#we’ve grown too

[marry-me-malfoy]

👏 the show is different than the books bc it’s a 👏different 👏 time 👏

[afterlife-2004]

[acourtofquestions]

Rowaelin Chapter 41 Kingdom of Ash:

She'd rebuild it—what she had been.

Perhaps one last time, perhaps only for a little while, but she'd do it. If only for Terrasen.

Rowan swooped from the mast, shifting as he reached her side at the rail. He surveyed the night-black sea beyond them. "You should rest." She slid him a glance. "I'm not tired." Not a lie, not in some regards. "Want to spar?" He frowned. "Training can start tomorrow."

"Or tonight." She held his piercing stare, matched his dominance with her own.

"It can wait a few hours, Aelin."

"Every day counts." Against Erawan, even a day of training would count.

Rowan's jaw tightened. "True," he said at last. "But it can still wait. There are ... there are things we need to discuss." The silent words rose in his animal-bright eyes. About you and me.

Her mouth went dry. But Aelin nodded In silence, they strode into their spacious quarters, its only decoration the wall of windows that overlooked the churning sea behind them. A far cry from a queen's chamber, or any she might have purchased as Adarlan's assassin.

At least the bed built into the wall looked clean enough, the sheets crisp and stainless. But Aelin headed for the oak desk anchored to the floor, and leaned against it while Rowan shut the door.

In the dim lantern light, they stared at each other.

She'd endured Maeve and Cairn; she'd endured Endovier and countless other horrors and losses. She could have this conversation with him. The first step toward rebuilding herself.

Aelin knew Rowan could hear her thundering heart as the space between them went taut. She swallowed once. "Elide and Lorcan told you... told you everything that was said on that beach."

A curt nod, wariness flooding his eyes. "Everything that Maeve said." Another nod.

She braced herself. "That I'm-we're mates."

Understanding and something like relief replaced that wariness. "Yes."

"I'm your mate," she said, needing to voice it. "And you are mine."

Rowan crossed the room, but halted a few feet from the desk on which she leaned. "What of it, Aelin?" His question was low, rough.

"Don't you..." She scrubbed at her face. "You know what she did to you, to ..." She couldn't say her name. Lyria. "Because of it."

"I do know."

"And?"

"And what do you wish me to say?"

She pushed off the desk. "I wish you to tell me how you feel about it. If…"

"If what?"

"If you wish it wasn't so."

His brows narrowed. "Why would I ever wish that?"

She shook her head, unable to answer, and stared over her shoulder toward the sea.

It seemed like he would close the distance between them, but he remained where he was.

"Aelin." His voice turned hoarse. "Aelin."

She looked at him then, at the pain in his words.

"Do you know what I wish?" He exposed his palms, one tattooed, the other unmarked. "I wish that you had told me. When you realized it. I wish you had told me then."

She swallowed against the ache in her throat. "I didn't want to hurt you."

"Why would it ever hurt me to know the truth that was already in my heart? The truth I hoped for?"

"I didn't understand it. I didn't understand how it was possible. I thought maybe ... maybe you might be able to have two mates within a lifetime, but even then, I just ….." She blew out a breath. "I didn't want you to be distressed." His eyes softened. "Do I regret that Lyria was dragged into this, that the cost of Maeve's game was her life, and the life of the child we might have had? Yes. I regret that, and I wish it had never happened." He would bear the tattoo to remember it for the rest of his days. "But none of that was your fault. I will always carry some of the burden of it, always know I chose to leave her for war and glory, and that I played right into Maeve's hands."

"Maeve wanted to ensnare you to get to me, though."

"Then it is her choice, not yours."

Aelin ran a hand over the worn wood of the desk. "In those illusions she spun for me, she showed me variations on one more than all the others." The words were strained, but she forced them out. Forced herself to look at him. "She spun me one dreamscape that felt so real I could smell the wind off the Staghorns."

"What did she show you?" A breathless question.

Aelin had to swallow before she could answer. "She showed me what might have been—if there had been no Erawan, if Elena had dealt with him properly and banished him. If there had been no Lyria, none of that pain or despair you endured. She showed me Terrasen as it would have been today, with my father as king, and my childhood happy, and..." Her lips wobbled. "When I turned twenty, you came with a delegation of Fae to Terrasen, to make amends for the rift between my mother and Maeve. And you and I took one look at each other in my father's throne room, and we knew."

She didn't fight the stinging in her eyes. "I wanted to believe that was the true world. That this was the nightmare from which I'd awaken. I wanted to believe that there was a place where you and I had never known this suffering and loss, where we'd take one look at each other and know we were mates. Maeve told me she could make it so. If I gave her the keys, she'd make it all possible." She wiped at her cheek, at the tear that escaped down it. "She spun me realities where you were dead, where you'd been killed by Erawan and only in handing over the keys to her would I be able to avenge you. But those realities made me ... I stopped being useful to her when she told me you were gone. She couldn't get me to talk, to think. Yet in the ones where you and I met, where things were as they should have been ... that was when I came the closest."

His swallow was audible. "What stopped you?"

She wiped at her face again. "The male I fell in love with was you. It was you, who knew pain as I did, and who walked with me through it, back to the light. Maeve didn't understand that. That even if she could create that perfect world, it wouldn't be you with me. And I'd never trade that, trade this. Not for anything." He extended his hand. An offer and invitation.

Aelin laid hers atop his, and his callused fingers squeezed gently. "I wanted it to be you," he breathed, closing his eyes. "For months and months, even in Wendlyn, I wondered why you weren't my mate instead. It tore me up, wondering it, but I still did." He opened his eyes, and they burned like green fire. "All this time, I wanted it to be you."

She lowered her gaze, but he hooked a thumb and forefinger around her chin and lifted her face.

"I know you are tired, Fireheart. I know that the burden on your shoulders is more than anyone should endure." He took their joined hands and laid them on his heart. "But we'll face this together. Erawan, the Lock, all of it.

"We'll face it together. And when we are done, when you Settle, we will have a thousand years together. Longer."

A small sound came out of her. "Elena said the Lock requires—"

"We'll face it together," he swore again.

"And if the cost of it truly is you, then we'll pay it together. As one soul in two bodies.

Her heart strained to the point of cleaving. "Terrasen needs a king."

"I have no intention of ruling Terrasen without you. Aedion can have the job."

She scanned his face. He meant every word He brushed the hair from her face, his other hand still clasping hers to his chest, where his heart pounded a steady, unfaltering rhythm.

"Even if I had my choice of any dream-realities, any perfect illusions, I would still choose you, too."

She felt the truth of his words echo into the unbreakable thing that bound their very souls, and tilted her face up toward his. But he made no move beyond it.

She frowned. "Why aren't you kissing me?"

"I thought you might want to be asked first."

"That never stopped you before."

"This first time, I wanted to make sure you were ... ready." After Cairn and Maeve. After months of having no choices whatsoever.

She smiled despite that truth. "I'm ready to be kissed again, Prince."

He let out a dark chuckle and muttered, "Thank the gods," before he lowered his mouth to hers.

"You're my mate." Her words were a breathless rush. "And I am yours."

The world might have been burning around them for all she cared, all he cared, too.

"Together, Aelin," he promised, and she heard the rest of the words in every place their bodies joined. Together they would face this, together they would find a way.

Together we'll find a way, their mingling breaths, the crashing sea, seemed to echo.

Together.

[dykestache]

lost contact w a lesbian best friend as soon as she went away to college and she is now a sorority girl w a cishet bf and watching that secondhand makes me want to tear my skin off and shake her and scream I KNOW THIS ISNT YOU

[sweaters-and-vertigo]

the bad batch fans because of the series finale:

[gregmarriage]

broooooo, i am actually soooo smart. turn your music up real loud, and then the bad thoughts can’t get through!

[micamicster]

I love so many deeply annoying people -_-

[sanyu-thewitch05]

I think it’s time to bring out the “Just because they were oppressed by white people doesn’t mean they’ll like black people” points. Also by Western, I assume they mean tribes indigenous to the USA.

The East Native American tribes in the south owned( and no amount of they were infiltrated by white people or they were trying to appeal to white people more could ever defend or justify holding black people as slaves. Especially when one of the tribes(Cherokee) have a pattern of not treating their black members well.) slaves.

Just because they’re indigenous doesn’t make them any less antiblack.

They have literally indirectly said they don’t like Black people. At some point, black people should be questioning why they’re “Allies” are producing shows that they champion as indigenous representation(Reservation Dogs) are portraying black people and our culture in a stereotypical negative light.

[aastarions]

Icl the way you talk about your marriage makes me believe in love <3

OMG 🥹💞 this is so sweet please, like any relationship its built on so so many things and its never perfect of course!! but i have those moments where i look at him and its really like falling in love all over again 😭

its such a wonderful feeling to have somebody by my side to experience life with someone i can be authentically 100% myself with in every way who can do the same around me 🥹 i really am thankful

[heartshapedtrap]

just hung out w friends for five hours and feltso full of whimsy I could pass out <333 I miss them so bad already but I get to see them tomorrow tooooo

[diabolicjoy]

.

[mossflower]

GIRL

[my-chemical-rot]

Guys look at these babies

[mrburnsnuclearpussy]

Dude I can’t even.

[echidnana]

also abt younger ppl identifying as ace/aro. we id’ed as ace when we were 13 and a lot of times were told we were too young to know/etc. and the ace community was really welcoming and encouraged us to find a label that was comfortable. and that being ace wasn’t a bad thing and that we had community. and later on we didn’t id as ace anymore and literally no harm was done, if anything we felt safer in exploring sexuality and knew there would be people that would support us. so it always makes us angry to see people tell kids they’re “too young” to be ace because it literally does not matter. take peoples word on their own identity you know. and if they change later then that’s completely fine and a normal part of being alive.

[mellomadness]

shameless gushing about my boyfriend you’ve been warned

Okay so my boyfriend has been growing out his hair recently, and OOOOOOOOOOOOOH my gOOOOOOOOOOOD it’s doing something for me. Not to say or insinuate any sort of attraction decline in the nearly 5 years we’ve been together, but this new hairstyle is LITERALLY giving me butterflies in my stomach, like I feel like I’m falling in love with him all over again. He’s a very handsome person to begin with, but he’s got the 90s Leonardo DiCaprio heartthrob type hairstyle like fucking Jim Hawkins from Treasure Planet rn and I CANNOT get over how FUCKING AMAZING he looks 🥵🫠

plus—and I know he’s sensitive about this—he’s gained a fair amount of weight recently, and oOOOOoooooOoooOooOoOOOOOOOH LORD 🥵🥵🥵 I have to be careful because I know he’s not too fond of it, and he wants to lose weight (and has begun exercising more to achieve that) but. I don’t think he truly realizes how much I have to physically restrain myself every time he raises his arms up and I get a peek at his belly. I know the societal ideal is a muscly lean man—but I am not society and I am LOSING MY MIND over his body. He’s just so fucking perfect

And like. I’m supportive of his weight goals, I understand that he doesn’t feel comfortable being as big as he is—I don’t want him to ever be unhappy in his body. But. His body especially rn. Is just. So fucking attractive. I cannot stress this enough. I literally have to excuse myself sometimes bc he’s in work mode (he works from home) and I catch a glimpse of him stretching casually or smth and I gotta. I gotta go. I can’t or else he will never get work done

And like. I let him know every day how much I love him, how handsome he is, how fucking unbelievably sexy he is. But I always feel like my words are so fucking understated compared to the FERAL SCREAMING GOBLIN in my brain every time I see him—which is all day every day bc we live together and we both barely leave

Anyway. I love this man so much. Not just his body obviously—we’re almost 5 years in, that would be supremely shallow—but when we started dating he was a solid 9/10 if I were to rate him. Now? He’s regularly breaking the scale, casually, and I don’t think he understands how often his beauty absolutely fucking DEVASTATES me