip protruding, and she can’t help but chuckle at how ridiculous he is.

The most ridiculous.

“Oh, come on, Swan. This is a heated pool. It feels glorious.” He leans back into the water, spreading his arms out into the water as he floats on his back. “Why don’t you join me?”

“I’m not wearing a bathing suit.”

“You got underwear on under those clothes?”

“That is none of your business, twenty-nine.”

He whines in protest, standing up on his feet so that his chest is exposed to her again. “I’m also fine with no underwear being on underneath those clothes. Come on, Swan. What else do you have to do tonight than spend some time with me in an indoor and empty heated pool?”

He’s right. It sounds entirely appealing to join him, so without saying anything, she grabs the bottom of her camisole and pulls it over her shoulders, wishing she was wearing a different bra than the one she has on right now. It’s more lingerie than actual support system for her boobs, and she’s only wearing it because it didn’t show lines under her dress today. But if the heat of Killian’s gaze is any indication, the way that he’s hungrily staring at her, she can say that he probably doesn’t mind.

Deciding to toy with him a little bit, she turns around and slowly takes her shorts off, knowing that he likes her ass, before bending completely over to pull her hair up into a bun so that it doesn’t get wet. She can’t believe that she’s about to do this, but like Killian said, what else does she have to do tonight?

Slowly, she steps down into the pool, the warm water hitting her ankles, then her knees, then her stomach as she gets a little closer to where Killian is waiting, a far too triumphant smile on his face.

“Shut up.”

“I haven’t said a thing.” He swims a little closer to her, the ripples of water moving with his touch, before he’s in her space and cupping her cheeks so that their lips come together in a slow kiss that’s all soft lips and small tilts and something she’s never truly experienced before. “You’re simply reading into my actions.”

Emma scoffs, rolling her eyes a bit, but wanting more of his kiss and the feel of him pressed up against her, so she uses the momentum of the water to wrap her legs around his waist, her core pressing just at his hip, and hold onto him by holding onto the back of his neck. She can feel every inch of him lined up with every inch of her, and like it so often is with the two of them, nothing else exists outside of the darkened blue of his eyes and the way that his fingers are kneading at her ass, exploring parts of her that he hasn’t really gotten to explore despite how intimate they’ve been before.

This is not Killian’s couch.

Every move they make causes water to move, a loud echo in the enclosed space, and she tightens her ankles around his back while her fingers toy with the hair that’s getting a little long at the back of his neck.

“Do you always wear bras like that, love?”

Her gaze flickers down to where Killian’s is, the swell of her breasts as obvious as the tightness of her nipples from how her bra has shifted.

“Nope. They’re usually very beige and boring but comfortable since that’s the whole purpose of them. For me at least. So, you’re getting lucky tonight.”

“Am I?” he asks, his right brow raising high on his forehead, and she realizes exactly what she just said.

Is this the most sexual tension to ever happen inside of a hotel pool? Probably not. But that’s how she feels right now.

“Maybe. If you play your cards right.”

“Damn. I’ve always been bad at card games.”

“Remind me to invite you to poker.”

Killian chuckles, a sound that’s dark but also light and joyous, before one of his hands is releasing the firm grip on her ass to come up and brush away loose strands that have fallen in her face, an intimate touch that has a shiver running down her spine.

Yeah, that’s why a shiver is running down her spine.

“You’ll take away all of my money.”

“Little do you know, that’s been my plan the entire time.”

“I asked you out first, so I’m not sure it really could have been your plan.”

“Yeah, but when I asked you out, we actually did something about it.”

“Touché.” Then his head dips and his mouth is running against her jaw, soft pecks that get more insistent when he moves back toward her ear, his teeth nibbling at her lobe, scruff burning into her skin, that makes her sigh into him. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I’m so damn glad you stumbled into the pool tonight.”

She tilts her head back, wanting to give him more access to her skin, and he takes full advantage of it, nibbling and teasing and soothing as he works his way down her chest, biting down onto the swell of her breasts. It’s so much and not enough, so she tries to climb his body, to move herself further up, and he boosts her with his hands on her ass so that he can nose at her bra until her nipples are exposed and he’s sucking one into her mouth.

Holy fuck.

Killian hums around her, the sucking insistent, and she starts to wonder if she said that out loud, but she doesn’t really care when all of her focus is on the intense way that Killian is riling her up with his tongue and his teeth and his – ah.

She’s not above getting creative on places to have sex, but a public pool is not high on her list…and that’s definitely where it’s been leading.

“K-Killian,” she gaps, practically panting. “Killian, stop.”

He releases her with a wet plop, and when his head is leveled with hers, she can see the redness of his cheeks, the pink on his lips, and all of the dirty thoughts that she’s sure are curled at the tip of his tongue.

“What? Why?”

“We’re in a pool. That’s not exactly private, and with the way things are going, I think I’d rather like some privacy.”

“Yeah?”

“Absolutely.”

“My room?”

“Fuck yes.”

It has never taken her so long to dry her body enough to put her clothes back on, and after what feels like an hour but is probably a minute, she pulls her top back over her shoulders and yanks her shorts up all the while Killian places his chain around his neck and wraps the towel around his waist without putting a shirt on. He doesn’t have a shirt. Of course not.

Anticipations buzzes through her, her feet never able to stay still, so as she silently follows Killian down the hotel hallways and up the elevator, she’s practically bouncing off of the carpets. She can tell that he feels the same way with the tense set of his jaw and the way that his hand squeezes onto hers, and the moment his hotel room door closes behind him, she lets out a sigh of relief that’s captured by Killian’s lips as he pulls her closer by the straps of her camisole and hungrily devours hers, quickly swiping his tongue into hers with no preamble.

Then again, they’ve had weeks of it.

He’s heavy and insistent against her, and even though she feels a chill from the dampness of her clothes, all she can feel is warmth. His hands move from her shoulders to her waist, tugging her closer so that they’re completely pressed together, and there’s no hesitation in the way that he moves against her.

None at all.

For years, all she knew of Killian Jones was that he was attractive, known for his dating life, and that he was a damn good pitcher. All she saw was the confidence and cockiness, the way that he swaggered on and off the field and threw people off with a flirtatious answer or a sly smile. She didn’t know him, no matter how well she thought that she did, but that’s not how it is now.

She knows that Killian is confident and cocky, that he can flirt successfully almost every time, and that he is sure of his movements with how he’s tangling his tongue with hers and making her melt into him. But she also knows that he’s got a lot of darkness hidden behind the blue of his eyes, that a lot of his confidence is fake and is only there to hide where he’s insecure.

The great Killian Jones can be insecure.

And unsure.

There are so many facets of him that she knows, so many that she hasn’t yet discovered, but she can’t wait to learn.

Nothing about him right now is unsure, though. Not the way that he pushes her back toward the bed, his steps precise and the movements of his hands directed to cover every inch of her skin at once. His chain is pressing into her skin, the cold metal a contrast to the warmth of his skin and his chest hair against her, and when his fingers slide up her neck and into her hair so that he can tilt her head to the side to deepen their kiss, she groans into his mouth.

This is absolutely everything, and she wants to be kissed like this – passionate, possessive, lovingly – every day for the rest of her life.

When her knees hit the end of the mattress, she pulls away from Killian so that she can tug her shirt off, the clothes falling to the floor. Immediately, she reaches for her bra, but then Killian’s grabbing onto her hands and moving them away so that he can undo the clasp, helping her remove the wet lace.

“Beautiful,” he mumbles with a slight shake of his head, his eyes focused on her breasts before flicking up to her eyes so that she can see the slight smile. “So beautiful.”

Even though she talks for a living, she’s never been great with words, so she doesn’t say anything, simply tugging him closer by the waistband of his swim shorts, and then he’s pushing her back onto the bed, her back hitting the mattress with a small oomph that has her laughing the slightest bit.

First times (and so many times after that) are always so heated and yet awkward, elbows in places that they don’t need to be and sounds made that shouldn’t be made, and while she’s usually nervous, she doesn’t feel that way right now.

“Something funny there, love?”

“Nothing at all.” She beckons him closer with a curl of her finger like he did to her earlier, and he obliges, bracing his palms on either side of her shoulders so that he’s staring down at her, hot breath hitting her already overheated skin. “I just like you is all.”

“Funny thing,” he smiles, dipping his hide to bite against her collarbone, “I rather like you too.”

She pulls herself up to try to start working at his shorts, but he wraps his fingers around her wrist all the while tugging her shorts down. She has to lift her hips to help him out, kick out at her ankles so that they fall to the floor, and she’s just about to try to work at his shorts again when his fingers are moving against the slick flesh that’s wet and aching and absolutely desperate to feel his touch again.

A whine escapes from her lips, one that even she knows sounds needy, and she can feel Killian’s chuckle against her breast as he breathes her in and keeps on driving her mad with the expert touch of his fingers. He’s very obviously a good listener both with coffee creamer preferences and sex preferences because he’s doing just what she asked him to last time.

No one should be able to bring her this much pleasure this quickly, should be able to make her feel like she’s already coming apart at the slightest touch.

Emma Swan wants Killian Jones, and she’s finally going to have him.

Her hips roll up into his, an attempt at chasing pleasure and bringing her more friction even with the way Killian is circling her clit, but when she gets the friction she’s chasing, Killian pulls back with a hiss and a clench of his jaw.

Some of the high comes down then, but only for a moment before he’s pulling his shorts down his thighs, exposing thick, muscled thighs covered in hair and his length bobbing against his stomach. She gulps, the thought of him sliding into her overwhelming her and exciting her all at once, but then he’s leaning back over her, nearly aligning their bodies so that he’s pressing against her thigh, smooth and thick and so goddamn hard that her body jolts at the touch.

“You’re a siren, do you know that?” He whispers the words as he ruts against her, his lips tracing her clavicle before he’s taking a nipple between his lips and lavishing there. He watches her as he does it, blue eyes under those unfairly long lashes, and she can barely control her breathing. Her heart may very well explode. “Everything about you. Your eyes, your hair, your pretty pink lips.”

His right hand trails up the mattress until he’s grabbing onto her hand and threading their fingers together, holding them above her head all the while he shifts his hips so that his cock brushes against her aching flesh, desire continuing to build.

She’s going to burst.

“The way your ass looks in your jeans,” he continues, moving away from her breasts and up her body until his lips are hovering just over hers his nose squishing into her cheek. “The way you smile and the laugh that follows after it. Or the way that you eat so many horrible things but get so happy while you’re doing it. The way you’re so passionate about your job, about your friends, about everything you do. A damn siren calling me to you.”

She gasps, words still failing her, so with her free hand, she reaches up and traces her fingers along the line of his scruff, smiling up at him as she blinks. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re really good with words?”

“Once or twice.”

“You are. Just, like, the best.”

His smile can be tasted in his kiss, and it’s this slow, tender thing, so unrushed like the rest of tonight, and she revels in it even as their hips keep rolling together.

“Do you have a condom this time?” she asks on a whisper.

“Bought a whole damn box on my way home from practice that day.”

She giggles into the comforter and then whines when Killian moves off of her, his bare ass in her view as he gets up and ruffles through his suitcase, pulling out a foil and carefully ripping it open. He moves to put it on, but this time it’s her turn to stop him. His breath hitches, his chest visibly moving, and the curses that he murmurs when her fingers travel over his length and the velvety feel of him are downright dirty. She tries to keep eye contact with him, but she can’t help but watch as between her thighs slicken.

“Lay down on your back.”

There’s a raise of a brow, but he listens, settling down onto the mattress and spreading his legs as she moves to hover above him, kissing along the muscles of his stomach and his inner thighs all the while her nails follow the path. He’s trembling, just barely though, and she smiles into his skin before balancing above him on her knees while his fingers find purchase on her hips, squeezing into her skin as she slowly moves above him so that he brushes against her flesh.

This is everything she imagined, and she did imagine this, but nothing compares to the real thing.

“Emma – ” His fingers move, his eyes wide, and she nods her head to his silent question before sinking down onto him and taking in every inch that she can.

Perfect.

Warm.

Full.

It’s a slight stretch, a new adjustment, and she reaches forward to press her hands against his chest, curling her fingers into the hair there as she sighs.

“Holy fuck.”

“That’s kind of what I was thinking too,” Killian chuckles, the smile on his face bright compared to how hooded his eyelids are.

And then she’s moving.

It’s a slow pace, one that’s full of learning and experimenting and simply trying to find a rhythm that’s right for the both of them. Electricity is rising on her skin, her flesh covered in bumps as the coil in her stomach continues to tighten, and with the way that Killian is thrusting up into her all the while she’s circling her hips over him, she doesn’t know how much longer she’s going to last.

“I need,” Killian mutters, adjusting his position under her while he tugs her down to bring their lips together, her breasts pressing into his chest as sweat trickles down her back.

“Faster?” she questions.

“Fuck yes.”

Then it’s a quick, dirty fuck, skin slapping against skin and moans being exchanged between them, and when Killian’s hand snakes down between them and starts rubbing against her flesh, she nearly loses it, having to bite into his shoulder as he wraps his arms around her waist and turns them. He slips from her as they reposition themselves, but then he’s sliding back into her in a rhythm that’s so intense that she has completely lost her breath.

She comes with a keening whimper into his jaw, her orgasm more sparks of electricity across her skin, and Killian encourages her to feel it, to let herself fall, all the while he thrusts into her, grunting and cursing and then finding his own releases as he presses into her and the cool metal around his chest does the same, their bodies connected in every damn way possible.

Killian coming is a beautiful sight.

His eyelids are hooded, his jaw clenched, and the intensity is like none other.

As far as first times with someone go, she thinks she likes this one the best.

He falls onto her, pressing into her with his weight, and she reaches up to comb her fingers through his hair, damp from the pool and from sweat, and she’s never been so fond of the smell of chlorine.

“I stand by my comments of you being a siren,” he mumbles against her skin before rolling off of her and off of the bed, quickly disposing of the condom before he crawls back In and pulls the blanket over the two of them. She needs to get up to use the restroom, but she has time for that later. “There is no way I’m ever going to be able to give you up now.”

Why did she ever bother catching her breath when it’s going to be taken away with words like that?

Emma rolls over to Killian, looping her leg over his calves and resting her head on his chest so that she can feel metal under her cheek and the quick beating of a heart to prove that this is real and not some kind of dream. Rough fingers trace across her back, spelling out words she can’t figure out, and then there’s a press of lips to her hairline that has her eyes fluttering closed in happiness.

#catch me if you can #cs fic #cs ff #captain swan fic #captain swan

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kariachi · 4 years

Text

Some more Levinstar. Fight me.

Mike’s life was going fairly well, if he did say so himself. He was wrenching a successful acting career essentially out of the aether with naught but skill, good looks, and his own riches. One of his best friends was a member of the Elite Four. The other was a big name in tech circles around the globe. Young mutants everywhere looked at him as an idol. His pokemon were healthy and vibrant enough to feature in magazines across the region. Yes, he and Elena’s elementary school ‘if neither of us are married by thirty’ agreement was looking more and more likely to be followed through on, but really in the end life was good. Very good.

Which is why he was kicking himself about his inability to just cross a fucking room and-

“Mike, if you don’t go talk to him I will.”

“Fuck off, I saw him first.”

Galas were essentially Mike’s lifeblood. He could schmooze and socialize with the best of them, a master of social maneuvering before he’d even started his pokemon journey. But tonight he’d found himself hopelessly distracted, enough so that Elena had been forced to rescue him before he made of fool of himself in front of somebody important. So there they were, stood at the edge of the room with glasses of champagne Mike’s service Delcatty was very cross at him about. But what could you do, when nobody ever planned for non-drinkers at these things and you were stuck staring at a very handsome man from the other side of the crowd.

“I can’t believe you’re too nervous to go talk to somebody. You flirt like attention is air!”

“I am not nervous, I just… am waiting for the right moment.”

Kevin fucking Levin was at this event. Mike had three of his books at home. Two of his sculptures. He was, at that moment, wearing a Xerneas brooch on his scarf that had been designed and handmade by the very bastard. What did you say in that circumstance? He couldn’t pretend to be unfamiliar with the man’s work, he was wearing it and the people who came to events like this knew everything about what they wore, but he didn’t want to risk coming across as some obsessed fan, no matter what the evidence might say. Normally if he met someone he was a fan of at these events it was other people in film and media, and he could use work as an icebreaker. If they were trainers he could turn to Elena for an introduction, which made things easier. It was only a good impression he wanted to make, there wasn’t really any pressure, but here, with Kevin…

He’d seen the man and his insides had done things that hadn’t since he was a teenager.

Across the room, the artist broke away from the little group he’d been talking with a smile, beelining for an empty spot near a far wall.

“Now’s your chance, he’s alone and unprotected!” As subtly as she could- they were at a formal event- Elena began shoving Mike in his direction.

“Hey!”

“I don’t want to have to marry your flat ass, move!”

Sending a glare over his shoulder at her, Mike did as instructed, weaving around the crowd toward what was, if he was quite honest, the most handsome man he hadn’t met yet. There was only a brief pause in his forward momentum, a stop by a decorative mirror to fix his hair and clothes, check his makeup. Perfection was required for these events, yes, but something like this called for an entirely new level of it. He didn’t just want to make a good impression, he wanted to dazzle. To that effect he also took the time to check Elissa for any out of place fur or loose threads in her vest.

Perfection.

Kevin was stood with his back to the crowd, fingers buried in his service Espeon’s fur as he inspected one of the sculptures on display. It wasn’t fair, no man should’ve had arms like that. Or a jawline like that. Or cheekbones like that. If Mike hadn’t been so into it he’d have had to kill him for daring to look so good. As it was it was surprisingly difficult not to reach right out and touch him. With an easing breath Mike slipped casually into place behind him, pulling out his most charming smile.

“What do you think, was it worth what they paid for it?” There was no sign of surprise when Kevin turned- people with Espeon were rarely surprised by anything- and holy shit his eyes were even browner in person. How was that allowed? At least there was a bit of a victory to be gained as Mike’s heart lodged itself in his throat, the other man going pink as soon as he saw him.

“I don’t think so,” he said, “but then abstract has never been my style.” He glanced back at Mike, going a shade darker, and the blond silently cheered what he was going to call a success. “Nice brooch.” Fuck.

“Thank you,” he said as if he wasn’t worried about coming off too big a fan, “was made by a very talented artist.” Kevin shrugged.

“Couldn’t get quite the colors I wanted,” he said.

“It’s perfect,” Mike replied almost before the other’s sentence was done. Kevin took a deep breath, rolling his shoulders as the color began fading from his face, then turned to face him completely with a smile that could’ve melted butter.

“So, Mike Morningstar.” He knew his name. This wasn’t surprising- he was a famous actor for fucks’ sake- but it still set his heart jumping.

“Kevin Levin.” And the man went pink again, at least this time he stayed looking at him.

“You know,” he said, “I’ve been watching your movies since I was yea big.” He put his hand as a spot just below his waist. Mike chuckled.

“Give I’ve been making them since I was that size, it’s quite a compliment.” Kevin shrugged again, still with that damn smile.

“You’re good, and most of your films are up my alley. Especially since you stopped being the bad guy.” That had been part of what had him using his own riches- if he was the one funding the movies then nobody could try to shoehorn him in as a villain, or brush off his auditions with excuses that barely hid the actual ‘there’s no place for chompers like yours in this’ reasons. Besides, it meant he could get more mutants involved, as much out of spite as anything.

“I try.” He considered and discarded several directions to take this conversation. “I don’t think I’ve seen you at one of these events before?” He knew he hadn’t, he’d have noticed, but if he said that it might come off creepy.

“Everyone kept telling me to come to one of these and network,” Kevin groaned, throwing an exaggeratedly put-upon look Mike’s way. “It’s not really my thing. I like my workday chill and my parties loud, ya know?” Mike didn’t know. He could make any social gathering work, but this was his native habitat, and work for him was hustle and bustle and at least one case per film of someone threatening to quit over something inane. (The last one had involved one of his costars sneezing on a camera and the man behind it, already stressed by a long day, late dinner, and impending wedding, throwing up his arms and swearing he was abandoning the industry entirely. He’d come back, but Mike had still made sure he had the week until the wedding off alongside the time he was already taking for his honeymoon.)

He didn’t necessarily understand it, but he knew the area, as well as an opening when he saw one.

“Well,” he said, inching just a bit closer and internally preening when Kevin looked him over instead of moving away, “if you’d rather, I know a few bars around here where we wouldn’t get too many strange looks for showing up in formalwear.” The smile that crept onto Kevin’s face was sharper this time, more purposeful. This time he was the one in motion, scooting just close enough for his hand to brush against Mike’s.

“Do you now,” he replied. “Ya know I haven’t really gotten to explore around here before, I would love to get the tour.”

Yessss.

“Well then-” Mike put out his arm, actively preening when Kevin took it with an appreciative look and a flash of teeth. “-let’s get you someplace less stuffy, hm?” It wasn’t too early to go, nobody would even miss them. Well, the paparazzi might, but he got gossiped about constantly anyway, and Kevin was very attractive with those coffee dark eyes, so… Fuck it.

“Lead the way, Mr. Morningstar.”

It didn’t take them long to reach the exit, especially as they skirted the crowd, evading the people already too drunk to respect their pokemon were working and saying goodbye to enough people that there wouldn’t be excess talk. Given the way Kevin bristled when people approached his Espeon, Mike was glad he was getting him out then, before he could make a scene and cause himself trouble. He lead him quickly past those sorts, throwing a wink at a grinning Elena before he slipped them out the back doors.

If he played his cards right, his life was about to get a whole notch better.

#fanfic #levinstar

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elvendorkinfinity · 4 years

Text

New Year’s Day: 2020

Yup, I wrote a 1000th Anniversary Thing. (Not a very good one.)

It’s very quiet. I wanted to do something with a less dramatic confession for A/C.

Wasn’t sure if I’d share, but since we’re basically all stuck inside with very little else to do... Enjoy. May or may not post to AO3 at some point. If I do, I may edit/expand/improve beforehand.

In the millennia-spanning friendship between an ancient pair of immortal adversaries, a great deal gets left unsaid. This is often for the best. It is safest, not just to keep certain knowledge from their superiors, but to keep it from each other; to keep it from themselves. Least said, soonest mended, and all that. Sticks and stones may break some bones, but these words will shatter hearts.

Matters very nearly come to a head during what is, in fairness, almost the end of the world; a perfectly reasonable time for emotions to be running high. They come close. They come so close, and then they just… don't. Nothing happens. Certain words are spoken (go off together - don't even like you - best friend - opposite sides), but many of these are untrue and quickly - although not, it must be said, necessarily explicitly - taken back (don't have a side - suppose I am really - good person - just enough of a bastard) .

Life settles back into its old patterns with almost unseemly haste. Aziraphale and Crowley return to the worn out grooves of their standard routines nearly as quickly as the humans do, and nothing needs to be admitted after all. Nothing needs to change.

Unless, perhaps, it does. Unless, perhaps, it is time. Unless - unless - unless.

It feels unfinished, like a conversation abruptly cut off, rudely interrupted by the world continuing to exist as it always has. Rather inconsiderate of it really, Crowley thinks. They were in the middle of something there.

It is just possible that Crowley is not entirely sober when he thinks this.

The problem is, these thoughts are not as easy to miracle away as alcohol. Like woodworm, like rust under a faint layer of paint, they eat away beneath the surface, weakening his resolve, changing things, and that just isn't fair. Isn't the whole reason they saved the bloody planet so that things wouldn't have to change?

A month ticks by, and then another. The year creeps along towards an end it was never guaranteed to have, and only gets because of the stubbornness - the curiosity - the love - of a quite extraordinary eleven year old boy and his quite excessively ordinary upbringing.

And the year 2020 rolls around.

And still. The words are there and they haven't been said and okay perhaps they don't need them, perhaps they have gotten along just fine without them for this long but damn it all this isn't about need.

Crowley doesn't need this. He wants it. Somehow, that feels worse.

Crowley tries to plan what to say, but finds that words would probably be easier to come by if he was sure what he was even trying to express.

He thinks of a hundred, a thousand times he has spoken in the past, only to find the words he chose were the wrong ones. He thinks of a hundred, a thousand times he has instead relied on showing rather than saying, and wonders if any of it ever actually got through.

He thinks of grand gestures and small ones, and each disguised as the other. He thinks of running away together, of bombs dropping on churches, of a tartan thermos. He thinks of oysters; of crepes; of favours and trinkets and jibes. He thinks of how well you can know someone, after six thousand years, and of how much they can hide behind a hereditary wall of paper thin animosity. How much they can pretend not to know. How much he can pretend not to see.

He thinks, eventually, of how they came to the Arrangement. That was ten centuries ago now. An entire millennium of history has passed since then, and still it only really deserves the capital letter because it has been around so long; it was never actually all that dramatic to begin with. Despite all Aziraphale's protests, it had been… easy, in the end, to slip into. Frighteningly easy.

Perhaps this, too, is simply a natural progression.

He swirls the wine in his glass and stares at it. He finds himself oddly reluctant to drink, though the scattered bottles around his feet would suggest this is a relatively new development. Aziraphale is watching him across a table littered with old papers and older books. Neither have spoken for some time; not since the sound of the fireworks in the distance faded; not since midnight came and went, all but unnoticed in the little Soho bookshop.

‘So,’ says Crowley eventually, eyes - uncovered, for once - flicking to Aziraphale’s face and then away again. ‘Twenty-twenty, angel.’

‘Hmm,’ Aziraphale replies, frowning at his own glass for a moment before shrugging and drinking most of it in one go. It has surprisingly little effect.

‘Do you know, it’s been a thousand years since… ?’ Crowley trails away and raises his eyebrows. Neither of them are anywhere near as drunk as they should be, given the quantity of alcohol already consumed, and neither of them are sure if this is deliberate or not.

‘Gosh, has it been that long?’ Aziraphale looks genuinely startled, though not unpleasantly. He smiles, just a little. Crowley looks away.

Perhaps, after all this time, they have no need for fireworks.

In the end, Crowley doesn’t plan what he says next, but he doesn’t resist it either. It just happens, and he lets it.

‘You know I love you, right angel?’

There is a long, long pause. It is not, to their mutual surprise, an uncomfortable one.

‘I…’ Aziraphale starts and then stops again. He sighs, gently. ‘I believe I do, yes. I think I have for quite some time.’ His smile is melancholy, but not regretful. His eyes, soft, follow Crowley’s answering nod.

‘Good.’ Crowley is not looking at him. Aziraphale wonders why. ‘That's good.’

‘I hope you know, I…’ Aziraphale glances down and leans forwards, clasping his hands on the table top. ‘The feeling is mutual, my dear.’ He admits eventually.

‘I did wonder, sometimes,’ Crowley replies. Neither of them are speaking at very much more than a whisper. Crowley does not say whether he had wondered about the presence or absence of Aziraphale's affections; Aziraphale finds himself reluctant to ask for clarification.

There is another, longer, period of silence.

‘Well,’ says Crowley at last, pulling himself to something approximating upright in his seat. He flashes a grin, achingly familiar, at Aziraphale, and raises his glass. Aziraphale mimics him automatically.

‘A thousand years,’ Crowley offers. ‘Here's to another thousand, I suppose?’ There is a question in his voice even now, and Aziraphale cannot have that.

‘Oh, at least,’ he enthuses.

Perhaps Aziraphale is imagining it, but there might be just a hint of wickedness in the smirk playing around Crowley's mouth now; a touch of suggestion in the quirk of his brow.

All he replies, however, is, ‘I'll drink to that.’

So they do.

#good omens #writing #fanfiction

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