#which i have been in my car my floor anywhere i can it’s really easy to just scream till i can’t and cry lately
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Glorified Assistant (Iridescent, Part 2)
A/N: This is more for Maeve and Spencer!! And honestly I hate writing enemies to lovers, I believe in makeout on sight, so enjoy me trying to make a believable hatred.
Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem!BAU!OC.
Summary: She’s been given paid leave to basically be Spencer’s assistant, and it almost isn’t worth it.
Word Count: 1.5k
Warnings: swearing, spencer is an ass™
Parts: Pt1, Pt3
Let me stress, this is not Maeve from the show, but my own Maeve just named the same to send Spencer into hell whenever he thinks about it.
Here is more of Maeve and Spencer.
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Maeve thought she was home and free.
She hadn’t been fired (score!), and now Spencer was going away for his mandated thirty days off. Apparently he was doing some teaching at the local college, good for him, it also means they won’t have to interact and hopefully he gets his head out of his ass so that she doesn’t cry when they work together.
They’d left on a particularly sore note, considering that she’d been the one to drive him home and he made it very clear how much he hated the entire interaction.
Of course, he didn’t say a word, struggling to fit into her little, gorgeous dark blue mini and then clenching white-knuckled to his knees for the entire journey. He, actually, didn’t say a thing until he got out of the car, slamming the door shut and turning to scowl at her.
“You’re a fucking maniac. Take some more damn lessons.”
As he stormed off into his apartment, annoyingly only five minutes from her own building, she grumbled under her breath. She’d only grazed maybe one curb, and that wasn’t even her fault, it jumped out at her.
Whatever, she’d been able to sleep easy knowing that she wouldn’t have to see him for several more weeks, giving her time to prepare.
…
Until she was woken by her phone ringing at 5am, answering it blindly because she’s used to work calling her at stupid hours. It was her boss.. however, she was asked to take thirty days of paid leave - which she’s surprised the Bureau can even afford - to be the one to take Spencer too and from the college and just kind of shepherd him around for whatever he needed.
Apparently his car, old and vintage as it was, had been idle for too long and wouldn’t start. Since Spencer can’t be bothered to sort it out, and Maeve lives closest, and she’s his partner, obviously this falls to her to deal with.
Maeve, forever a pushover and unable to say no to any figure of authority, agreed and practically threw her phone across the room when she was done.
Understandably, she didn’t get any more sleep, getting ready for the day with the only solace that he looks like an idiot in her car. Making them both a coffee and putting them into her reusable travel cups, trying not to listen to the little voice telling her to drive into a wall.
After about ten minutes of calling him and getting no answer, she gets out of her illegally parked car and storms up. Although it’s really hard to storm anywhere in an elevator.
Hammering on his door, it took all of two seconds before it flew open and he barged past her, causing her to scowl over at him.
“Damn! Watch it! What’s your problem today?”
He barely looked at her, locking the door behind her as he struggled with a bunch of papers in his hands. A harsh frown on his face that matched his equally-pissed voice.
“Fucking coffee machine broke.”
“I got you one already, Christ..” Sucking in a breath and following after him as he goes for the stairs, thankfully he only lives on the third floor. “What’s with the papers?”
Spencer went ahead of her on the stairs, and she found herself rushing after him and his stupidly long legs. Cursing him with all the colourful words that she knows on her way after him.
“Car insurance, I’m driving today.”
Insurance? He got insured on her car without telling her? All to avoid her driving. This man is a level of petty that teenage girls aspire to be, and she has to resist the urge to pout as she trailed out of the building after him.
“But why? My driving wasn’t--”
“Stop asking so many questions and get in your little clown car.”
Quietly fuming, she didn’t even thank him as he held open the passenger door for her, sliding into the seat and picking up her coffee. Drinking it and trying to squash the thoughts of throttling him.
As he gets into the driver seat and immediately starts rearranging everything, her mirrors, seat, radio, she wonders just how long it would take for someone to realise that he’s missing.
Before he even drove off, gripping the wheel far too hard for her liking, he spoke lowly and glared ahead. As if he was stopping himself from glaring at her.
“Don’t come up to my apartment again. I will come to you. I expect you to be ready by six thirty, and since you have a working machine, you can make the coffees.”
“.. just drive already.”
She’s going to kill him by the end of this.
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Considering she got paid to leave to, essentially, be Spencer’s glorified assistant, she decided to make the most of it.
Plus, annoyingly, his lectures are actually pretty interesting - as much as she tried to stop giving a shit. Between running to get him more coffees, again assistant, and handing out things to the students, she gets to sit and just listen to him talk about whatever content he chooses.
Psychopaths, mainly, their brains and behaviours, which she enjoyed immensely when she studied psychology and criminology. Damn, but.. he’s really good to listen to.
By the third lecture of the day, she was sat at the desk to the side of the platform, usually reserved for teaching assistants, scribbling in a pretty lilac notebook she bought from the student store. Taking actual notes for his lecture, thoroughly enjoying the content of the lecture and not the fact that it’s Spencer.
Spencer had noticed, immediately, of course, and hated it.
He doesn’t know what she’s hoping to achieve, or prove, because it definitely isn’t impressing him, and he can’t fathom the idea that she’s doing the work to just do the work. Why would she, after he’s purposely been an ass to her purely for existing.
There’s no way she’s actually just paying attention.
So, to test her, for his own morbid curiosity and the need to try and embarrass her in front of all these people, he decided it would be fun to throw random questions to her. Not even related to the topic he was covering. To him, she doesn’t seem like the kind of person to handle stress well.
As he proposed hypothetical questions to the students, he turned to Maeve with a grin on his face, which she finds much more unnerving than a scowl. Hands clapping together as he brought all the attention onto her.
“And for my.. assistant.” Oh, yeah, she absolutely hates that, even more than his smug little grin. “What are the disadvantages of Mary Ainsworth’s study when examining infant attachment?”
Now it was time for her own smug little grin to settle on her lips, which he certainly didn’t like the implications of.
It was clear that he hadn’t expected her to know the answer, or even have enough of a knowledge base to even remotely know what he was talking about. Thankfully she had always been a pushover, and when her friends begged for her to sit in on their presentations in college, she learnt a lot. Especially the ones who presented developmental psychology.
Also, a few times she opted to speak in front of lectures purely because she felt bad for the lecturers when no one would volunteer, which meant she was quickly forced to grow out of her fear of public speaking. Leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms, getting comfortable.
“Mary Ainsworth was American. And she made an American based model, off American children and families, testing it solely in America. It cannot be generalised to other countries.”
“But-”
He tried to cut her off, but she wasn’t done yet. That wasn’t nearly enough to feel like she’d finally won something between them.
“And. When it was, by Kroonenberg and Ijzendoorn, it was proven to have terrible generalisation. Because other cultures and countries have very different ways of rearing children that don’t fit her American guidelines.”
Spencer looked like he wanted to vault the desk and strangle her, and if it weren’t for the crowd of whispering students, he probably would’ve done. Giving him a soft smile, which only he knew was completely fake, she picked her pen back up and tapped her notebook.
“If that’s all, Doctor Reid, I was enjoying your lecture on psychopathic brains.”
And as she looks back down, he has to force himself to continue lecturing to curb the rumours he can hear being created by suddenly-dejected female students. Trying not to sigh at the knowledge that people are going to think they’re sleeping together.
Throwing one last glare her way, not even needing his profiling to know that she so gets off on calling him ‘Doctor Reid’. The simultaneous irritation and begrudging admiration was making him dizzy, wanting nothing more to chuck something at her head.
Whatever, on the way home, he’ll take the longest route he knows to run her petrol down to nothing. Anything to get another mental tally on their growing rivalry.
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Want more?! Good!
#spencer reid x self insert#spencer reid#dr spencer reid#spencer reid criminal minds#criminal minds fanfic#criminal minds#spencer reid fanfiction#spencer reid fanfic#spencer reid fic#criminal minds fic#spencer reid x oc
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Vi x fem!reader
I'm heart broken so I need this
How vi gets comforted
I feel like because she is an older sister and the leader of her family she is more often than not dealing with her own pain privately not wanting people to see her wilt and crumble but you, her lover get to see her in a way that most if not all people don't, so you would notice when she isn't doing well she'd be subtle about it at first her energy would change, making itself not so loud. She's a bit of a talker in normal circumstances but she's quiet and giving you one word or just sounds as answers
Like for example yall were in the car and you were driving talking about some drama that happened at your job and when you hit her with a "can you believe that?" She responds with a demure "..yea...yea" this being the final notice you need to GENTLY confront her about it pulling into a near by parking lot, park and sit in silence for about a minute before hit her with a gentle "Are you ok?" Now she can hear you but she's not really listening so she responded with a "..yea I'm fine" in a hushed tone not breaking eye contact with whatever is in her line of sight out of the window, only when you sigh and she feels her hand being slipped into your palm that she turns to view your worried face revealing what you've been suspecting for days passed
Taking a breath before you say "talk to me, please?" It's More of an ask rather than a demand as not to make her feel cornered at all. She pulls her gaze away from yours to meet the floor taking a deep breath that is complete with a exhaled sigh before she begins to try to explain how she feels "it's....welll......*sighs* I'm sorry" this startles you alittle but you mask it pretty well ask her "about what?" Before she continues "for worrying you. I'm just alittle sad right now. Alot of things are changing right now and I just don't know how to deal with it and the feels that come along with it. *takes a sharp inhale* I'm just scared because everything is so good and *sniffles* I'm scared waiting for the other shoe to drop ya know and..and...." tears fall down her face as she reaches for you over the center console for comfort which you give her with out a moment of hesitation. Holding her as tight and as close as you could being on the other side of the car you keep you position until her breath starts to settle into a calmer pace not saying anything other than "its ok" and "let it out" once her breath is steady you climb into her lap over the console to gain a better hold on your trembling anxious girlfriend to say the things that need to be said.
Hold her face you take a deep breath before saying "I know change is scary but I can assure you that my love for you is unwavering and I am not going anywhere anytime soon.* you whip a stray from her face" ok? I don't know what is going to happen in the future but. I do know this* you gently tilt her face to meet your gaze before continuing* nothing life throws at us will ever come between us. Yes things change but one this that will never change is how much I love you and that is as deep as the ocean is vast as easy as wind flowing through the and and has plentiful as pine needles in the winter. *pulling her into an even tighter embrace than before* I love you ok" with that she nods and holds you just as tight in fear that she would literally fall to pieces if she didn't have you to stabilize her.
After a moment she lifts her head away from your now drenched blouse up to your lips and place a soft meaningful kiss upon your lips before whispering a barely audible "thank you" and you both carry on with your errands hand in hand hardly breaking contact. And when you return home yall through in a lasagna and cuddle on the couch watching what ever on TV just enjoying each other's company.
I hope you enjoyed it
I needed this after today
As always thoughts are mine characters aren't my requests are open so ask away
Until next time stay warm stay healthy
Signing off for now 💋💋
#character x fem! reader#black coded reader#female reader#arcane#arcane season 2#arcane vi#vi x fem reader
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PR Relationship
Masterlist Scarlett Masterlist
Word Count: 3110
Relationship: Scarlett x Singer Reader
Summary: Y/n and Scarlett are in love with each other and have a secret relationship that only a select few know about. Things change when Y/n finds out that Scarlett may have her eyes on someone else.
(I do not own the rights to the lyrics, I just think this sounds fits the story perfectly. It’s Secret Love Song by Little Mix.)
Y/N’s POV:
For the last 3 months, I have been dating the beautiful Scarlett Johansson. However, as she hasn’t come out yet, it was a complete secret with only Lizzie Olsen knowing the truth. At first it didn’t bother me at all. It was exciting. The sneaking around was fun and trying to sneak dates and kisses without being caught was exhilarating. But the last couple of weeks have started to get tiring. If ever I stay over, she’s kicking me out at like 5am so I don’t get caught by the paps, we never travel anywhere together and I’ve lost count of the amount of times she’s totally changed her demeanour around me because someone has walked by us.
Don’t get me wrong, I completely understand that Scarlett is scared of coming out. I’ve already done that and it wasn’t easy. I would never push her to do anything she’s uncomfortable with. But it’s starting to hurt, it feels more like she’s hiding me rather than protecting herself. Thing is, I love her and I’m willing to wait for her. Which is the problem, I’m scared this might break me.
So here I am, 4:30 in the morning tiptoeing around her bedroom getting ready to sneak out. I don’t want to wake her, she’s been so busy at work she deserves a good rest. I throw on some sweatpants and a hoody whilst picking up my underwear from the floor after last night’s activities. I leave a gentle kiss on Scarlett’s forehead before slipping out of the house, unheard, into the early morning.
As I’m sat in my car I can feel the exhaustion seeping through my body. I had been spending most nights at Scar’s which meant I was only getting a few hours sleep and it was starting to catch up with me. I’ve got to be at the studio at 8am so I decide there is no point in heading home. Instead I make my way to the beach to watch the sunrise and go for a swim. There’s no better way to start my day. Well other than getting to sleep in my girlfriends arms past 5!
I get to the studio early and I start having all of these thoughts in my head which I start to collate and write down. Lyrics forming as I write. I’ve not felt this inspired for a long time
We keep behind closed doors
Every time I see you, I die a little more
Stolen moments that we steal as the curtain falls
It'll never be enough
It’s not until I start to pull the lyrics together that I realise how much this whole situation is hurting me. By the end of the day it’s all starting to come together, the quickest that I have ever written a song. My team love it and are already planning for me to sing it on Jimmy Kimmel. I push back though. It’s not fair to Scarlett to hear about my feelings through an interview. But writing the song has helped, I’m feeling better already.
As I get into the car I check my phone. I’ve not spoken with Scarlett all day. That’s not unusual as for us though. But a smile forms on my face when I see a message from her.
Scarlett:
Hey Babe, thanks for this morning. I really needed that sleep. I know you’re in the studio all day so can’t talk. I’m working late but perhaps you could come over tomorrow? Love you xx
Me:
Hey Scar, no problem, you need your sleep! Tomorrow would be great. Love you too xx
The next evening I’m sat on the sofa in Scarlett’s living room her legs draped over mine as we watch TV. She has her laptop resting on her legs finishing up the last bit of work before she’s done for the day. I’m just sat scrolling through my phone when I seeing articles popping up about Scarlett and her new partner. We’d been so careful to not been seen together in more than a friendly capacity. In fact, by the way we act in public you wouldn’t think we were that close as friends.
But then my heart stops, the articles aren’t referring to me but Chris Evans. What the fuck?! I can feel my heart beating faster like it’s going to beat out of my chest. Then I click on one article, “Co-Stars Scarlett Johansson and Chris Evans spotting kissing on a dinner date.” A photo accompanying it. That was yesterday! I sit up with a jolt feeling like I was going to be sick. My God she’s cheating on me and she’s not even trying to hide it!
“Hey what’s wrong Babe, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Scarlett says concerned looking over her laptop to me. I try to speak but I can’t form words. I can see her starting to get worried as she puts her laptop down on the table and goes to put her arm on my back. I’m quick to pull away and just throw my phone in her direction. She looks at the screen and her eyes grow wide.
“Y/N this isn’t what it looks like, I swear. Please..” Running my hands through my hair I stand up not even able to sit next to her. “I mean it looks like you’ve got your tongue down Evans’ throat. Not sure what else it could look like Scarlett!” I say coldly trying so hard not to yell. “Is this why you hid me? Not wanting anyone to know. Am I the dirty little secret to keep until you have Evans?” Pacing round the room I can feel my chest get tighter and my breathing becoming erratic.
“NO! I’m not cheating on you Y/N, I love you!” “THEN WHAT IS THIS!” So much for not shouting. I can feel my heart breaking in two. “Please just let me explain. With the new Avengers movie coming out our teams thought it would be good PR if we got some rumours going about being in a relationship. We had lunch and dinner dates here and there making sure to look like a couple for the paparazzi. I promise you Y/N there is nothing going on.”
I immediately stop my pacing, turning to her in disbelief. “So you can’t tell anyone about me, but you’re happy to go along with a fake relationship for you movie. Great, good to know where I sit in your priorities. Did you even consider telling me, it’s weird but I would have understood? Instead I find out by finding a picture of you kissing!” I can’t stop the tears anymore, but I won’t let her see me sob.
“Y/N please…” Scarlett grabs my hands trying to get me to look at her. “I-I can’t do this anymore.” I whisper pulling my hands away. “Wait, what do you mean? Y/N?” she says in a scared tone. “I’ve spent the last 3 months doing everything you ever asked. I never pushed for you to do anything you were uncomfortable with, even if it was at a detriment to me. I was waiting for you to be happy in yourself that you could share us with the world. I have always put your first. I knew this could break me and it has. I need to put myself first this time as it’s evident you won’t.” Turning my back on her I grab my things and walk towards her door.
I can hear her running up behind me and she grabs my shoulders spinning me around. “No, you can’t go. I’m so sorry Y/N, I love you, please you can’t leave me. Don’t go we can work this out.” Looking in her eyes I can see the pain. Her cheeks are stained with tears. “We don’t need to work anything out Scar, you do. I just hope you find happiness one day without having to hide yourself way.” With that I walk out, my heart tearing from my chest. A part of me just wishing that one day she might be ready for this relationship as a whole.
Scarlett’s POV:
I had really fucked this up. I hadn’t slept for days and had shut myself away, calling in sick to work to avoid seeing anyone. I had never felt pain like this. Y/N was my world. I love her with all my heart. I had always intended to tell the everyone but it just felt too hard and she was so great at giving me time. But this PR relationship with Chris was by far the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. This isn’t me, I don’t intentionally hurt people but it feels like I did with Y/N.
Whilst in my cave of self-pity and depression I hear banging on the door. Dragging myself up I find an angry Lizzie stood there with her Wanda head tilt. Shit that’s terrifying! “What the fuck Scar?!” She huffs pushing herself into my house. “Well hello to you too Lizzie” I half chuckle. “You broke her when all she has ever done is put your first. I warned you that you needed to be honest with yourself or you’ll lose her.” She’s angry but her tone softens when she sees the state I’m in. “Geeze Scar when was the last time you slept?” She said pulling me in for a hug. “I can’t sleep without her.” I whisper tears starting to form in my eyes.
We move to the sofa and she takes my hands in hers. “From what I hear, Y/N didn’t get much sleep with you. Staying up til God knows when with you then being kicked out at 5am. Did you not notice how tired she’d been?” I just shake my head in shame. “I’ve screwed up Lizzie and I don’t know how to get her back. I’ve told my team I won’t go ahead with the fake relationship anymore but I know I need to do so much more than that to show her I’m in this for the long run.” I don’t dare even speak that I’m terrified that I’ve lost her forever, in fear that speaking it will make it true.
“Scarlett, you need to decide what scares you the most. Coming out and fearing people will see you differently, or losing Y/N, the woman you are madly in love with, for good. Just don’t take too long in making that decision or it could be too late.” She pulls me into a hug and we lie together on the sofa. “I miss her Lizzie” I sniffle. “Well, she’s performing on Jimmy Kimmel. How about we watch that?” I nod and she grabs the remote switching over to her performance.
Y/N’s Performance:
Jimmy: Performing her latest single, please welcome to the stage, Y/N Y/L/N!
The lights dim with a sole spotlight shining on Y/N who is sat at a piano. She starts to play as the notes ring out through the studio.
We keep behind closed doors
Every time I see you, I die a little more
Stolen moments that we steal as the curtain falls
It'll never be enough
As you drive me to my house
I can't stop these silent tears from rolling down
You and I both have to hide
On the outside where I can't be yours and you
Can't be mine
But I know this
We got a love that is homeless
Why can't I hold you in the street?
Why can't I kiss you on the dance floor?
I wish that it could be like that
Why can't it be like that?
'Cause I'm yours
Why can't I say that I'm in love?
I wanna shout it from the rooftops
I wish that it could be like that
Why can't it be like that?
'Cause I'm yours
It's obvious you're meant for me
Every piece of you, it just fits perfectly
Every second, every thought, I'm in so deep
But I'll never show it on my face
But we know this, we got a love that is homeless
Why can't you hold me in the street?
Why can't I kiss you on the dance floor?
I wish that it could be like that
Why can't we be like that?
'Cause I'm yours
Why can't I say that I'm in love?
I wanna shout it from the rooftops
I wish that it could be like that
Why can't we be like that?
'Cause I'm yours
I don't wanna live love this way
I don't wanna hide us away
I wonder if it ever will change
I'm living for that day
Someday
When you hold me in the street
And you kiss me on the dance floor
I wish that we could be like that
Why can't we be like that
'Cause I'm yours, I'm yours
Oh, why can't you hold me in the street?
Why can't I kiss you on the dance floor?
I wish that it could be like that
Why can't it be like that?
'Cause I'm yours
Why can't I say that I'm in love?
I wanna shout it from the rooftops
I wish that it could be like that
Why can't we be like that?
'Cause I'm yours
Why can't we be like that
Wish we could be like that
The lights faded as the camera zoomed in close enough to see that Y/N was crying before the stage went dark and the audience erupt in applause.
Scarlett’s POV:
Lizzie and I just sat there in silence. I could hear the pain in her voice and it hurt me to know that it was me that caused it. I was pulled out of my trance by Lizzie squeezing me into a tight hug whispering in my ear. “If this didn’t help you decide then I don’t know what will.” She was right, the only person who I care about is Y/N. I’m not scared anymore. I’m going to win her back.
I’m up all night with Lizzie working a way out that I can come out and show my love for Y/N. An Instagram post didn’t seem like enough and a press release was too impersonal. It needed to be something special, and that’s when Lizzie came up with a risky but perfect plan. I just hope that she could forgive me and we can start out lives together a fresh.
Timeskip
It was a week later and here I am sat in the back of Y/N’s limo. She just doesn’t know it. It’s the night of the Grammy’s and Y/N is up for an award. I’m so proud of her and it’s time to show her that she is my number one priority. Lizzie’s grand plan so far had worked. We spoke with Y/N’s team and I explained the whole situation. Her manager was surprisingly nice about and said that it explained a lot about her behaviour recently. She had agreed to arrange a secret plus one for Y/N. I would wait in her car to surprise to walk down the red carpet with her, as her girlfriend. I just hoped she wouldn’t kick me out on the curb.
My heart rate starts to pick up as I hear her talking as she walk towards the car. God I’ve missed that voice. The car door opens and she gets in letting out a slight sigh as she sits. It takes her a moment before she notices me sat there with a nervous smile on my face and she jumps “Jesus Scar, you scared the shit out of me.” We both let out an awkward chuckle. “What are you doing here?” She asks not quite able to maintain the eye contact. This is it, the moment I win my girl back.
I put my finger under her chin and lift it so she’s looking at me. My God she is breathtakingly beautiful! I then take both of her hands in mine taking a deep breath “Y/N. Since the day I met you, I knew I was going to fall madly in love with you. Every day I spent with you I fell more and more in love. No one has ever made me as happy as you do. I know it’s only been 3 months but I know you are the women I want to spend the rest of my life with. I screwed up, I know I can’t take that back. I was so paralysed with fear about coming out and people’s reaction to it, that I didn’t think about you and our relationship. I just let you carry on making the sacrifices for me. But today that changes. I love you with all my heart and I’m not prepared to lose you again. I am so fucking proud of what you have achieve this last year. You deserve everything you are going to get tonight. And…. If you’ll have me… I want to be there for you every step of the way. No more hiding. I want to walk down that red carpet on your arm as your proud girlfriend. And then I’m going to spend the rest of my life showing you how much I love you.”
There is a long silence as her eyes flicker between my own trying to get a read of me. I hope she can see how sincere I’m being, that I mean every word that I’m saying. “Don’t hurt me again. I don’t think I can survive if you do.” She whispers. The biggest smile appears on my face as I reach up and put my hand to her cheek wiping away the stray tear. “I promise I won’t. Can I kiss you?” I ask. “You never have to ask Scar.” And with that I pull her into a passionate kiss. I have missed her lips connecting with mine. It makes me feel complete. “You look absolutely beautiful Y/N. I’m so glad I get to call you mine.” She laughs and pulls me in for another soft kiss.
As we pull up to the venue Y/N grabs my hand. “Are you sure Scar? I don’t want you to do something you’re going to regret.” I look at her and smile. “The only regret I have is not telling the world how much I love you sooner. Let’s do this.” The fear is gone, I’m only excited now. As the door to the limo opens, I see the start of our new life together.
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Hi Hi! I'm in love with your fanfics. So, I sincerely hope that you will be interested in my request about some comfort\smut Mary and the reader and thier small relationship anniversary. It can be night full of passionate romance, which is not typical for them. Love the idea that the reader is hypersensitive to hard touch and deep, long kisses, and Mary knows this very well. May be a bit of aftercare and naked talks as they cuddles, the reader strokes his hair, and Mary makes makes goofy jokes.
I am so so sorry anon for how long this took me to get to. I really hope you see this! 18+ under the cut
You were itching for the clock to turn six. Your foot tapping anxiously on the floor, nails drumming on the counter. You were probably driving your co-worker insane by the glare they kept shooting you as they sorted through the used stack of vinyl someone had donated earlier that day. To be fair you were always anxious for six. But it wasn’t just an ordinary day. No, it was your anniversary with Mary. And your practically vibrating on the spot waiting until you could get home and show him the present you’d made him. You’d both technically agreed not to get one another anything, but making something didn’t ever pop up in that discussion. And besides it was a special occasion. One year. The longest Mary had ever been in a relationship. And if you were being fair, it had been quite a while since any of your flings had lasted that long as well. One year. It warmed your heart every time you thought about it. It wasn’t easy. Mary clearly wasn’t used to committed relationships, and it had taken a lot of work on both your ends, Mary a lot of listening and you a lot of patience, but you fucking made it. And it was so worth it. Because every time you thought of your adorably feral partner, your stomach fluttered. No, the homemade gift was definitely worth it, you thought, rubbing your sore fingers, poked and calloused. You really ought to buy a thimble.
“Hey…d’you hear me?” You blink out of your daze to find your co-worker staring at you, completely unamused.
“Hmm? Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention,” you mumble in apology.
“Just go home. It’s close to six and I can close the shop just fine on my own.”
“Are you sure?” You hesitate.
“Go. You’re driving me crazy with all that fidgeting.” Slinging your tote over your arm, you’re flying to the door before they even finish speaking.
“You’re the best!” You cry over your shoulder, skipping out onto the street and down to the bus stop. If it’s on time you just might make it home before Mary does; and it should give you enough time to prepare your surprise.
You make it to the bus stop just in time and score a single seat near the back door, plopping down heavily into it, tired from the day but buzzing with excitement. You might just make it back with a few minutes to spare. For now you pop your earbuds in and lean against the window, watching the cars pass by, people meandering on the streets, going about their day. All the while, an anxious pit is gnawing away in your stomach, and sensing it, your fingers flutter and tap against your bag.
The bus ride couldn’t feel any slower, and as soon your feet hit the pavement again your skipping up the street to your apartment, climbing the stairs nearly two at a time your key already in hand. The lock opens with a click! And you’re greeted with a completely silent apartment. No music from Mary’s record player, no tv. Perfect. Throwing your bag and keys down on a chair at your tiny dining table, you get to work.
Your apartment is small. A two bedroom in a crummy neighborhood; but rent is dirt cheap. And though you and Mary don’t make too much, you’ve made the place your own; having rummaged through yard sales and thrift stores for knick knacks and décor over the years. It was cozy, and so very special. And really, you couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, with anyone else.
You hid it in your wardrobe. At the bottom of your sock drawer, in a sock, rolled in another sock, just in case Mary got into it after forgetting to do a round of laundry. You pulled the small box out now, and held it in your hand. It was wrapped neatly in plain black paper, and all you had to do now was add the bow. You opted for a black lace ribbon, and sitting at your desk, you tied the box with a dainty bow. Perfect. You looked at the clock. There was still some time until Mary got home, and you paced about the apartment, lighting a few candles here and there. A couple at the dining table, a few in the bedroom that you told yourself wouldn’t catch fire while you let them be. And after everything was ready, the click, squeak, and slam of the door alerted you to Mary’s arrival.
“Babe?!” Your partner called out into the flat.
“At the table!” The sound of Mary shaking their heavy boots off thumped in rhythm with your pounding heart. You fumbled with the present, before you set it down on the table again, opting to ring your hands in anxious anticipation.
And then, out from the corner of the wall opening separating the kitchen from the dining and living room, poked a mismatched bouquet of wildflowers; daisies, dandelions, and forget-me-nots all in a messy bundle. Then, Mary popped their head round the corner, a devilish grin on his face.
“Happy anniversary.” You break out into a grin, and leap over to your partner. Mary rounds the corner just in time to catch you with an oof! As you throw your arms around their neck. You squeeze your eyes shut, breathing in deep the faint traces of Mary’s amber cologne, lingering cigarette smoke. Mary. “Take it you look the flowers?” They teased, a large hand cradling the back of your head, tangling into your hair as his other arm snaked around your waist, pulling you flush against them.
“Mhmm,” you hum into Mary’s neck. You pull back, your arms still linked around your partner’s neck. “Happy anniversary to you too.”
“Mmm.” Mary dipped his head, snatching your lips into a deep kiss, their tongue tracing over your lips. You sigh into the kiss, and Mary’s hands begin to roam down your sides, tracing over your hips, the swell of your backside. You had to give them the present now. There wouldn’t be much time later given how eager he was.
“Mary—”
“Hmm?” they moaned into your mouth, and your breath hitched as Mary’s knee nudge its way between your legs.
“Mary—Wait.” you breathed, pulling back from their chasing lips with a breathy laugh.
“What?” You could hear the slight frustration in his voice, the quiet whine slipping from their lips as you pull away. He’d just have to wait. This was important.
“I have something for you.” Mary frowned, brows quirking in confusion.
“I thought we said no gifts?” Panic creeped into his voice, and they ran a nervous hand through their hand. You smiled shyly.
“I know. But I promise I didn’t spend anything on this!” You hand Mary the small box, and a small smile forms on their face as they examine the wrapping.
The time it takes for Mary to unwrap the gift and open the box is agonizingly slow. Your legs start to jitter and he eyes you with amusement more than once. Then pulling back the tissue paper, Mary frowns, his brow pinching.
“Oh.” You chew on your lip. In the box was a single patch. Black and white. Written in jagged letters was Mary’s band Repugnant. Under it a skull, one eye piercing and wide.
“You’ve been working so hard on getting the band started I—I saw some of your sketches for a logo. I really liked that one.”
“You made me a band patch,” Mary murmurs.
“Yeah.” You shrug, wringing your hands. “Figured it could be your first merch.” Mary doesn’t say anything. Rather, he places the box on the table, and hungrily, pulls you tight against them. You breath in sharply as Mary crushes their lips to yours, all tongue and teeth, pushing you back against the table. Its edge digs sharply into your backside and wince in pain.
“Mary—” You huff, a heat bubbling in your gut as Mary grips your wrists, pinning your hands to the table as they nip at the sensitive skin of your jaw, licking and biting their way down your neck. One long leg tangles between yours, kicking your feet out from under you and Mary pushes you further up the table. Your hands skuttle reflexively to catch yourself, but he bears his weight down on you, pinning your wrists above your head. “The candles,” you squeak. And Mary huffs in amusement, leaning over you to blow them out.
“Better?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” And with a bruising grip on your hips, Mary yanks you down the table until your hips are flush with theirs, and they unbutton your jeans, tugging them down your legs along with your underwear and throwing them in a heap on the floor. His hand is between your legs almost instantly, wasting no time in getting you worked up. You squirm with the suddenness of overwhelming pleasure. It punches the breath out of you and your hands fly down to pull away, give you some reprieve, but Mary doesn’t let you. With a devilish sneer, they hold you down, your hands caught in a bruising grip between a single large hand.
“Stay still,” Mary hisses as you buck your hips into his hand, whining. “So wet already, you want me to fuck you?” You find yourself nodding, practically begging, your eyes heavy-lidded, mouth parted in ecstasy. There’s a cloud of pleasure blurring your vision, and you struggle to focus on Mary as their hand is relentless, working you closer and closer to the crest.
“Y-yes, Mary. Need you.”
“Yeah? Want my cock?”
“Please.” You throw your head back, squeezing your eyes shut as your toes curl, Mary inserting two fingers into you, curling around your sweet spot. “Fuck fuck fuck.” All you hear is the zip and the clanking of metal as Mary takes off their belt and pulls their cock out. You hiss and Mary groans as he runs the head of his cock through your slit. And without warning, thrusts into you, setting a bruising pace.
“Fuck! You feel so good,” Mary groans, their fingers digging harshly into your hips. He keeps you teetering precariously on the edge, the pleasure building. Everything is tense, and your eyes prickle with tears, the frustration mounting within you. Mary ruts into you with reckless abandon, uttering a string of curses under their breath as they slam you hard into the table, your shoulder blades screaming out in pain with each thrust.
“M-ary,” you moan, your breath punching out sharply as Mary fucks you hard.
“What is it sweetheart?” They growl, a hand squeezing your jaw harshly, gripping your chin so you’re looking straight at him.
“Please.” Mary grins, their breath heavy, panting.
“Please what? Say it. C’mon baby,” he grunted, a particularly sharp thrust to your sweet spot making you cry out. “Tell me.”
“Let me come, please.”
“You wanna come? Yeah?” Their hand squeezes your jaw tighter, fingers applying just the right amount of pressure. You nod as much as you can, and your toes curl as Mary slides their free hand down to work you once more. You hurtle over the crest, crying out, your whole body shaking. Mary isn’t far behind, his hips stuttering as you pulse around him. His nails sink into the supple flesh of your hips as they come, panting into the crook of your neck.
“Hey.” Your eyes flutter open, turning your head back to look at Mary. After the two of you recovered and your legs weren’t jelly, you’d made it to the bed, Mary holding you close as you basked in the blissful peace of your comedown.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks. For the patch. I love it.” You snort.
“Figured you did, given your reaction.” Mary huffed, pressing a soft kiss to your shoulder.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.” You smile, letting your eyes slide shut as Mary’s arm pulls you in closer, tucking you under their chin.
“But can I get a lover’s discount or something on manufacturing.”
“Oh my god!”
“I’m thinking like 5, 10 percent off per orgasm?” You scrunch your face, frowning.
“That’s not much of a discount.” You feel them shrug.
“Adds up, babe. I’ll be paying next to nothing for bulk orders.”
“You have a lot of faith in your abilities Goore.”
“Yeah? Wanna bet?” It was getting late. You were sleepy. Perfectly cozy. But the bait was dangling right in front of your face and it would be a real pity to leave it hanging. So, with a mischievous smile on your lips, you give Mary an answer.
“Try me.”
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The thing is? Everybody starts out poor when they leave home (unless they get a shitload of money from their parents, which is fewer people than you think).
The GI Generation did not go straight from school into neat little “pleasant valley” houses. They fought a freakin’ war first, then half of them went to college on the GI Bill, and THEN they finally settled down to start making Baby Boomers.
Baby Boomers? A bunch went to college, a bunch went to Vietnam, and a bunch bummed around getting high without really living anywhere until they finally settled down (or died off) and started getting real jobs.
Gen X? We got soooo many thinkpieces about hanging around living with our parents because we didn’t have the scratch to move out (which is historically normal, BTW- people lived with their parents and sometimes their grandparents). Those who did had the time-honored tradition of living with roommates for the first place or two, with all the awkward steps of living with people who may not have the same hygiene standards you do. Or may feel like vodka and sunny delight is a perfectly good breakfast and trash belongs on the floor.
So, Millennials weren’t setting any new trends by having trouble paying rent and getting a car (if they even wanted one) as young adults freshly on their own. And you up and coming kids, you’re going to have to figure out some strategies, too. Roommates, living with your parents, going into debt and learning about bankruptcy... those are all normal things for twenty-somethings.
For most of our country’s existence, the big worries were child poverty and elderly poverty. Guess what? We’ve just about licked those. Kids and their parents get a lot of help, and the lone grandma out there is usually richer than her kids. Even if not, she’s got the kinds of retirement funds previous generations could only dream of.
That leaves the last form of ‘poor’, which is the young adult with almost nothing to their name, setting out to make their way in the world for the first time. Most of them are going to struggle. Some take out student loans and get through college and THEN reality hits them, but unless you were a very strange student who had a part-time job and saved a lot of money, you don’t have much of anything when you turn 18/21/24.
It takes time to accumulate wealth, be it in ‘real’ form (houses and other property) or simple cash. It’s never been easy, and the rules change as society changes. The internet and global supply chains changed things in just the last generation. COVID screwed up so much, it’s unreal, and we’re still sorting that out. I’m sorry for those of you hitting the job market right as things hit the skids- that sucks. It’s happened to my mom every time she went job hunting so far (and she’s in her 60s- sometimes it just works out that way).
Is it hard sometimes? Boy howdy. Make some friends to hang out with on the cheap, be it drinking country time lemonade and vodka instead of going to the bars or picking up hobbies less expensive than playing the latest video games.
What you’re going through is what other people go through and HAVE gone through for years and years and years. It gets easier. You’re going to have pitfalls where you screw up. Maybe you’ll have to start over once or twice. God knows my husband and I did a couple of times. Things you never learned about in school will suddenly become important, like credit ratings. The good news is that information on how to fix this stuff isn’t too hard to find these days. The bad news is that you’re going to have to do a lot of stuff that’s new or uncomfortable until you learn the ins and outs.
You’ll manage. You’ll get better at it. There are some things you’ll let go and other things you’ll hold onto. Life isn’t about having it all, it’s about learning what really matters and what you can live without. It’s about the choices you make along the way. Make those choices in a way so you can look yourself in the mirror afterwards.
Don’t set yourself up for failure by assuming it’s supposed to be easy. We’d all like it to be easy, but nobody’s figured out the magic formula to actually make it work out that way. Believe me, people have tried.
Don’t pay for job placement- good places charge the companies they head-hunt for, not you.
Libraries have programs to help you write resumes and learn to budget.
Step outside and appreciate nature a little bit- it’s free of charge and it’ll keep you sane.
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by Natasha Tripney (reprinted from Catapult.Co) “There’s nowhere in the world where I don’t have an accent. Nowhere where my voice fits.” My mother My mother’s small, parquet-floored apartment is noisy. It looks out over a busy intersection in Belgrade. When her balcony door is open, her living room fills with the blare of car horns being hammered by impatient drivers. As she chops onions in the kitchen, music bubbles up from the bar downstairs. It is the antithesis of tranquility, but she doesn’t mind one bit. She likes being in the heart of things, being surrounded by the thump and rumble of city life. I’m not sure at what point my mother decided to go back to Belgrade. For months, she would talk about it, as if testing out the idea, seeing how it sounded out loud. But at some point her thinking solidified and, in 2015, she decided to leave England, the country in which she’d spent the entirety of her adult life—half a century—and make a new start in a city she had not lived in since she was a teenager. She knew it would not be easy, that you can never really go “back” anywhere, certainly not after fifty years. This would be true of anywhere, even if the country in which she grew up had not ceased to exist in 1992. My mother was born in Yugoslavia in the 1940s, in the city of Kragujevac. She first lived there, then in the capital city of Belgrade until the 1960s, until her parents’ never-stable marriage finally collapsed. With little notice or warning, at the age of sixteen, she found herself traveling across Europe to live with family in the United Kingdom. Her mother’s parents had been displaced after the Second World War, and, along with many immigrants from the region, they had made a home for themselves in West London, in Notting Hill. My mother did not speak any English. Her knowledge of England was shaped by the books she’d read—by Thomas Hardy and the Brontës. The Notting Hill she arrived in was not the wealthy enclave it is today but a combustible neighborhood in which a number of immigrant communities overlapped. My mother’s family ran a café on Portobello Road, serving a mix of fry-ups to barrow boys from the local market and Yugoslav dishes to those in search of a taste of home. There was a brothel across the street—the women who worked there used to pop in for a coffee—and men would often come by flogging dodgy knockoff jewellery, which my mother’s grandmother, who loved pretty things, was happy to take off their hands. Fights sometimes broke out beneath her window, and she was frightened to venture outside at night. She found her new home overwhelming. The unfamiliar voices, the harsh weather, the mixture of deprivation and abundance. She remembers wandering wide-mouthed around the fashion boutiques with her grandmother, seduced by the beauty of the clothes but also the life they appeared to offer. She became smitten with a deeply impractical purple coat and her grandmother bought it for her. Life got hard for my mother fast. She’d not been in the UK all that long when her mother passed away. Her grandparents followed soon afterward. She found herself alone in a way I have never experienced and struggle to imagine. She met a man, who also had cause to leave his home behind, and though they were incompatible in many ways, they married. They moved away from West London and its Yugoslav community, putting another layer of distance between herself and the country from which she came. Over the years, my mother has learned to navigate the difference between being from a place and being of a place. When we visited family in Bosnia and in Belgrade, she was accustomed to being asked by wary hotel receptionists and curious waiters where she was from and to being smilingly charged twenty-five euros by taxi drivers, an obviously inflated figure, to take us from the airport. Partly, it was a result of her accent. Fifty years in the UK has shaped her speech patterns. She might speak what was formerly known as Serbo-Croat, but languages are not static; she’s missed out on half a century of slang, cultural references, linguistic drift. As she was a teenager when she arrived in the UK, she never wholly lost her accent there either. Visiting Belgrade in later life, watching people’s faces flicker with interest as she spoke, it dawned on her that, wherever she went, her voice always sounded foreign to people. My mother has always stood out. “There’s nowhere in the world where I don’t have an accent,” she would sometimes say, while sipping a glass of rakija—sadly, but with a degree of resignation. “Nowhere where my voice fits.” In the UK, she was a single mother raising a young child on her own and working for low wages; money was a constant source of worry. But in the eyes of her family, she was a wealthy Westerner with her freedoms. My mother had a job; for them, work was hard to come by. She had the luxury of space; they lived in a small apartment. As her family saw it, my mother’s life was one of comfort. But she also struggled. Both of these things were true. Yugoslavia—which consisted of six republics (Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, and Macedonia) and two autonomous provinces (Kosovo and Vojvodina)—is remembered as a bold, socialist utopian experiment. It was a bridge between the East and West, built on principles of “brotherhood and unity.” Its citizens could travel. People from the West holidayed on its islands. But the reality was more complex. Reality always is. The ideals of brotherhood and unity did not extend to Albanian and Roma communities. Soviet sympathisers and dissidents were imprisoned. Marshal Josip Broz Tito, a Yugoslav communist revolutionary, didn’t just lead the country; he bestrode it. Cities were named after him. His image was everywhere. His face was displayed in every home, on every wall. Growing up, I too was familiar with his face: pouchy and stern, with slicked-back hair, his jacket laden with medals. There was a picture of him in the book from which I learned to read the Cyrillic alphabet, staring out at me from the front page. But by the time I was born, Tito was dead, and, in the country he had held together, nationalism and ethnic tensions were on the rise. When Yugoslavia broke apart, it happened in the most brutal way imaginable. From 1992 to 1995, war raged in Bosnia. Tens of thousands died; the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia put the probable death toll at 104,000 and the number of people displaced at over two million. Sarajevo endured the longest siege in modern history, and Srebrenica was the site of the worst genocide to take place in Europe since the Second World War. Then, in 1998, war erupted again in Kosovo—then still part of Serbia, though with a largely Albanian population. This time, the West intervened; in 1999, NATO unleashed airstrikes on Belgrade; during the Bosnian conflict four years earlier, they had resisted taking action. My mother and I watched all this play out on the news every night, sitting on our sofas as newsreaders issued solemn warnings that “viewers may find the following scenes distressing.” They were right. It was terribly hard to watch. There was a strange disconnect in watching this horror from afar, a sheen of unreality. How could this be happening? How could this be true? When we were finally able to return in 1996 and visit family for the first time in five years, we had to cross a border where before there had been none. It was a tense and frightening experience. A man in uniform took one look at my mother’s and my UK passports—documents that grant us an ease of movement not available to the rest of our family—and demanded my mother hand over all the money she had on her for “a visa.” In his eyes, she was an outsider and thus a suitable subject for extortion. My grandparents’ apartment in Bijeljina—in what became the Republika Srpska, the newly created, predominantly Serb entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina—still smelled the way I remembered, of soup and cigarette smoke coupled with the faint bodily aroma that comes when several people share a one-bedroom apartment. But the place had changed in many ways. There was a kind of dazed numbness to people; it clouded the air. My grandparents—a Serb married to a Bosnian Muslim, as was common before the war—had been lucky in many respects. They had survived. They still had their home, but they were not unmarked. No one was. My mother felt shock and grief at what was lost. But she had not lived through it, as they had. The collective trauma was palpable, but she did not share it. She had not been there. Nor was she there for the protests that culminated on October 5, 2000, when thousands of people gathered outside the parliament building in Belgrade to finally force out the Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic; nor was she there in 2002 when the Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic was assassinated, an event that, for many Serbians, extinguished the hope that the country could move forward. My mother was cushioned by distance, protected. I’m not sure I took her talk of moving to Serbia seriously at first. She’d lived in the UK for so long. Though we visited with increasing frequency over the years, she was essentially a tourist. We both were. We did the things that tourists do. We walked round Kalemegdan, the old fortress at the center of the city, overlooking the point where the Danube meets the Sava River. We sought out kafanas serving daunting portions of traditional Serbian food, where the waiters inevitably asked us if we wanted menus in English. It eventually became clear, however, that she was very serious about moving. She started packing up the house she’d lived in for over thirty years, all my life. She stopped saying “if I go” and started saying “when I go.” This wasn’t an idle fancy. The prospect of a quiet retirement in the London suburbs filled her with alarm. She wanted more. She knew she could not time-travel. She knew she could not return to the Yugoslavia of her youth. And yet at the same time, when she finally moved to Belgrade in 2015, she found traces of her old life everywhere she went: the cinema she used to visit with her friends to watch Elvis films, the market she walked past on the way to school. Her younger self haunted the city in which she now lived. Her childhood home in the suburb of Žarkovo was still standing, though the surrounding neighborhood had changed beyond recognition. There were shops and apartment blocks that—though not new by any means, having been built in the 1970s—were new to her. She took me there one afternoon, the taxi driver excitedly peppering his English passengers with questions about Arsenal F. C. and the sitcom Only Fools and Horses. It took her a while to locate the old house, but eventually she did. It had stood still while the city around it had changed. She showed me the garden where her grandmother grew tomatoes and the steps on which she used to sit as a girl. “Do you want to knock?” I asked. “See if they’ll let us in?” My mother considered this for a while and shook her head. She’d seen enough. Some doors are better left closed. Serbia is not an easy country in which to live. Its administration shifts between nationalist bombast and the politics of victimhood. There’s a weariness that comes from living under such a regime. You can see it in people’s faces. It chips away at their spirit. My mother’s been spared some of that, and she’s very aware of the fact. Her friends there all worry about their children’s future in such a country, but these things do not press as heavily on her. There are privileges to displacement. And the waiters in my mother’s local café, the cashiers in the local shops and bakeries, the woman who cuts her hair, they all know her. She is part of a community, perhaps for the first time. “My life is more interesting here,” she observes as she lights a cigarette. They still ask her where she’s from. Sometimes she answers “from here,” and sometimes “from London,” and both these things are true. Natasha is a writer and critic based in London. She writes about theatre and the arts for The Stage, the Guardian, the Independent, Exeunt and Kosovo 2.0 (function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src=" fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); (document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Source link
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by Natasha Tripney (reprinted from Catapult.Co) “There’s nowhere in the world where I don’t have an accent. Nowhere where my voice fits.” My mother My mother’s small, parquet-floored apartment is noisy. It looks out over a busy intersection in Belgrade. When her balcony door is open, her living room fills with the blare of car horns being hammered by impatient drivers. As she chops onions in the kitchen, music bubbles up from the bar downstairs. It is the antithesis of tranquility, but she doesn’t mind one bit. She likes being in the heart of things, being surrounded by the thump and rumble of city life. I’m not sure at what point my mother decided to go back to Belgrade. For months, she would talk about it, as if testing out the idea, seeing how it sounded out loud. But at some point her thinking solidified and, in 2015, she decided to leave England, the country in which she’d spent the entirety of her adult life—half a century—and make a new start in a city she had not lived in since she was a teenager. She knew it would not be easy, that you can never really go “back” anywhere, certainly not after fifty years. This would be true of anywhere, even if the country in which she grew up had not ceased to exist in 1992. My mother was born in Yugoslavia in the 1940s, in the city of Kragujevac. She first lived there, then in the capital city of Belgrade until the 1960s, until her parents’ never-stable marriage finally collapsed. With little notice or warning, at the age of sixteen, she found herself traveling across Europe to live with family in the United Kingdom. Her mother’s parents had been displaced after the Second World War, and, along with many immigrants from the region, they had made a home for themselves in West London, in Notting Hill. My mother did not speak any English. Her knowledge of England was shaped by the books she’d read—by Thomas Hardy and the Brontës. The Notting Hill she arrived in was not the wealthy enclave it is today but a combustible neighborhood in which a number of immigrant communities overlapped. My mother’s family ran a café on Portobello Road, serving a mix of fry-ups to barrow boys from the local market and Yugoslav dishes to those in search of a taste of home. There was a brothel across the street—the women who worked there used to pop in for a coffee—and men would often come by flogging dodgy knockoff jewellery, which my mother’s grandmother, who loved pretty things, was happy to take off their hands. Fights sometimes broke out beneath her window, and she was frightened to venture outside at night. She found her new home overwhelming. The unfamiliar voices, the harsh weather, the mixture of deprivation and abundance. She remembers wandering wide-mouthed around the fashion boutiques with her grandmother, seduced by the beauty of the clothes but also the life they appeared to offer. She became smitten with a deeply impractical purple coat and her grandmother bought it for her. Life got hard for my mother fast. She’d not been in the UK all that long when her mother passed away. Her grandparents followed soon afterward. She found herself alone in a way I have never experienced and struggle to imagine. She met a man, who also had cause to leave his home behind, and though they were incompatible in many ways, they married. They moved away from West London and its Yugoslav community, putting another layer of distance between herself and the country from which she came. Over the years, my mother has learned to navigate the difference between being from a place and being of a place. When we visited family in Bosnia and in Belgrade, she was accustomed to being asked by wary hotel receptionists and curious waiters where she was from and to being smilingly charged twenty-five euros by taxi drivers, an obviously inflated figure, to take us from the airport. Partly, it was a result of her accent. Fifty years in the UK has shaped her speech patterns. She might speak what was formerly known as Serbo-Croat, but languages are not static; she’s missed out on half a century of slang, cultural references, linguistic drift. As she was a teenager when she arrived in the UK, she never wholly lost her accent there either. Visiting Belgrade in later life, watching people’s faces flicker with interest as she spoke, it dawned on her that, wherever she went, her voice always sounded foreign to people. My mother has always stood out. “There’s nowhere in the world where I don’t have an accent,” she would sometimes say, while sipping a glass of rakija—sadly, but with a degree of resignation. “Nowhere where my voice fits.” In the UK, she was a single mother raising a young child on her own and working for low wages; money was a constant source of worry. But in the eyes of her family, she was a wealthy Westerner with her freedoms. My mother had a job; for them, work was hard to come by. She had the luxury of space; they lived in a small apartment. As her family saw it, my mother’s life was one of comfort. But she also struggled. Both of these things were true. Yugoslavia—which consisted of six republics (Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, and Macedonia) and two autonomous provinces (Kosovo and Vojvodina)—is remembered as a bold, socialist utopian experiment. It was a bridge between the East and West, built on principles of “brotherhood and unity.” Its citizens could travel. People from the West holidayed on its islands. But the reality was more complex. Reality always is. The ideals of brotherhood and unity did not extend to Albanian and Roma communities. Soviet sympathisers and dissidents were imprisoned. Marshal Josip Broz Tito, a Yugoslav communist revolutionary, didn’t just lead the country; he bestrode it. Cities were named after him. His image was everywhere. His face was displayed in every home, on every wall. Growing up, I too was familiar with his face: pouchy and stern, with slicked-back hair, his jacket laden with medals. There was a picture of him in the book from which I learned to read the Cyrillic alphabet, staring out at me from the front page. But by the time I was born, Tito was dead, and, in the country he had held together, nationalism and ethnic tensions were on the rise. When Yugoslavia broke apart, it happened in the most brutal way imaginable. From 1992 to 1995, war raged in Bosnia. Tens of thousands died; the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia put the probable death toll at 104,000 and the number of people displaced at over two million. Sarajevo endured the longest siege in modern history, and Srebrenica was the site of the worst genocide to take place in Europe since the Second World War. Then, in 1998, war erupted again in Kosovo—then still part of Serbia, though with a largely Albanian population. This time, the West intervened; in 1999, NATO unleashed airstrikes on Belgrade; during the Bosnian conflict four years earlier, they had resisted taking action. My mother and I watched all this play out on the news every night, sitting on our sofas as newsreaders issued solemn warnings that “viewers may find the following scenes distressing.” They were right. It was terribly hard to watch. There was a strange disconnect in watching this horror from afar, a sheen of unreality. How could this be happening? How could this be true? When we were finally able to return in 1996 and visit family for the first time in five years, we had to cross a border where before there had been none. It was a tense and frightening experience. A man in uniform took one look at my mother’s and my UK passports—documents that grant us an ease of movement not available to the rest of our family—and demanded my mother hand over all the money she had on her for “a visa.” In his eyes, she was an outsider and thus a suitable subject for extortion. My grandparents’ apartment in Bijeljina—in what became the Republika Srpska, the newly created, predominantly Serb entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina—still smelled the way I remembered, of soup and cigarette smoke coupled with the faint bodily aroma that comes when several people share a one-bedroom apartment. But the place had changed in many ways. There was a kind of dazed numbness to people; it clouded the air. My grandparents—a Serb married to a Bosnian Muslim, as was common before the war—had been lucky in many respects. They had survived. They still had their home, but they were not unmarked. No one was. My mother felt shock and grief at what was lost. But she had not lived through it, as they had. The collective trauma was palpable, but she did not share it. She had not been there. Nor was she there for the protests that culminated on October 5, 2000, when thousands of people gathered outside the parliament building in Belgrade to finally force out the Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic; nor was she there in 2002 when the Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic was assassinated, an event that, for many Serbians, extinguished the hope that the country could move forward. My mother was cushioned by distance, protected. I’m not sure I took her talk of moving to Serbia seriously at first. She’d lived in the UK for so long. Though we visited with increasing frequency over the years, she was essentially a tourist. We both were. We did the things that tourists do. We walked round Kalemegdan, the old fortress at the center of the city, overlooking the point where the Danube meets the Sava River. We sought out kafanas serving daunting portions of traditional Serbian food, where the waiters inevitably asked us if we wanted menus in English. It eventually became clear, however, that she was very serious about moving. She started packing up the house she’d lived in for over thirty years, all my life. She stopped saying “if I go” and started saying “when I go.” This wasn’t an idle fancy. The prospect of a quiet retirement in the London suburbs filled her with alarm. She wanted more. She knew she could not time-travel. She knew she could not return to the Yugoslavia of her youth. And yet at the same time, when she finally moved to Belgrade in 2015, she found traces of her old life everywhere she went: the cinema she used to visit with her friends to watch Elvis films, the market she walked past on the way to school. Her younger self haunted the city in which she now lived. Her childhood home in the suburb of Žarkovo was still standing, though the surrounding neighborhood had changed beyond recognition. There were shops and apartment blocks that—though not new by any means, having been built in the 1970s—were new to her. She took me there one afternoon, the taxi driver excitedly peppering his English passengers with questions about Arsenal F. C. and the sitcom Only Fools and Horses. It took her a while to locate the old house, but eventually she did. It had stood still while the city around it had changed. She showed me the garden where her grandmother grew tomatoes and the steps on which she used to sit as a girl. “Do you want to knock?” I asked. “See if they’ll let us in?” My mother considered this for a while and shook her head. She’d seen enough. Some doors are better left closed. Serbia is not an easy country in which to live. Its administration shifts between nationalist bombast and the politics of victimhood. There’s a weariness that comes from living under such a regime. You can see it in people’s faces. It chips away at their spirit. My mother’s been spared some of that, and she’s very aware of the fact. Her friends there all worry about their children’s future in such a country, but these things do not press as heavily on her. There are privileges to displacement. And the waiters in my mother’s local café, the cashiers in the local shops and bakeries, the woman who cuts her hair, they all know her. She is part of a community, perhaps for the first time. “My life is more interesting here,” she observes as she lights a cigarette. They still ask her where she’s from. Sometimes she answers “from here,” and sometimes “from London,” and both these things are true. Natasha is a writer and critic based in London. She writes about theatre and the arts for The Stage, the Guardian, the Independent, Exeunt and Kosovo 2.0 (function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src=" fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); (document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Source link
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by Natasha Tripney (reprinted from Catapult.Co) “There’s nowhere in the world where I don’t have an accent. Nowhere where my voice fits.” My mother My mother’s small, parquet-floored apartment is noisy. It looks out over a busy intersection in Belgrade. When her balcony door is open, her living room fills with the blare of car horns being hammered by impatient drivers. As she chops onions in the kitchen, music bubbles up from the bar downstairs. It is the antithesis of tranquility, but she doesn’t mind one bit. She likes being in the heart of things, being surrounded by the thump and rumble of city life. I’m not sure at what point my mother decided to go back to Belgrade. For months, she would talk about it, as if testing out the idea, seeing how it sounded out loud. But at some point her thinking solidified and, in 2015, she decided to leave England, the country in which she’d spent the entirety of her adult life—half a century—and make a new start in a city she had not lived in since she was a teenager. She knew it would not be easy, that you can never really go “back” anywhere, certainly not after fifty years. This would be true of anywhere, even if the country in which she grew up had not ceased to exist in 1992. My mother was born in Yugoslavia in the 1940s, in the city of Kragujevac. She first lived there, then in the capital city of Belgrade until the 1960s, until her parents’ never-stable marriage finally collapsed. With little notice or warning, at the age of sixteen, she found herself traveling across Europe to live with family in the United Kingdom. Her mother’s parents had been displaced after the Second World War, and, along with many immigrants from the region, they had made a home for themselves in West London, in Notting Hill. My mother did not speak any English. Her knowledge of England was shaped by the books she’d read—by Thomas Hardy and the Brontës. The Notting Hill she arrived in was not the wealthy enclave it is today but a combustible neighborhood in which a number of immigrant communities overlapped. My mother’s family ran a café on Portobello Road, serving a mix of fry-ups to barrow boys from the local market and Yugoslav dishes to those in search of a taste of home. There was a brothel across the street—the women who worked there used to pop in for a coffee—and men would often come by flogging dodgy knockoff jewellery, which my mother’s grandmother, who loved pretty things, was happy to take off their hands. Fights sometimes broke out beneath her window, and she was frightened to venture outside at night. She found her new home overwhelming. The unfamiliar voices, the harsh weather, the mixture of deprivation and abundance. She remembers wandering wide-mouthed around the fashion boutiques with her grandmother, seduced by the beauty of the clothes but also the life they appeared to offer. She became smitten with a deeply impractical purple coat and her grandmother bought it for her. Life got hard for my mother fast. She’d not been in the UK all that long when her mother passed away. Her grandparents followed soon afterward. She found herself alone in a way I have never experienced and struggle to imagine. She met a man, who also had cause to leave his home behind, and though they were incompatible in many ways, they married. They moved away from West London and its Yugoslav community, putting another layer of distance between herself and the country from which she came. Over the years, my mother has learned to navigate the difference between being from a place and being of a place. When we visited family in Bosnia and in Belgrade, she was accustomed to being asked by wary hotel receptionists and curious waiters where she was from and to being smilingly charged twenty-five euros by taxi drivers, an obviously inflated figure, to take us from the airport. Partly, it was a result of her accent. Fifty years in the UK has shaped her speech patterns. She might speak what was formerly known as Serbo-Croat, but languages are not static; she’s missed out on half a century of slang, cultural references, linguistic drift. As she was a teenager when she arrived in the UK, she never wholly lost her accent there either. Visiting Belgrade in later life, watching people’s faces flicker with interest as she spoke, it dawned on her that, wherever she went, her voice always sounded foreign to people. My mother has always stood out. “There’s nowhere in the world where I don’t have an accent,” she would sometimes say, while sipping a glass of rakija—sadly, but with a degree of resignation. “Nowhere where my voice fits.” In the UK, she was a single mother raising a young child on her own and working for low wages; money was a constant source of worry. But in the eyes of her family, she was a wealthy Westerner with her freedoms. My mother had a job; for them, work was hard to come by. She had the luxury of space; they lived in a small apartment. As her family saw it, my mother’s life was one of comfort. But she also struggled. Both of these things were true. Yugoslavia—which consisted of six republics (Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, and Macedonia) and two autonomous provinces (Kosovo and Vojvodina)—is remembered as a bold, socialist utopian experiment. It was a bridge between the East and West, built on principles of “brotherhood and unity.” Its citizens could travel. People from the West holidayed on its islands. But the reality was more complex. Reality always is. The ideals of brotherhood and unity did not extend to Albanian and Roma communities. Soviet sympathisers and dissidents were imprisoned. Marshal Josip Broz Tito, a Yugoslav communist revolutionary, didn’t just lead the country; he bestrode it. Cities were named after him. His image was everywhere. His face was displayed in every home, on every wall. Growing up, I too was familiar with his face: pouchy and stern, with slicked-back hair, his jacket laden with medals. There was a picture of him in the book from which I learned to read the Cyrillic alphabet, staring out at me from the front page. But by the time I was born, Tito was dead, and, in the country he had held together, nationalism and ethnic tensions were on the rise. When Yugoslavia broke apart, it happened in the most brutal way imaginable. From 1992 to 1995, war raged in Bosnia. Tens of thousands died; the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia put the probable death toll at 104,000 and the number of people displaced at over two million. Sarajevo endured the longest siege in modern history, and Srebrenica was the site of the worst genocide to take place in Europe since the Second World War. Then, in 1998, war erupted again in Kosovo—then still part of Serbia, though with a largely Albanian population. This time, the West intervened; in 1999, NATO unleashed airstrikes on Belgrade; during the Bosnian conflict four years earlier, they had resisted taking action. My mother and I watched all this play out on the news every night, sitting on our sofas as newsreaders issued solemn warnings that “viewers may find the following scenes distressing.” They were right. It was terribly hard to watch. There was a strange disconnect in watching this horror from afar, a sheen of unreality. How could this be happening? How could this be true? When we were finally able to return in 1996 and visit family for the first time in five years, we had to cross a border where before there had been none. It was a tense and frightening experience. A man in uniform took one look at my mother’s and my UK passports—documents that grant us an ease of movement not available to the rest of our family—and demanded my mother hand over all the money she had on her for “a visa.” In his eyes, she was an outsider and thus a suitable subject for extortion. My grandparents’ apartment in Bijeljina—in what became the Republika Srpska, the newly created, predominantly Serb entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina—still smelled the way I remembered, of soup and cigarette smoke coupled with the faint bodily aroma that comes when several people share a one-bedroom apartment. But the place had changed in many ways. There was a kind of dazed numbness to people; it clouded the air. My grandparents—a Serb married to a Bosnian Muslim, as was common before the war—had been lucky in many respects. They had survived. They still had their home, but they were not unmarked. No one was. My mother felt shock and grief at what was lost. But she had not lived through it, as they had. The collective trauma was palpable, but she did not share it. She had not been there. Nor was she there for the protests that culminated on October 5, 2000, when thousands of people gathered outside the parliament building in Belgrade to finally force out the Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic; nor was she there in 2002 when the Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic was assassinated, an event that, for many Serbians, extinguished the hope that the country could move forward. My mother was cushioned by distance, protected. I’m not sure I took her talk of moving to Serbia seriously at first. She’d lived in the UK for so long. Though we visited with increasing frequency over the years, she was essentially a tourist. We both were. We did the things that tourists do. We walked round Kalemegdan, the old fortress at the center of the city, overlooking the point where the Danube meets the Sava River. We sought out kafanas serving daunting portions of traditional Serbian food, where the waiters inevitably asked us if we wanted menus in English. It eventually became clear, however, that she was very serious about moving. She started packing up the house she’d lived in for over thirty years, all my life. She stopped saying “if I go” and started saying “when I go.” This wasn’t an idle fancy. The prospect of a quiet retirement in the London suburbs filled her with alarm. She wanted more. She knew she could not time-travel. She knew she could not return to the Yugoslavia of her youth. And yet at the same time, when she finally moved to Belgrade in 2015, she found traces of her old life everywhere she went: the cinema she used to visit with her friends to watch Elvis films, the market she walked past on the way to school. Her younger self haunted the city in which she now lived. Her childhood home in the suburb of Žarkovo was still standing, though the surrounding neighborhood had changed beyond recognition. There were shops and apartment blocks that—though not new by any means, having been built in the 1970s—were new to her. She took me there one afternoon, the taxi driver excitedly peppering his English passengers with questions about Arsenal F. C. and the sitcom Only Fools and Horses. It took her a while to locate the old house, but eventually she did. It had stood still while the city around it had changed. She showed me the garden where her grandmother grew tomatoes and the steps on which she used to sit as a girl. “Do you want to knock?” I asked. “See if they’ll let us in?” My mother considered this for a while and shook her head. She’d seen enough. Some doors are better left closed. Serbia is not an easy country in which to live. Its administration shifts between nationalist bombast and the politics of victimhood. There’s a weariness that comes from living under such a regime. You can see it in people’s faces. It chips away at their spirit. My mother’s been spared some of that, and she’s very aware of the fact. Her friends there all worry about their children’s future in such a country, but these things do not press as heavily on her. There are privileges to displacement. And the waiters in my mother’s local café, the cashiers in the local shops and bakeries, the woman who cuts her hair, they all know her. She is part of a community, perhaps for the first time. “My life is more interesting here,” she observes as she lights a cigarette. They still ask her where she’s from. Sometimes she answers “from here,” and sometimes “from London,” and both these things are true. Natasha is a writer and critic based in London. She writes about theatre and the arts for The Stage, the Guardian, the Independent, Exeunt and Kosovo 2.0 (function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src=" fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); (document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Source link
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by Natasha Tripney (reprinted from Catapult.Co) “There’s nowhere in the world where I don’t have an accent. Nowhere where my voice fits.” My mother My mother’s small, parquet-floored apartment is noisy. It looks out over a busy intersection in Belgrade. When her balcony door is open, her living room fills with the blare of car horns being hammered by impatient drivers. As she chops onions in the kitchen, music bubbles up from the bar downstairs. It is the antithesis of tranquility, but she doesn’t mind one bit. She likes being in the heart of things, being surrounded by the thump and rumble of city life. I’m not sure at what point my mother decided to go back to Belgrade. For months, she would talk about it, as if testing out the idea, seeing how it sounded out loud. But at some point her thinking solidified and, in 2015, she decided to leave England, the country in which she’d spent the entirety of her adult life—half a century—and make a new start in a city she had not lived in since she was a teenager. She knew it would not be easy, that you can never really go “back” anywhere, certainly not after fifty years. This would be true of anywhere, even if the country in which she grew up had not ceased to exist in 1992. My mother was born in Yugoslavia in the 1940s, in the city of Kragujevac. She first lived there, then in the capital city of Belgrade until the 1960s, until her parents’ never-stable marriage finally collapsed. With little notice or warning, at the age of sixteen, she found herself traveling across Europe to live with family in the United Kingdom. Her mother’s parents had been displaced after the Second World War, and, along with many immigrants from the region, they had made a home for themselves in West London, in Notting Hill. My mother did not speak any English. Her knowledge of England was shaped by the books she’d read—by Thomas Hardy and the Brontës. The Notting Hill she arrived in was not the wealthy enclave it is today but a combustible neighborhood in which a number of immigrant communities overlapped. My mother’s family ran a café on Portobello Road, serving a mix of fry-ups to barrow boys from the local market and Yugoslav dishes to those in search of a taste of home. There was a brothel across the street—the women who worked there used to pop in for a coffee—and men would often come by flogging dodgy knockoff jewellery, which my mother’s grandmother, who loved pretty things, was happy to take off their hands. Fights sometimes broke out beneath her window, and she was frightened to venture outside at night. She found her new home overwhelming. The unfamiliar voices, the harsh weather, the mixture of deprivation and abundance. She remembers wandering wide-mouthed around the fashion boutiques with her grandmother, seduced by the beauty of the clothes but also the life they appeared to offer. She became smitten with a deeply impractical purple coat and her grandmother bought it for her. Life got hard for my mother fast. She’d not been in the UK all that long when her mother passed away. Her grandparents followed soon afterward. She found herself alone in a way I have never experienced and struggle to imagine. She met a man, who also had cause to leave his home behind, and though they were incompatible in many ways, they married. They moved away from West London and its Yugoslav community, putting another layer of distance between herself and the country from which she came. Over the years, my mother has learned to navigate the difference between being from a place and being of a place. When we visited family in Bosnia and in Belgrade, she was accustomed to being asked by wary hotel receptionists and curious waiters where she was from and to being smilingly charged twenty-five euros by taxi drivers, an obviously inflated figure, to take us from the airport. Partly, it was a result of her accent. Fifty years in the UK has shaped her speech patterns. She might speak what was formerly known as Serbo-Croat, but languages are not static; she’s missed out on half a century of slang, cultural references, linguistic drift. As she was a teenager when she arrived in the UK, she never wholly lost her accent there either. Visiting Belgrade in later life, watching people’s faces flicker with interest as she spoke, it dawned on her that, wherever she went, her voice always sounded foreign to people. My mother has always stood out. “There’s nowhere in the world where I don’t have an accent,” she would sometimes say, while sipping a glass of rakija—sadly, but with a degree of resignation. “Nowhere where my voice fits.” In the UK, she was a single mother raising a young child on her own and working for low wages; money was a constant source of worry. But in the eyes of her family, she was a wealthy Westerner with her freedoms. My mother had a job; for them, work was hard to come by. She had the luxury of space; they lived in a small apartment. As her family saw it, my mother’s life was one of comfort. But she also struggled. Both of these things were true. Yugoslavia—which consisted of six republics (Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, and Macedonia) and two autonomous provinces (Kosovo and Vojvodina)—is remembered as a bold, socialist utopian experiment. It was a bridge between the East and West, built on principles of “brotherhood and unity.” Its citizens could travel. People from the West holidayed on its islands. But the reality was more complex. Reality always is. The ideals of brotherhood and unity did not extend to Albanian and Roma communities. Soviet sympathisers and dissidents were imprisoned. Marshal Josip Broz Tito, a Yugoslav communist revolutionary, didn’t just lead the country; he bestrode it. Cities were named after him. His image was everywhere. His face was displayed in every home, on every wall. Growing up, I too was familiar with his face: pouchy and stern, with slicked-back hair, his jacket laden with medals. There was a picture of him in the book from which I learned to read the Cyrillic alphabet, staring out at me from the front page. But by the time I was born, Tito was dead, and, in the country he had held together, nationalism and ethnic tensions were on the rise. When Yugoslavia broke apart, it happened in the most brutal way imaginable. From 1992 to 1995, war raged in Bosnia. Tens of thousands died; the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia put the probable death toll at 104,000 and the number of people displaced at over two million. Sarajevo endured the longest siege in modern history, and Srebrenica was the site of the worst genocide to take place in Europe since the Second World War. Then, in 1998, war erupted again in Kosovo—then still part of Serbia, though with a largely Albanian population. This time, the West intervened; in 1999, NATO unleashed airstrikes on Belgrade; during the Bosnian conflict four years earlier, they had resisted taking action. My mother and I watched all this play out on the news every night, sitting on our sofas as newsreaders issued solemn warnings that “viewers may find the following scenes distressing.” They were right. It was terribly hard to watch. There was a strange disconnect in watching this horror from afar, a sheen of unreality. How could this be happening? How could this be true? When we were finally able to return in 1996 and visit family for the first time in five years, we had to cross a border where before there had been none. It was a tense and frightening experience. A man in uniform took one look at my mother’s and my UK passports—documents that grant us an ease of movement not available to the rest of our family—and demanded my mother hand over all the money she had on her for “a visa.” In his eyes, she was an outsider and thus a suitable subject for extortion. My grandparents’ apartment in Bijeljina—in what became the Republika Srpska, the newly created, predominantly Serb entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina—still smelled the way I remembered, of soup and cigarette smoke coupled with the faint bodily aroma that comes when several people share a one-bedroom apartment. But the place had changed in many ways. There was a kind of dazed numbness to people; it clouded the air. My grandparents—a Serb married to a Bosnian Muslim, as was common before the war—had been lucky in many respects. They had survived. They still had their home, but they were not unmarked. No one was. My mother felt shock and grief at what was lost. But she had not lived through it, as they had. The collective trauma was palpable, but she did not share it. She had not been there. Nor was she there for the protests that culminated on October 5, 2000, when thousands of people gathered outside the parliament building in Belgrade to finally force out the Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic; nor was she there in 2002 when the Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic was assassinated, an event that, for many Serbians, extinguished the hope that the country could move forward. My mother was cushioned by distance, protected. I’m not sure I took her talk of moving to Serbia seriously at first. She’d lived in the UK for so long. Though we visited with increasing frequency over the years, she was essentially a tourist. We both were. We did the things that tourists do. We walked round Kalemegdan, the old fortress at the center of the city, overlooking the point where the Danube meets the Sava River. We sought out kafanas serving daunting portions of traditional Serbian food, where the waiters inevitably asked us if we wanted menus in English. It eventually became clear, however, that she was very serious about moving. She started packing up the house she’d lived in for over thirty years, all my life. She stopped saying “if I go” and started saying “when I go.” This wasn’t an idle fancy. The prospect of a quiet retirement in the London suburbs filled her with alarm. She wanted more. She knew she could not time-travel. She knew she could not return to the Yugoslavia of her youth. And yet at the same time, when she finally moved to Belgrade in 2015, she found traces of her old life everywhere she went: the cinema she used to visit with her friends to watch Elvis films, the market she walked past on the way to school. Her younger self haunted the city in which she now lived. Her childhood home in the suburb of Žarkovo was still standing, though the surrounding neighborhood had changed beyond recognition. There were shops and apartment blocks that—though not new by any means, having been built in the 1970s—were new to her. She took me there one afternoon, the taxi driver excitedly peppering his English passengers with questions about Arsenal F. C. and the sitcom Only Fools and Horses. It took her a while to locate the old house, but eventually she did. It had stood still while the city around it had changed. She showed me the garden where her grandmother grew tomatoes and the steps on which she used to sit as a girl. “Do you want to knock?” I asked. “See if they’ll let us in?” My mother considered this for a while and shook her head. She’d seen enough. Some doors are better left closed. Serbia is not an easy country in which to live. Its administration shifts between nationalist bombast and the politics of victimhood. There’s a weariness that comes from living under such a regime. You can see it in people’s faces. It chips away at their spirit. My mother’s been spared some of that, and she’s very aware of the fact. Her friends there all worry about their children’s future in such a country, but these things do not press as heavily on her. There are privileges to displacement. And the waiters in my mother’s local café, the cashiers in the local shops and bakeries, the woman who cuts her hair, they all know her. She is part of a community, perhaps for the first time. “My life is more interesting here,” she observes as she lights a cigarette. They still ask her where she’s from. Sometimes she answers “from here,” and sometimes “from London,” and both these things are true. Natasha is a writer and critic based in London. She writes about theatre and the arts for The Stage, the Guardian, the Independent, Exeunt and Kosovo 2.0 (function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src=" fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); (document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Source link
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by Natasha Tripney (reprinted from Catapult.Co) “There’s nowhere in the world where I don’t have an accent. Nowhere where my voice fits.” My mother My mother’s small, parquet-floored apartment is noisy. It looks out over a busy intersection in Belgrade. When her balcony door is open, her living room fills with the blare of car horns being hammered by impatient drivers. As she chops onions in the kitchen, music bubbles up from the bar downstairs. It is the antithesis of tranquility, but she doesn’t mind one bit. She likes being in the heart of things, being surrounded by the thump and rumble of city life. I’m not sure at what point my mother decided to go back to Belgrade. For months, she would talk about it, as if testing out the idea, seeing how it sounded out loud. But at some point her thinking solidified and, in 2015, she decided to leave England, the country in which she’d spent the entirety of her adult life—half a century—and make a new start in a city she had not lived in since she was a teenager. She knew it would not be easy, that you can never really go “back” anywhere, certainly not after fifty years. This would be true of anywhere, even if the country in which she grew up had not ceased to exist in 1992. My mother was born in Yugoslavia in the 1940s, in the city of Kragujevac. She first lived there, then in the capital city of Belgrade until the 1960s, until her parents’ never-stable marriage finally collapsed. With little notice or warning, at the age of sixteen, she found herself traveling across Europe to live with family in the United Kingdom. Her mother’s parents had been displaced after the Second World War, and, along with many immigrants from the region, they had made a home for themselves in West London, in Notting Hill. My mother did not speak any English. Her knowledge of England was shaped by the books she’d read—by Thomas Hardy and the Brontës. The Notting Hill she arrived in was not the wealthy enclave it is today but a combustible neighborhood in which a number of immigrant communities overlapped. My mother’s family ran a café on Portobello Road, serving a mix of fry-ups to barrow boys from the local market and Yugoslav dishes to those in search of a taste of home. There was a brothel across the street—the women who worked there used to pop in for a coffee—and men would often come by flogging dodgy knockoff jewellery, which my mother’s grandmother, who loved pretty things, was happy to take off their hands. Fights sometimes broke out beneath her window, and she was frightened to venture outside at night. She found her new home overwhelming. The unfamiliar voices, the harsh weather, the mixture of deprivation and abundance. She remembers wandering wide-mouthed around the fashion boutiques with her grandmother, seduced by the beauty of the clothes but also the life they appeared to offer. She became smitten with a deeply impractical purple coat and her grandmother bought it for her. Life got hard for my mother fast. She’d not been in the UK all that long when her mother passed away. Her grandparents followed soon afterward. She found herself alone in a way I have never experienced and struggle to imagine. She met a man, who also had cause to leave his home behind, and though they were incompatible in many ways, they married. They moved away from West London and its Yugoslav community, putting another layer of distance between herself and the country from which she came. Over the years, my mother has learned to navigate the difference between being from a place and being of a place. When we visited family in Bosnia and in Belgrade, she was accustomed to being asked by wary hotel receptionists and curious waiters where she was from and to being smilingly charged twenty-five euros by taxi drivers, an obviously inflated figure, to take us from the airport. Partly, it was a result of her accent. Fifty years in the UK has shaped her speech patterns. She might speak what was formerly known as Serbo-Croat, but languages are not static; she’s missed out on half a century of slang, cultural references, linguistic drift. As she was a teenager when she arrived in the UK, she never wholly lost her accent there either. Visiting Belgrade in later life, watching people’s faces flicker with interest as she spoke, it dawned on her that, wherever she went, her voice always sounded foreign to people. My mother has always stood out. “There’s nowhere in the world where I don’t have an accent,” she would sometimes say, while sipping a glass of rakija—sadly, but with a degree of resignation. “Nowhere where my voice fits.” In the UK, she was a single mother raising a young child on her own and working for low wages; money was a constant source of worry. But in the eyes of her family, she was a wealthy Westerner with her freedoms. My mother had a job; for them, work was hard to come by. She had the luxury of space; they lived in a small apartment. As her family saw it, my mother’s life was one of comfort. But she also struggled. Both of these things were true. Yugoslavia—which consisted of six republics (Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, and Macedonia) and two autonomous provinces (Kosovo and Vojvodina)—is remembered as a bold, socialist utopian experiment. It was a bridge between the East and West, built on principles of “brotherhood and unity.” Its citizens could travel. People from the West holidayed on its islands. But the reality was more complex. Reality always is. The ideals of brotherhood and unity did not extend to Albanian and Roma communities. Soviet sympathisers and dissidents were imprisoned. Marshal Josip Broz Tito, a Yugoslav communist revolutionary, didn’t just lead the country; he bestrode it. Cities were named after him. His image was everywhere. His face was displayed in every home, on every wall. Growing up, I too was familiar with his face: pouchy and stern, with slicked-back hair, his jacket laden with medals. There was a picture of him in the book from which I learned to read the Cyrillic alphabet, staring out at me from the front page. But by the time I was born, Tito was dead, and, in the country he had held together, nationalism and ethnic tensions were on the rise. When Yugoslavia broke apart, it happened in the most brutal way imaginable. From 1992 to 1995, war raged in Bosnia. Tens of thousands died; the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia put the probable death toll at 104,000 and the number of people displaced at over two million. Sarajevo endured the longest siege in modern history, and Srebrenica was the site of the worst genocide to take place in Europe since the Second World War. Then, in 1998, war erupted again in Kosovo—then still part of Serbia, though with a largely Albanian population. This time, the West intervened; in 1999, NATO unleashed airstrikes on Belgrade; during the Bosnian conflict four years earlier, they had resisted taking action. My mother and I watched all this play out on the news every night, sitting on our sofas as newsreaders issued solemn warnings that “viewers may find the following scenes distressing.” They were right. It was terribly hard to watch. There was a strange disconnect in watching this horror from afar, a sheen of unreality. How could this be happening? How could this be true? When we were finally able to return in 1996 and visit family for the first time in five years, we had to cross a border where before there had been none. It was a tense and frightening experience. A man in uniform took one look at my mother’s and my UK passports—documents that grant us an ease of movement not available to the rest of our family—and demanded my mother hand over all the money she had on her for “a visa.” In his eyes, she was an outsider and thus a suitable subject for extortion. My grandparents’ apartment in Bijeljina—in what became the Republika Srpska, the newly created, predominantly Serb entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina—still smelled the way I remembered, of soup and cigarette smoke coupled with the faint bodily aroma that comes when several people share a one-bedroom apartment. But the place had changed in many ways. There was a kind of dazed numbness to people; it clouded the air. My grandparents—a Serb married to a Bosnian Muslim, as was common before the war—had been lucky in many respects. They had survived. They still had their home, but they were not unmarked. No one was. My mother felt shock and grief at what was lost. But she had not lived through it, as they had. The collective trauma was palpable, but she did not share it. She had not been there. Nor was she there for the protests that culminated on October 5, 2000, when thousands of people gathered outside the parliament building in Belgrade to finally force out the Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic; nor was she there in 2002 when the Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic was assassinated, an event that, for many Serbians, extinguished the hope that the country could move forward. My mother was cushioned by distance, protected. I’m not sure I took her talk of moving to Serbia seriously at first. She’d lived in the UK for so long. Though we visited with increasing frequency over the years, she was essentially a tourist. We both were. We did the things that tourists do. We walked round Kalemegdan, the old fortress at the center of the city, overlooking the point where the Danube meets the Sava River. We sought out kafanas serving daunting portions of traditional Serbian food, where the waiters inevitably asked us if we wanted menus in English. It eventually became clear, however, that she was very serious about moving. She started packing up the house she’d lived in for over thirty years, all my life. She stopped saying “if I go” and started saying “when I go.” This wasn’t an idle fancy. The prospect of a quiet retirement in the London suburbs filled her with alarm. She wanted more. She knew she could not time-travel. She knew she could not return to the Yugoslavia of her youth. And yet at the same time, when she finally moved to Belgrade in 2015, she found traces of her old life everywhere she went: the cinema she used to visit with her friends to watch Elvis films, the market she walked past on the way to school. Her younger self haunted the city in which she now lived. Her childhood home in the suburb of Žarkovo was still standing, though the surrounding neighborhood had changed beyond recognition. There were shops and apartment blocks that—though not new by any means, having been built in the 1970s—were new to her. She took me there one afternoon, the taxi driver excitedly peppering his English passengers with questions about Arsenal F. C. and the sitcom Only Fools and Horses. It took her a while to locate the old house, but eventually she did. It had stood still while the city around it had changed. She showed me the garden where her grandmother grew tomatoes and the steps on which she used to sit as a girl. “Do you want to knock?” I asked. “See if they’ll let us in?” My mother considered this for a while and shook her head. She’d seen enough. Some doors are better left closed. Serbia is not an easy country in which to live. Its administration shifts between nationalist bombast and the politics of victimhood. There’s a weariness that comes from living under such a regime. You can see it in people’s faces. It chips away at their spirit. My mother’s been spared some of that, and she’s very aware of the fact. Her friends there all worry about their children’s future in such a country, but these things do not press as heavily on her. There are privileges to displacement. And the waiters in my mother’s local café, the cashiers in the local shops and bakeries, the woman who cuts her hair, they all know her. She is part of a community, perhaps for the first time. “My life is more interesting here,” she observes as she lights a cigarette. They still ask her where she’s from. Sometimes she answers “from here,” and sometimes “from London,” and both these things are true. Natasha is a writer and critic based in London. She writes about theatre and the arts for The Stage, the Guardian, the Independent, Exeunt and Kosovo 2.0 (function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src=" fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); (document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Source link
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I'm so behind on tag games, so thank you @katierosefun @giggles-and-freckles @indigostars for tagging me!! (At least I think you tagged me....if you didn't, consider yourself tagged, or considering me giving u a hug and saying hello)
What book are you currently reading?
I have very slowly been making my way through Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari, and the Spanish edition of Ghosts by Reina Telgmier!
What’s your favourite movie you saw in theatres this year?
Hmm, I think A Man Called Otto/Ove might be the only one I've seen in the theater this year! It was very good, I cried a TON, oh god
What do you usually wear?
If I'm not going anywhere, shorts and a tshirt! If I'm going out, I wear a lot of casual dresses and high waisted shorts/crop top combos. When I'm working, it's a lot of dresses and dress pants (but they have to be dress pants I don't mind sitting on the floor/moving/spilling paint on lol)
How tall are you?
5'10" !! I am the height of a baby giraffe
What’s your star sign? Do you share a birthday with a celebrity or a historical event?
Aries! And hmm I'm sure I do, but not that I know of off the top of my head
Do you go by your name or a nickname?
My name! I always wanted to be a nickname person as a kid, but just never really did
Did you grow up to become what you wanted to be when you were a child?
Definitely no lol, I wanted to be singer for the longest time, and then a veterinarian, and then an astronaut,,,,,all the standard things kids find cool
And I've always wanted to be a writer, and I guess that part is true, though maybe not in the way childhood me wanted, since my published writing is mostly academic articles lol.
Are you in a relationship? If not, who is your crush if you have one?
I've been dating a really awesome person, and I'm really happy :')
what’s something you’re good at vs something you’re bad at?
Something I'm good at: public speaking
Something I'm bad at: keeping my space (ie room, car, desk, house) organized in any way
dogs or cats?
Cats!
if you draw/write, or create in any way, what’s your favorite picture/favorite line/favorite etc. from something you created this year?
For some reason, I cried when I wrote the last sentence in this little paragraph from In Another Life:
The vision of Anakin swims before him. This man he should’ve never gotten to know, but did. They are saying goodbye without saying it. And yet, Obi-Wan knows that it isn’t really. For he has walked among universes where Anakin is good and where he is alive, he has seen galaxies filled with light and freedom, he has faced the unimaginable and seen what could’ve been if things were different. If in his own, the universe despairs, Obi-Wan takes comfort in this—the knowing that there are infinite universes out there in which things are better. Where the people you love, even if they leave you in the ways you know, are still there.
what is something that you’d like to create content for?
Hmm, I've been thinking a lot about my original writing recently actually! As far as fic goes, I've thought about writing for Manifest which I just finished, but honestly, I'm kinda at a point where I just love writing SW fic bc it's easy? And fic for me is a fun hobby, I like it to be easy lol, and then I can save my sweat for my original work. But I have thought about writing for Manifest, or Bly Manor—I even started a bly manor fic I never finished, so you never know!
what’s something you’re currently obsessed with?
@katierosefun has sucked me into leverage if we're talking TV shows, but also I've been very into roller skating recently, and learning how to cook!
what’s something you were excited about that turned out to be disappointing this year?
Starting my masters, unfortunately. There have been good parts of it, and in the end it will be worth having done it, but overall I'm just not extremely happy there, and the experience hasn't been what I've expected. But it's all experience, and I am lucky for the good parts I've had.
what’s a hidden talent of yours?
I can tap dance! I have two pairs of tap shoes, and I took lessons bc the YMCA offered them for free to college students when I was like 19, so I learned!
are you religious?
I don't know. I think the only time I feel religious is when I sing. Otherwise, idk, there's a lot of religion-related hurt that I haven't really sorted through.
what’s something you wish to have at this moment?
Some normal sleep! For some reason I've had such a hard time sleeping for the past week or so, and the air conditioner has been broken for about a week also, so I've just done a lot of....laying in bed....sweating profusely....not sleeping...
Tagging: @lightasthesun @pandora15 @tessiete @starwarsite
Tag Game To Better Know You
I have been tagged in so many things by so many of you lovely people in the midst of my sorta-hiatus and I would break the internet if I tried to catch up...but I like this one because it feels like a good little re-intro into the Tumblr world. :-)
What book are you currently reading?
The Writing Revolution...I can't in good conscience recommend it unless you also happen to find yourself as a teacher trying to capture teenagers' imaginations and get them to produce complete sentences! Hahahaha. Miserable toil.
What’s your favourite movie you saw in theatres this year?
Ooh, this one's easy--The Little Mermaid!! I have seen it with my family twice and then with my friends once. (I felt a little freer to lust after Prince Eric when my husband and two children weren't sitting there with me...)
What do you usually wear?
These days, some form of athleisure. During the school year, I've been told my teacher style is "Jessica Day if she didn't care so much" and...that about sums it up.
How tall are you?
5′5″ AND A HALF (alternatively: taller than @stolen-pen-name23 which is all that truly matters in this world)
What’s your star sign? Do you share a birthday with a celebrity or a historical event?
Cancer...I think? Malala Yousafzai and Henry David Thoreau!
Do you go by your name or a nickname?
Most folks IRL call me Abigail. It's just my brothers, husband, and you guys who call me Abi!
Did you grow up to become what you wanted to be when you were a child?
Absolutely not. I wanted to be a lawyer my entire life. My undergrad was pre-law and then life had other plans for me and now I'm teaching 8th grade American History. And LOVING IT. I start grad school in the fall and I'll be getting my Principal's Certification with that, so I suppose I'm in this education world for the long haul.
Are you in a relationship? If not, who is your crush if you have one?
I am tragically married. Sorry to all interested parties!
What’s something you’re good at vs. something you’re bad at?
I'm fairly good with piano and singing. I'm terrible at cooking.
Dogs or cats?
Dogs forever and ever!
If you draw/write, or create in any way, what’s your favourite picture/favourite line/favourite etc. from something you created this year?
Oh my. I haven't written as much as I'd like to this year (although I'm hoping to post something before the weekend!!) so I'm choosing to interpret this as the last 12 months. Maybe this bit from walking by her side, talking by her side, have pity?
He holds out his hand, wondering if she’ll bare touching him. “Goodbye, Leia.”
She is not a girl of gentleness—this, he can tell. But she accepts the hand like she’s afraid to shatter it. “Goodbye.”
“Saying my name won’t hurt you, you know,” he says, refusing to be the first to let go.
“Remind me?”
He rolls his eyes. “Anakin Skywalker.”
“Skywalker, you said?” she echoes, and lets their hands fall between them. She opens the door and smiles teasingly at him, tilting her head. “Interesting. That was my father’s name.”
What’s something you’d like to create content for?
I think I'm forever stuck in my prequels hell!
What’s something you’re currently obsessed with?
Ur mom. Okay...sorry. Ahem. I've been sewing more lately. I used ot dabble in high school, but I'm finding more motivation to make things for my toddler than I did to make things for myself.
What’s something you were excited about that turned out to be disappointing this year?
The weather recently! It was supposed to rain the past couple weeks and we've not gotten much more than a few minutes of sprinkling. I looooove rainy days, so that's bummed me out quite a bit.
What’s a hidden talent of yours?
I'm excellent at whistling. It's completely useless, but I'll get compared to a Disney princess occasionally, so I guess that's something.
Are you religious?
Yes. My faith is very important to me, but it's *my* faith, so I don't feel the need to bring it up with strangers unless asked about it. (Crazy concept, right?)
What’s something you wish to have at this moment?
A cuppa tea...so I think I'll go put the kettle on byeeeee
No pressure tags: @pandora15 @stolen-pen-name23 @tessiete @ilonga @kckenobi & anyone who wants to join in the fun!
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Hiiii love could you maybe do a Harry one shot where the readers a diabetic and when she’s out one day there’s a toxic fan saying stuff to her like “Harry shouldn’t have to take care of you” and “Harry shouldn’t be dating a disabled person” and stuff like that? I’m a diabetic and I get really insecure sometimes if you don’t want to it’s fine hope you have a good day/night :)
A/N: Alright babe I tried my best and I don't know a lot about the problem so I just winged it with Google I'm sorry if there are any inaccuracies. Also you don't need to get insecure darling, diseases happen they don't define who you are. Besides Harry has asthma doubt he's one to judge
Pairing: Harry Styles x reader
Word Count: Close to 1k
TW: None except curse words and talks about diabetes
My eyes droop as I finish washing my hands in the mall toilet. Even though I’ve just been out shopping for an hour, I feel like I could drop dead any second now. I was in a reasonably good state when I woke up today, so I decided to go out and treat myself to a day of shopping which is turning out to not be such a good idea. Besides the fatigue and weakness, my day has been pretty great. I slightly stumble out of the bathroom with a blurry vision, apologising to the woman I bumped into.
Fucking diabetes. It's been years since I was diagnosed, but it most definitely hasn’t been easy. The constant tiredness, mood swings and all are just a bit more manageable with Harry, who’s unfortunately not here with me today. My boyfriend of 3 years is in LA and won’t be returning for another week, so here I am trying to occupy myself.
I’m waiting for my coffee in the food court when I hear them, these two girls pointing and whispering at me like I didn’t notice. I paid them no mind and instead sat down quickly, gulping from my water bottle.
They’re just a couple of tables back, and somehow, through all the bustle of the floor, I can hear them clearly.
“Isn’t that Harry’s girlfriend? Jesus, look at her.” “Yeah, like she’s all bones.” They snicker to themselves at that comment as tears sheen over my eyes.
“I heard she’s a diabetic. Can you believe it? A fucking diabetic, and Harry Styles is with her.” “Proper burden she must be. My gran had diabetes; it was so hard to take care of her. Imagine how much poor Harry must be struggling.” “He’s so perfect. Why the fuck is he even dating a disabled person?” With that, I shakily get up and rush out of the door. Screw the damn coffee.
Having other people confirm my fears, just how much trouble I was to someone I loved dearly, hurt, to say the least. I knew better than to get caught up in the words of 2 teenage girls who knew jack shit about me, but that, mixed with my rising insecurities, was affecting me badly without Harry. He wouldn’t have let them get to me if he was here. But he wasn’t.
As I sit in my car, tears have started to go down my face. My unsteady hands dial Harry’s number, which rings until it goes to voicemail. I keep trying, but it keeps going to voicemail. Great, he isn't even picking up my phone. Did he suddenly realise how much of a burden I was?
I couldn’t watch a movie with Harry properly because of having to go to the toilet repeatedly, always having to carry a water bottle around, couldn’t go anywhere without insulin, I was constantly losing more weight than I needed to, always weak and tired. What more reason does somebody need to stop tolerating me?
Trying my best to hold myself together until I reach home, I practice everything Harry taught me to reduce my chances of having an anxiety attack. That’ll just tire me out more.
Once I pull up to the driveway, I race inside, giving no fucks about the bags in the car. My body collapses onto the sofa in the living room, heaving with thick sobs.
Why do their words hurt so much? They shouldn’t. I shouldn’t be so weak, I should be strong enough to pay them no mind, but I’m not.
I don’t hear the front door opening or the bags dropping on the floor as I cry. I don’t register him until his tattooed arms are wrapped around my trembling frame, and his smooth voice is whispering in my ears.
Harry tugs me onto his lap, completely enveloping me with his warmth.
“Hey mi amore, what’s wrong, hmm? Why’s my sweet girl crying like this? Came home early to surprise you, and you surprised me instead.”
I giggle softly at him as the waterworks gradually cease.
Harry’s green eyes peer at me fondly but sternly enough to tell me I’m not getting out of this by saying ‘nothing’, but I know he’s not gonna push me too much if I don’t want to talk about it. He understands I have trouble opening up and talking about my feeling. It’s been three years, and I just love him more for it every day.
I sniffle into his sweater, quietly breathing him in.
“I-I went to the mall today for some shopping. I was bored, so I thought, why not.” He gently smiles at me as an encouragement to continue. “It was good. It was pretty good except a few things, the tiredness and all you know. I went up to the food court to get a coffee, and there were these two girls a couple tables back. They were talking. Said you shouldn’t have to date a disabled person like me and that you shouldn’t be obliged to take care of me and all my burdens-”
“You didn’t believe them, did you, sunflower?”
A finger tilts my chin to look him in the eyes when I don’t answer
“Baby it's for me to decide what I should or shouldn’t do and loving you’s my antidote, lovie. Wouldn’t give that for the world.”
“You’re gonna make me cry now.”
Harry just laughs and tucks me into himself further.
“A disease you have doesn’t define you who are, darling. Besides those are happy tears aren’t they?”
#harry styles#harry styles x reader#harry styles x reader fluff#harry styles imagines#harry styles one shot#harry styles smut#harry styles fic recs#harry styles angst#reader#harry styles x reader smut
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Child!reader being adopted by spy x family characters Pt. 2
As I said in the previous part, these adoption headcanons are really specific, including your hypothetical pronouns and name; these two are extra so you can imagine yourself with your name and desired gender. You can ask for less specific headcanons if you want too. Part 1 here
Enjoy!
Sylvia Sherwood
How you met
She carries the responsibility of WISE, she needs to be committed to it. More than ever now that the peace was threatened every day by those who wanted war to arise again
She missed her family, but she overcame it. Just like the HQ she had to be impenetrable
At least, that's what she thought
Because right in front of her there was the question which answers she wanted to hear. A kid.
It would be normal to see one if she wasn't at the HQ
It didn't help no one knew there was a kid there until you spoke up
The camera system didn't record you and there wasn't any entrance to the agency that had been forced. You weren't any employee's kid either
After scolding them and order to search your parents she met you again
"Hello little one. May I ask you how did you get in here?"
You smiled, seeming to have been waiting her to ask
"Because I like to play and explore! And I'm really good at hide and seek"
Sylvia raised an eyebrow. No matter how well someone was good at hiding there was no way you could break into the HQ; it sounded surrealistic
"But how did you find this place?"
"Because it was easy to find"
"Don't you think you could end bad breaking into unknown places?"
"If I don't know what isthis place how I'd know that?"
Fair enough
That conversation wasn't going anywhere, yet she was angrier with the security staff than you. You didn't look worried though
You gave her an idea
"Do you want to play with me?"
Both entered in the nearest police station, she talked with the officers before telling you to count until 1000 while she was going to hide. You started the count facing a wall
She felt bad, but there were some traffickers she had to catch before they made the exchange
She was following their car; everything fine until she believed to see a small hand greeting her from the car's trunk
She returned to the police station to find out that moments later of her departure you disappeared without anyone realizing. She went to the point where the delivery would be made
Outside the abandoned warehouse there was no signal that you were there until she saw you getting out from under the car on the other side
Something caused a shooting that would make the police come and caught her at any moment. The bands kept shooting at each other while you were behind a transport container
"What were you thinking?! I told you to stay with the police!"
"I'm sorry, I counted until I know, then I saw you following the car, so I followed too. But before they caught me I hid in there...I'm sorry..." You pulled out a walkie-talkie
"I got two from the police station. I left one in there so the others thought the guys of that car were betraying them, it should have worked to scape with no bad guys seeing us"
She was impressed. However, there was no time to ask where you learn that from
Analyzing the situation the principal scape was blocked, fortunately they hadn't noticed you yet so–
You pulled her shirt, pointing somewhere else
"Let's get out"
General headcanons
Sylvia was still surprised that your plan of exiting through a rear window she hadn't seen and walk away without hurry could work
She stopped walking to watch you smash the walkie-talkie and take out some matches to burn it
"Now they can't find footprints!"
The police may not get answers about it but she had many questions for you
She lied to you about the HQ, after the shooting her lie was on the floor. Thenceforth Sylvia's not able to tell if you were playing along and keeping her secret or you have no idea what's all about
You thought her name was Handler. When you knew she was called Sylvia Sherwood you pointed your hoody logo and say "S of Super, you're superman–Superwoman!"
That's how she begun to be mistaken with an endearing mother and her son. She was superwoman and you "kid", because you said that's how you were called, along with child, shrimp, demon...
"That's unacceptable". She handed you lists of names to choose, unfortunately no one convinced you
It wasn't until you two went to a jewelry store that you found the name
The casual way you break in HQ when you want still frustrates her, how do you do it?? You don't see big deal though
Fullmetal lady didn't remember how tough was motherhood
Anyone would freak out if they found out about spies. Yet there you are, admiring flying guys in underpants
Sylvia asked you about your family, but you always tell the same: you lived with dad until he left you with a woman that he said was your mom
The Handler found out your father is a repeat offender, currently on a maximum security prison in another country. Both him and the woman without offspring legally
"Please, don't tell me one of his criminal records is jailbreaking"
The informant doubted "Actually, that's the main one"
"..."
The Forgers
Scenario where it's up to both of them to adopt you. To keep Loid's mental sanity safe it will be independent of the timeline where Yor has a kid on her own, feel free to imagine both kids being Anya's siblings at the same time. You can ask me to include that idea if I write more about this
How you met
As I said before Twilight wouldn't adopt anyone due his job, only one kid for Operation Strix and that was Anya. For now Yor didn't want more kids, she loves Anya and that's enough for them
Not for Anya. She wanted a little sibling
All started talking with Becky when Damian mentioned his brother. Back at home she brought the topic and neither Pa or Ma were giving her an answer of where babies come from
That's when she begun to feel like being a sister. Any plan helped her to convince her parents though
Anya remembered something Mr Henderson told them. "If you want something, take it into your own hands"
And she took it too seriously
Next day Anya and Bond disappeared, she was in the dogs park with Yor
While Mrs Forger panicked Anya had returned to the place she met Twilight
As the time passed the Forgers worried more. When they found Anya and Bond at their building's door they felt relieved
Your presence didn't make things better
They asked Anya where she had been and where did you come from. She said she adopted you
Of course Anya wasn't going to say she broke into an orphanage and took you
Loid's scolding made you cry
"Anya, we aren't adopting–"
"If she's not my sister I won't go to school ever again!!"
"Just for a trial period" that's what Loid hoped
General headcanons
Loid thought babies were easy because it's unnecessary (more impossible) communication with a living being that can't talk; after all babies only have basic needs. He was wrong
It would be easier if you could talk. Why are you crying? You have eaten! Are you sad? Cold? You dislike him?
Yor is not better either. Because her parents died when Yuri was a kid Yor didn't have experience with changing diapers, or anything related with babies
She was more scared than Loid to the point she didn't want to hold you. She broke Yuri's ribs with a hug when he was a toddler, what if she kills you with few contact?
In less than 24 hours you already had a crib and all kinds of things a baby would need. However, having three bedrooms and parents sleeping in separate rooms meant all your things ended in Anya's room
You cried at night until they discovered you calmed down when Anya let you a plushie to hug
She can't wait for the day pa and ma share bed to take back her bedroom
The second night Anya had an idea
Ma is scared of being your mom, solution? Leave you in her bed while Yor is asleep imagining that would work
Thanks God Yor doesn't move much when sleeping. On the other hand Yor is a light sleeper due not being used to sleep with someone so she woke up minutes later
She almost jump out of the bed, realizing that would make you cry made her contain. You groaned, did she wake you up? Yor wasn't sure of holding you, instead she laid down again and approached you to her chest
Seeing you so peaceful by her side melted her, thinking about it you looked a bit like her and Loid.. She blushed at the embarrassing thought
Bold of them to not imagine that's why Anya chose you
In the morning Loid discovered what happened and had a little words with Anya during breakfast before she went to school
Yor went to work and he decided to take a day off from his work to spend the morning with you. The Handler said the first days you should see them to recognize faces
Walks with Bond, buying toys, trying to teach you sign language...Normal stuff
Loid is glad you don't do anything but sleep and eat, except your obsession with munching. When you first kissed Yor he found it normal until you munched her cheek and now you do that to everyone; probably you're teething
Yor found it really cute, but you shouldn't go kissing and chewing cheeks. Anya thinks is funny just don't try to chew her hair again please
Another problem came with names. Loid was going through a list of 850 names in alphabetical order, meanings included; Yor didn't take it to the extreme
"Hum, what about Rose? I think it's a cute name, I mean it's both decision and I'm not good with names Loid–"
Welcome to the family Rose
A spy, an assassin, a telepath and... Well, a baby. Seems like a good mix
Yor Briar
As we know Twilight only would adopt for Operation Strix's sake. Yor became mother by marrying Loid, but what if she had already a kid before being Mrs Forger?
Inspired by this post of @say-seira
How you met
Long ago before Twilight adopted the identity of Loid Forger, the Briars moved to a flat in Berlint
While the eldest sibling had recently become an adult Yuri was only a kid, Yor decided to move to the city so he had nearer his school. It was possible due her proper salary as Thorn Princess
This change would make her job easier too. She had a new client which death could pay Yuri's entrance to a good university
There was a politician who negotiated with terrorists, helping them to get into Ostania and providing them with weapons in exchange to gain good propaganda abroad and getting rid of competition
Knowing this was enough to make Yor's blood boil. He deserved to die, she was sure of it
Struggling with the security around him, Yor finally killed the target without leaving trace
The only inconvenience was a bad injury made by a bullet that she received. After removing the bullet the wound got worse
She went to the hospital to avoid an infection. In the waiting room she met a kind lady, Yor swore that she had seen her before
The woman was scared, but Yor reassured her she will wait her
While Yor was attended the girl was taken to another room. As she promised, Yor waited in the hall after her wound was treated; with a buttoned medical gown on because she didn't want to attract more attention due the bandaged wound in sight
Time passed and many people enter and exit from the room, but she didn't. A nurse carrying something mistook her for one of the staff and scolded her for standing there
"Here, take the baby to the nursery"
"Me? But— wait! What about the woman? Is she okay?"
From afar she heard the answer, but before Yor could explain the error the woman had left. She was shocked, how? She seemed fine
Against her will the dark-haired looked at the lump she was holding: rosy cheeks babbling in dreams, you were in peace
Her shock grew when she saw you shared the username that the man she killed had. That's why the woman was familiar: she was the politician's daughter
Yor searched someone who hand the baby when she recognized the doctor that guided the woman to the room, he was talking with a masked nurse
The fact they went to a private place and maintained their voices low made her suspect
"Did you take care of the mother?" the nurse asked
"Yes, they got ahead of us with her father but I think they will pay us anyway. When they found it was a medical negligence we'll be far from here"
Yor understood they were assassins as well, probably paid by a rival. Luckily they hadn't seen her yet
"Heh, do you they will pay more if we got rid of the baby?"
Yor left the hospital with you, unsure of what to do. Did you have more relatives? The widowed politician didn't have more kids, and your mother came alone. What if they wanted to kill the rest of the family?
A small hand grabbed hers, and every fear disappeared. Looking at each other, she knew you were safer with her. Perhaps it was only guilt or sympathy, but she would try
General headcanons
The moment Yuri saw Yor holding you was in disbelief. Yor said she found you in the streets and he believed it
At first he tried to convince her sister to leave you in a orphanage but once scolding was enough to cease
Still disliking you for the first months. It took some time until he saw you like one of his family
Yuri helped, although they had a rough time because you refused to eat Yor's purees. Your endurance might grew up to make you the only person who can eat her food without bleeding but it doesn't mean you like its flavor
She viewed you as a sibling until you were two, being called mom made Yor too happy to correct you. Yuri was just Yuri, you never feel like using formalities with him or addressing "Uncle" everytime you talked
Yor decided to let your belongings, it was better that way. When you were older, and only if you wanted, she would tell you the truth
She's bad with names, Rose was the only name she could think of but you're a boy. Yor's parents loved that Yuri and her had matching names, therefore you would be the sweet addition to it
The only name I could think of is Yuu because it's gender neutral and means "you" sorry
During the first year of your life she didn't try to hide the blood of her clothes from you. Yuri never suspected either and you wouldn't remember it when you grow up
Your lack of childhood amnesia was something she didn't have in count. Not that she knows you know anyway
Yor has been training you since you were able to walk, if she wasn't there when you needed at least you would be ready to defend yourself. Proud to say you're her strong boy
That said, if the assassins that tried to killed you found were you lived it's something you ignore. Being the protective mother Yor is they could be dead by now
Six years later, it was still Yor and you against the world, with Yuri being the only paternal figure you had. Before one day she met a man and everything changed
She said he will help her by accompanying her to a party so Yuri stopped worrying about her. She said it would be one night, and the next morning you woke up with Yor waiting to talk with you
In part she accepted because of you; you passed the Eden exam before knowing you needed a dad for it. That requisite seemed stupid for you, as you reassured her you could go to any other school; now you would be accepted into the best school!
You agreed and started packing. What else you could do? The decision was made before you were asked anyway, and you didn't want to argue with your mom because she was doing it for your future too
Of course it affected you. No matter how nice they were it was a huge change; in one day you had to move to a new place which didn't feel like home and live with strangers who you'll have to share mom with isn't easy
Anya was nervous too, but for different reasons. She was so excited to meet her soon-to-be sibling! For her, who was an orphan last week, having a pa, a ma and a friend to play with was great
Her expectations went down when she read your mind. You didn't think bad of them, but excited wasn't the word to describe your emotional state either
Loid may not be good at understanding children, but it was clear for him you wasn't comfortable. For him would be weirder if you didn't seem affected at all
On the contrary, Yor seemed cool with all of this to you. Even without any idea of how to be a wife or mother for Anya she enjoyed her time as Forger, which confused you a bit
Yor is happier, not only because she didn't have to worry about the SSS or Yuri anymore. They make her happier, it's just matter of time she could fall for Loid and have a baby that was her own, real kid
Being sure Yor loves you and your new family want you to feel welcomed doesn't make disappear the feelings you carry with. Still, if mom is happy you prefer to keep it to yourself and try to maker her smile too
If it wasn't because Yuri hates the idea of her sister hiding her marriage for a year and sympathized your situation he would have laughed at the irony when you told him during your uncle-nephew walk the next day of his meeting with "Loiloi"
He doesn't know they got married before you attended school so he assumed you had been holding it for a long time. He passed his fingers through your hair
"I understand it's difficult, but I'll be for you whenever you need me"
+ Honorable mention to compensate you for the mild ansgt without warning
Daybreak
![Tumblr media](https://64.media.tumblr.com/2e3e9937f87bd0e473543d6bf05341c7/1e92ad85f4d0a84a-d0/s540x810/7d723c0a85759b3973832fdd9c1fa18d17313ab2.jpg)
We don't know much about him but I included this dork for fun
Thinking about "Daybreak" and "parenthood" makes anyone's mind stopped working
Mainly because it's difficult to say which one would be the child
Not "How you met headcanons" because he wouldn't be able to adopt to begin with
From what we saw in chapter 27 he seems to live alone, depending on his amazing spy career to afford pork steak for dinner. So he must not live too good given that after his first mission he was fired
If he had a child, it would be likely because of a previous relationship he had and didn't end well
He didn't adopt you. You're his biological kid, the only not adopted of this gang
Sorry we can't choose our family good luck ig
Not necessarily ended bad, even remaining as friends, your mother took a different path and is happily married with another man
If she knew he wanted to be a spy either thought "it's a joke" or *sigh*
She was who brought money in the relationship, now you live with her and your step-dad but at the beginning you didn't want to
Daybreak talked with you and promised you could visit each other and even live with him when he could afford it
They don't get it
Who would take care of him? The idea of living on his own was frightening to you
Imagine being father and is your kid who worries about whether pops know how to pay taxes without mom
You took after him in terms of appearance. Any signal of intelligence was from your mother
Average smart but surely smarter than him
Probably he thanked God that you were a boy. He will love whatever you are but he was relieved of saving himself of buying female products when you were on that time of the month and guide you through puberty
As much as he says to be a charming man he's not good with women either so
Your name is Sunny. Guess who chose it
Probably you see him more on weekends than during the week
Until you showed him Spy Wars he didn't have no idea that existed such good series
Of course not cooler than the legend he is but Daybreak jokes about how reading that and seeing your cool pops in action would make you half as good spy as he is someday
Quite sad is that your common sense along with the things you see on TV are enough to be better spy material
You try to watch it with him to see if he learns something
Unsure of what you'll be in the future but in the mean time you had fun watching cartoons and liking kids stuff like dinosaurs and skateboard
Current status: Busy with your first year at school and getting him out of trouble
#spy x family#sxf headcanons#sylvia sherwood#the handler#loid forger#yor forger#anya forger#yor briar#thorn princess#daybreak#child!reader
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So Perfect 2 | J.P
Paring: Young!James Potter X Fem!Lupin!Reader
Summary: James falls in love with a bookstore called, Lupin’s Library, and can’t believe what they’re going through.
Preparing for a date seemed easy enough, except when it’s with a twenty-five-year-old man that already has a child. Granted, the twenty-five-year-old man was handsome, very handsome; maybe that’s what made this so hard. Every dress that she tried on didn’t seem to fit or didn’t seem to look right.
Y/n was looking at her appearance in the mirror when a light knock was heard on her door, “Come in!”
Remus almost dropped the tea he was holding for her, “You look spiffing.”
“Spiffing?” Y/n crossed her arms with a stupid smile, “That’s all you could come up with?”
“Dashing, beautiful, gorgeous?” Remus shrugged, “I'm not good at this whole thing. ‘S why I’m into blokes, remember?”
Y/n hummed, reaching for the tea he was holding for her, “Thanks, Remmy.”
“No problem.” He replied, taking a seat on her twin bed, “So, are you excited?”
“Nervous.”
“Nervous?”
“Yeah, I mean, he’s already got a child, Rem!” Y/n said exasperated, “If this goes well, then he’ll expect me to be Harry’s stepmother, and I’m not sure I’m ready for that.”
Remus placed two hands on his shorter sister's shoulders, “You’re going to be fine. No one is more prepared for that than you are.”
“I’m regretting this.”
“If you don’t go on this date, then I’ll never call Sirius.”
“That’s not fair!”
“It is.” Remus replied, “How about this-”
“Oh no, you only do this when you know you’ll win.” She murmured.
Remus smirked, “If you go on this date and have fun, I’ll ask Sirius out. If you don’t go on this date at all, I’ll block his number.”
“But you and Sirius are perfect for each other.” Y/n whined, “And so are you and James.” Remus countered.
Y/n pouted, and Remus smiled, “Now go have fun on this date. James is waiting outside.”
“Are you shitting me?!”
Remus laughed, “Nope!”
Y/n scrambled to grab her things, and Remus watched amusedly, “You’re the worst, Rem!” She yelled as she began to leave the bookstore.
“Love you too, sis!”
The door closed behind her, and she was releasing breaths of air. James turned to see her out of breath and a flush on her cheeks. It made him smile. She looked absolutely breathtaking too. Y/n’s hair was styled, and her dress looked dashing on her. James offered her his hand, and Y/n took it with a gentle smile.
“Sorry for making you wait.” Y/n apologized, “Rem was no help.”
James chuckled, “It’s fine.”
James opened the car door for her, and she got in. Instantly she felt out of place. Y/n hadn’t been in a car since high school and ever since then had taken public transportation or walked. She and Remus didn’t have money for a vehicle, so they made do with what they had. The seats were black leather, and the car didn’t have a spec of dirt on it.
He got into the driver's side of the car smoothly and took notice of Y/n’s awestruck expression, “I take it you like my car?”
“I’m sorry.” Her expression turned sheepish, “It’s been a minute since I’ve been in a car.”
James quirked an eyebrow, “Remus and I walk or ride buses to get by.”
“Well, I’m glad I could be with you for your first experience back.” They both laughed.
It was so easy with James. Conversation flowed like water, and the air was light like clouds. His hand went from the shift to intertwine his fingers with hers. Y/n’s face flushed, and James smiled genuinely. James couldn’t remember a time when a girl made his heart race and butterflies fill his stomach like this before.
When they arrived, Y/n was starstruck. It was fancier than she thought. Her heart pounded, and insecurity filled her body. James made his way to her side of the car and opening the door for her again. He helped her out of the car and felt her hand tremble just the slightest bit.
“You look beautiful.” James assured, “No need to be worried.”
Y/n swallowed thickly, “Hey,” James turned her face to his, “If I thought you were underdressed, I would’ve told you. You’re gorgeous, and I think you’ll be the prettiest girl in the room.”
“Thank you.”
He gave her another one of those beautiful smiles before walking up to the hostess, “Name?”
“Should be under Potter.”
The hostess smiled, “Right this way.”
James motioned for Y/n to go first, so she followed the hostess to the table. Y/n sat down, and James sat across from her as the woman set down two menus. Maybe it was a force of habit, but she couldn’t help but let her eyes travel to everything around her.
He smiled, slightly amused by her way of checking everything around her. It wasn’t the fanciest place that he could’ve taken her - there was much better - but he didn’t want to overwhelm her. It wasn’t pitying that drew him toward her, though. There was something about her that made him feel like a teenager again.
The place was made of what appeared to be a dark wooden material. The lights were a dim yellow, and the tables were polished beautifully. The booths were comfy and with red cushioning. The atmosphere was cooling and dry.
Y/n had opened her menu and began to survey it, “Pick whatever you want.”
“Are you sure?” Y/n asked, “I really don’t mind-“
“This is a date.” James reminded as he held her hands from across the table, “Let me treat you so well that you a second date.”
Y/n blushed, “You’ve already done that.”
“I have?”
“Shut up.”
James chuckled, kissing her knuckles, “Whatever you want, love.”
Half of the food on the menu Y/n hadn’t even heard of. Granted, she and Remus never really ate out much as kids. Usually, their mother - Hope - would cook them dinner as their father - Lyall - got home from work. Dinner was generally around seven-thirty or eight o’clock.
The dinner went by gracefully, with lots of banter and getting to know each other. It wasn’t until the end of the date where James had paid despite Y/n’s efforts, and they got into the car where he had asked the dreadful question. They both sat in the parking spot when James had turned to her.
“How do you feel about children?” James asked and quickly added, “I know that you’re good with them because of the reading on Saturdays but, I mean, about having children?”
Y/n wrung her hands, “I never really thought about it.”
“Why?”
“I have two jobs and a sick brother to take care of.”
Y/n replied, “Kids don’t really fit in. I’d also have to have a significant other to have children. Which I don’t have.”
James nodded, “Okay, but if you were to have a significant other.”
“I mean, I’d like to.” Y/n shrugged, “My life is just hectic right now. Bringing a child into this life wouldn’t be fair.”
Okay, so this isn’t going anywhere, James thought; I need to be blunt, “How would you feel about being Harry’s stepmother?”
She swallowed, “James….”
“I know that’s a hard thing to answer right now. Especially with us just getting started.” James added, “But if you aren’t interested, then this isn’t worth starting.”
“No, I know and understand.” Y/n said, fidgeting with her hands in her lap, “I’m sure it’s hard to find someone, you know, already having a kid and all.”
James nodded.
“I’d love to be Harry’s stepmother.” Y/n replied as James’ face lit up, “But I still have the bookstore, the bar, and Remus to take care of as well. It’ll be stressful.”
“I’m not asking you to be a stay-at-home mother.” James chuckled, “I’m just asking that at the end of the day, you come home to us.”
“And hopefully,” James smiled sheepishly, “Sirius can knock Remus off your list.”
Y/n chuckled, “Hopefully. Remus is a handful.”
“He seems nice.”
She snorted, “Until you officially meet him.”
“Well then,” James smiled, taking her hand in his as he began moving the car, “Looks like we’ll be having double dates.”
Y/n squeezed his hand as he began to drive. The car drove effortlessly over the unpaved roads. Light music played in the background. The sky was a beautiful blue littered with sparkling white specks. The moon was crescent and barely a sliver. James had gotten to a stoplight when he spoke up again.
“My house or yours?”
“Whichever.”
James smiled and turned the wheel to the left, “Okay.”
It didn’t take long to realize that they were going to his house. His neighborhood was much different than hers. Granted, she lived on top of a bookshop, but it was still different. James lived in the suburbs. The houses were breathtaking, and the streets looked clean. Asphalt roads were freshly paved, and sidewalks looked new. The homes were family-sized, but they looked ginormous compared to her and Remus’ studio apartment only suited for one.
James pulled into the driveway, and Y/n was flabbergasted. It was a two-story house, mostly white concrete, and the accents were a dark brown color. The grass was freshly cut, and the vegetation was trimmed. The backyard appeared to have a pool and a patio area, but Y/n could barely tell over the solid fence.
His keys jingled as he placed the key into the slot and the door opened with ease. Gently, he motioned her to go first. The floors were dark oak wood, seemingly similar to the dark paint on the accents of the house. Everything was so clean, exactly like the car, not a spec of dust laid on the surfaces.
A movie was playing on the television in the room on the right. The kitchen was on the left, and the sitting table was in the room beside it. James shut the door behind him, locking it. He took off his coat and shoes, placing them at the front door. He smiled.
“I take it you like the house?”
“It’s beautiful.”
James smiled, walking to the kitchen, and Y/n took off her shoes before following him. He sighed when he opened the fridge, and Y/n had taken a seat at the barstool in front of the island. James picked up an empty bottle of wine that was still residing in the fridge.
“You keep empty bottles of wine in the fridge?” Y/n questioned as James rubbed his face with his hands.
“No. Bad habit of Sirius’.”
Y/n quirked an eyebrow, “He lives here?”
“He acts as he does.” James muttered as he recycled the empty bottle, “But no, Sirius lives a couple of doors down. But I feel like he should be paying rent here.”
Y/n laughed, “Regardless, I’ve known him since elementary school, so he’s like my brother. Harry calls him uncle and everything.”
“That’s adorable.” Y/n said, “Do you have any actual siblings?”
“Nope. Jus’ me.” He answered, motioning to himself, “Sirius has a younger brother named Regulus.”
“His parents obsessed with constellations or something?”
“Supposedly.”
“Where is Harry now?”
“With Sirius.” James replied, taking out a full bottle of wine, “Told him I might get him tonight or might not.”
Y/n took the glass of wine he offered her with a smile, “Mind if I ask why the tv was left on?”
“My cat.”
“Cat?”
“Technically, not mine.” James explained, “It’s my ex-fiancées, but she left him here, so he’s mine now.”
“And your cat likes the tv?”
James nodded, “What's his name?”
“Moony.”
“Moony?”
“Yeah. Harry named him actually.”
Y/n smiled. They continued to talk, and the night kept going on by. It was well past midnight when James drove her back home to her shared apartment. The car ride was silent, primarily with music playing lightly in the background once again. He walked her to the door of the bookstore before bidding her goodnight.
Gently James pressed his lips to her forehead, “Goodnight, get some sleep.”
“You too…” Y/n muttered, blushing as she walked into the bookstore.
She hadn’t even made it up the steps when Remus began talking, “Had a good night, I presume?”
“You’re a dick, ya know?”
He smirked and closed his book with a thud, “Runs in the family.”
Y/n gasped playfully, “You ass!”
Remus chuckled as they both walked up the steps, “Seriously though, good night?”
“Yeah, really good night.”
#James x you#James x y/n#James x reader#James Potter x you#James Potter x reader#James Potter x y/n#sirius black x reader#remus lupin x reader#remus lupin#sirius black#brother remus lupin#marauders#marauders imagine#marauders fluff#marauders x reader#marauder#muggle au#harry potter#child harry potter#lily evans#harry potter fanfiction#harry potter imagine
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maybe i do | kth. II
➵ summary : maybe you love each other, maybe you don’t. when a deal between your fathers leaves you forcefully wedding kim taehyung, arguably seoul’s most powerful CEO, you’re prepared for a loveless marriage of eternal regret and unhappiness. but maybe, it doesn’t turn out that way after all.
↳ part of the high-class series!
➵ pairing : taehyung x reader
➵ genre : arranged marriage!au, ceo!tae, s2l!au, eventual smut, fluff, angst
➵ rating : 18+
➵ word count : 10k
➵ warnings : none really, swearing, mainly fluffy and funny interactions, some angst! :o
➵ a/n: and i’m back with chapter two! i really wanted to say thank you for the love and support i received on the first part of maybe i do, it was astounding!! i’m so grateful so many people loved the story and asked to be tagged (all at the bottom <3), it made me feel so motivated to write. if you would also like to be tagged please message me. your feedback is always appreciated!
chapter two : “on my pillow, can’t get me tired”
prev. ↞ || ↠ next || masterlist
Taehyung didn’t remember sleeping anywhere near you last night.
He remembered that even though you willingly agreed to share the same bed, he still opted for caution and slept with the most space between you two as possible.
Though when his eyes fluttered open the next morning, eyeballs burning from the light that bled into the suite, the first thing he realized was that he was not on his side of the bed from last night.
No, he had somehow gravitated towards the center, and as if almost on cue, your slight movement and the sound of your breathing alerted him of your nearby presence.
Peering down at you, Taehyung caught sight of your sleepy head turned towards him and lying on his arm, his other thrown over your torso with you unsuspectingly nuzzled into his side.
Taehyung’s eyes shot open, acknowledging he had succumbed to his habit of hugging something to sleep during the course of the night and he internally panicked. He began retracting his arms slowly, just about drawing himself from you until alarms rang in his head at the sight of you stirring in your sleep.
Taehyung took the golden opportunity to sit up in a flash, having to physically shake his head to rid the image of your tranquil, sleeping face from his brain, crushing the thought that it was kind of cute.
He found himself chanting the same denial from last night, he couldn’t be thinking of such complicated things concerning you when he knew the second he’d step foot inside his home, there’d be a mountain of paperwork ready for him; even more on his work desk.
He had to be thinking about his job, not you.
Even if Taehyung was married now, it wouldn’t lessen the amount of work that plagued his life nor make it any less demanding. If anything, his life would be harder now considering the fact that he had another priority to add to his list, another aspect of his life he had to split his attention between.
He didn’t necessarily hate the idea, just found himself needing to work harder than he already was.
Taehyung sighed heavily at the thought and swung his legs off the bed, rubbing his tired eyes. He took a moment to look back at you, thinking if he observed you a second time he’d be able to piece together how the hell you two ended up in that position, that close.
By evidence of the forgotten blanket half-thrown off you, he could see you were the tossing-and-turning type, maybe the only explanation for your proximity considering he was the same.
He also noticed you slept all curled up, like you were cold and the only warmth you knew was snuggling yourself.
Cute.
There it was again, cute.
Why does that word even exist?
Taehyung discarded the notion altogether and stood to his feet, stretching out his stiff muscles. He made for the bathroom eagerly to begin his day, though not without fixing at least some of the blanket back onto you.
“You don’t have a driver?”
“Not for everywhere I go. I have two hands, I can drive myself.” Taehyung made it a statement to jazz hands at you, showcasing the perfectly capable limbs he was gifted with.
“That’s.. nice, actually. I always see asshole CEO’s getting other people to drive them around.” You relayed as you trailed behind Taehyung, letting him lead you towards the front of the hotel where dozens of expensive cars lined the curb side.
You had no clue which luxury vehicle belonged to Taehyung because quite frankly, he could probably afford every car your eyes caught sight of. It wasn’t until he approached a certain one and retrieved his keys from the valet that your jaw completely dropped, floored.
“This is your car?” You gawked, the sleek design, crispness of its shape and nearly sparkling gloss completely sweeping you off your feet.
“Yeah, think someone like me can’t get a car like this?” Taehyung cocked an eyebrow, gesturing towards himself.
“It’s just-wow. Mercedes CLS?” You inquired without really looking at him, inspecting the car instead as you admired its every curve. Safe to say, you were beyond in love with it. Even if you were always more of a minimalist and preferred the average product, there was just something gorgeous about luxury cars that appealed to you.
“Yeah, actually it is.” Taehyung looked at you impressed, momentarily reminded of just how different you were compared to any other woman he’s chanced upon.
How many of them knew car models?
Taehyung was intrigued by the fact before speaking with one of the hotel workers, confirming if they had loaded his car with both your luggage and some wedding sentiments your parents insisted you keep.
Once receiving affirmation Taehyung made towards your side of the car and pulled the door open. He flashed you a tight-lipped smile as he gestured for you to hop in, drawing you out of your stupor. You thanked him warmly before sliding into your seat.
He let you scramble in comfortably before shutting the door and walking to his side, positioning himself in and clicking on his seatbelt. He watched as your expression lit up once occupying the car, face beaming with excitement as you touched and drank in at the high-end features the vehicle had to offer. Taehyung found himself smiling before he licked his lips and straightened his face, igniting the engine and beginning the smooth drive.
It was easy to settle the debate on where you both would be living. Taehyung was an enormously rich CEO who lived in an expensive, massive home while you lived in a measly apartment. You knew it was useless to live separately, even more useless to have him live with you. And so you agreed without protest to pack your things and relocate, begin your move into the house you’d share with him for a lifetime.
The car ride remained quite silent, you mindlessly bopping your head to whatever mainstream song played on the radio, while Taehyung tapped his fingers against the steering wheel or his lap.
You found your eyes wandering to his slender fingers wrapped around the wheel every so often, sometimes venturing to the other one he placed against his thigh. You began reprimanding yourself once you realized with all the staring, observing and ogling, you most certainly had a thing for his hands already.
Fuck.
They were just so big, bigger than what you’ve seen of the average man and it didn’t help that they looked crafted to perfection.
There was just something about the veins that decorated them, his palm large in size as his fingers seemed deft turning and working the steering wheel. His little accessories like a ring or two, bracelets and his watch did absolutely nothing to deter your interest either.
It only increased once you realized he looked good driving, really good. You knew men had this common attractiveness to them when they drove, watching them all focused and effortlessly working the car somehow sexy; but watching Taehyung drive was another experience entirely.
He looked insanely hot, and you felt like throwing yourself out your window for even thinking such a thing. It was another case of you ogling him without realizing until his deep voice suddenly fished you out of your thoughts, questioning. “Did you like the wedding?”
“Huh?”
“The wedding, did you like it?” Taehyung repeated, glancing at you.
“Does it really matter if I did?” You asked, this one phrase seeming to perfectly sum up the misfortune of your life, provoking an ironic laugh even.
“I think it does. A bride should always enjoy her wedding.”
“Well, I didn’t.” You deadpanned, your expression turning frustrated having to remember that one of, if not the most special night of your life had just been robbed of you, thrown to the wolves while you were only left to accept the sad fact.
“C’mon, you didn’t enjoy a single thing?” Taehyung didn’t mean to flash back to the kiss you two shared, though found himself doing exactly so.
You didn’t enjoy that? he questioned in his head.
“Not really, I just imagined having more choice in the wedding.” You answered honestly, trying not to sulk so much. “It’s not you, I just... thought I’d be able to decide things at my own wedding. I’m grateful your parents did so much, but I didn’t really get to choose anything.” You grew more solemn as your gaze fixated on nothing, watching the world pass you by through the car window.
“My favourite flowers weren’t even there.” You said only despondently to yourself, shoulders drooping, though Taehyung didn’t miss it.
“You don’t like roses?”
Your eyes flashed towards him with furrowed eyebrows, surprised he heard your comment. You straightened up before shrugging back a response. “I like peonies.”
Taehyung looked at your side profile as you turned away, finding the conversation turning more sorrowful than he liked. He allowed some silence to linger as you leaned your chin against your palm, boringly watching the bustling streets.
He decided to change the subject.
“So you don’t think I’m an asshole, huh?”
“What?”
“You said you always see ‘asshole CEO’s’ getting people to drive them around. But I don’t, so I’m not an asshole to you?” Taehyung halved his attention between you and the road, glancing in your direction with one hand working the steering wheel.
You thought the question over, “No, you’re not an asshole.” You said simply, distracted by the thoughts that previously occupied your mind.
“I see.” Taehyung pursed his lips. Another beat of silence passed through the downcast air before Taehyung perked up again.
“Is it just the driving? Or do you have other criteria?” Taehyung asked inquisitively, leaning back into his seat as he observed you.
You could detect from the corner of your eyes the way his stance drew attention to his legs, thighs broad as he sat. “I guess there is.”
“Like what?”
You didn’t really know why Taehyung was so curious. You thought it was common knowledge what the stereotypical asshole CEO was like; they were nearly all jerks with horrible one-percenter mentalities and treated people like gravel.
You scoffed a bit. “They’re usually so full of themselves. They act like they own the place all the time, which makes sense at their own companies but not everywhere else. It’s like the position gets to their heads. Even the way they talk is condescending, belittling, or straight up rude to anyone not on their level. It wouldn’t kill to be nice.” You revealed almost too eagerly, avoiding eye contact with Taehyung as you viewed the traffic on the road ahead, remembering he was a CEO himself.
Long story short, you’ve had your fair share of experiences meeting them as you grew up during the beginnings of your father’s company. They were quick to skew your opinion ever since you watched the way they treated your father all due to having a start-up, for simply being small in name or reputation. They acted like he was less than, some even daring to behave as though his company would simply never make it.
It always boiled your blood, left an extremely distasteful image of CEOs and the business world in your head.
And you were certain it all sucked after that.
“Understandable.” Taehyung nodded agreeably. “But you think I don’t fit any of that?” He rested a hand against his thigh, sitting laxed as he spread his legs apart further. This time it was definitely hard to miss the way they appeared, all laid out and long as your eyes drank him in, following up his thighs all the way to his-
“You don’t. I thought maybe since you’re super successful you’d be full of yourself. But you’re not, really.” You snapped yourself out of whatever the hell you were doing, trying to refocus on the conversation.
“Ah, seems like a stepping stone.”
“Stepping stone? Towards what?”
“Towards you not hating me.” His voice came out with a more solemn timbre than you expected, his jaw tightening for a mere second.
Taehyung only thought such a thing because even if he decided you didn’t harbour negative feelings towards him, there was no way of him determining whether that was true or not without your real input.
“I don’t hate you, Taehyung. I don’t.. think I can.” You claimed with poignancy, his statement causing you to reflect on your own feelings about him.
You don’t hate Taehyung, you couldn’t because he did absolutely nothing wrong in this situation. He was dragged in just like you were. You only despised the unfairness of the arrangement, not him.
There wasn’t much to hate about him.
“So you’re saying you like me then, aren’t you?” Taehyung suddenly teased light-heartedly, all smug as his amused eyes flickered to you.
“Shut up, I never said that.” You turned away, scandalized by his remark.
“I’m kidding. But, why do you think you can’t hate me? I pretty much.. ruined your life.” Taehyung internally felt his chest tighten at the words, remembering the exact thoughts from where he stood no less than 24 hours ago, seconds from lawfully marrying you.
“And I didn’t ruin yours?” This time you turned your gaze towards Taehyung, meaningfully. Your eyes instinctively communicated your emotions as they locked with his for a moment, Taehyung all attentive.
“I took away from you just as much you took away from me. We both ruined each other’s lives, there’s no use in blaming each other. That’s why I can’t hate you.” You finalized, crossing your arms and opting to watch the passing buildings through your window again.
Taehyung absorbed your sudden confession with reason, realizing that in a sense, you two were partners in this unfortunate case. Even if your matrimony constituted a forced partnership neither of you liked, there seemed to be a natural comradery in having to deal with the aftermath of that forced partnership.
Trying to accept it.
“I don’t think I can hate you, either.” Taehyung admitted, ending the more miserable part of the conversation as you fell silent. You thought he was done until he decided to bother you again.
“I think you’re still saying you like me, though.”
You turned to him half-appalled before pointing towards the road, eyes narrowed. “Just drive us home, will you?”
Taehyung laughed at the moment and pressed down on the accelerator, internally grinning at the fact you never said no to his statement.
“This is your house?” You found yourself gawking again at something that belonged to Taehyung, stepping inside a luxury home you’ve only ever dreamed of living in. Sure, you lived with your parents until you were 18, though your father was still starting out with his company for most of those years, not exactly owning anything too luxurious until after you permanently moved out.
So as you stood trying to prop your heels off yourself, your jaw dropped at the sheer elegance and high-status look to the interior of Taehyung’s home. You had already done enough gawking at the exterior, but being inside and processing the fact that you were now to inhabit this home for the rest of your life sent another wave of shock.
You immediately observed Taehyung was the type who decorated his home with only the finest, his taste easily identifiable. Aesthetic, lavish, charming. He seemed like a man of utter simplicity though his home said otherwise, showcasing an artistic, exquisite feel you never really expected from him.
“When will you stop saying that?” He titled his head and smiled through a laugh, removing his shoes and slipping into his indoor slippers.
“Right, sorry.” You were still struggling for normalcy, somehow forgetting almost every hour Taehyung’s wealth and only registering it once you saw something that indicated it.
Taehyung sauntered inside and took a deep breath, enjoying the feel of his abode. He enjoyed nothing more than being home, in the comfort of his own space. Especially for someone who worked so busily, he found pleasure in doing the bare minimum at home. Relishing in the feeling right now, he pressed his lips together in a smile before glancing back at your struggling figure, catching sight of your size.
His eyebrows shot up to the sky. “Woah, you’re short.”
“Huh?”
“I think I’ve only ever seen you in heels.” Taehyung informed. “Now that you’re not wearing them you’re a lot shorter than I thought. You’re tiny.” He pointed out as he eyed you from head to toe, processing the amount of height you lost simply from removing your shoes.
“I mean, that’s kind of what heels do, you know, they add height.” You deadpanned, stating the obvious for him.
“Sorry, it’s just..” Kind of cute, he thought, though fought for another response. “I could probably throw you.”
Nice save.
“Excuse me? It’s not my fault you’re so tall.” You scowled at him. “Besides, you’re all height and no muscle, you probably can’t even carry me.”
“Wanna see me try?” Taehyung was already coming towards you with his arms held out and you sputtered immediately, “No, no, no.” you held your hands up defensively. “Let’s just start the house tour, yeah?” you offered a smile for compromise.
“That’s what I thought.” Taehyung narrowed his eyes coyly and turned on his heel, signaling you to follow him.
What you realized strolling through the home as Taehyung discussed its details was that it emphatically represented him like an open book. Even if Taehyung was predominantly unreadable and seemed to always hide a mystery behind his eyes, you could see nearly all of him reflected in his home.
You often found valuable trinkets or sentiments scattered around the house. It seemed like he cherished a lot of things in his life, namely memories or people. It would also be hard to miss the exquisite selection of paintings and embellishments he draped the walls with, all harbouring their own charm and adding to the overall artistic feel of his home.
There were famous works consisting of Vincent Van Gogh all the way to local Korean artists you’ve never heard of, though admired their work.
It seemed as though he selected the paintings himself.
Another large aspect you couldn’t miss were the many photos he kept, calling to question whether they were of his own work.
“Did you take these?” You approached a shelf in one of his grand hallways on the second floor, hand brushing the wooden frame of a captured photo; six men including Taehyung himself posing comfortably, like they were extremely close, backdrop reflecting what seemed to be a trip.
“I took all of them.” He stated casually, hands tucked into his pockets as he eyed the shelf along with you.
“All?”
He simply nodded and didn’t elaborate further as he watched you admire the photos, yourself impressed by his adeptness for photography.
“You’re really good.” You complimented absentmindedly, enjoying the other photos of not only people but scenery, empty streets, candid shots from what looked to be his own little adventures.
“Thanks.” Was all Taehyung could manage, trying to mask the sheer gratitude he felt hearing the first ever person to admire his work; something that wasn’t related to being a CEO or a businessman.
He also felt slightly embarrassed you’d seen a small part of him he usually hid.
Taehyung continued walking down the hallway until he reached the end, revealing what you could tell was the largest room in the house. You were thrown off by just how unnecessarily large it was. It seriously reminded you of an extravagant hotel suite, more like the grandest one among them.
“This is our room.” Taehyung introduced, gesturing towards its interior.
“Our?”
Taehyung nodded “I should’ve told you earlier but I wanted us to sleep in the same room. If we slept apart our marriage wouldn’t look convincing to my two housekeepers. I trust them but I don’t want any information about us getting out to the public, not over my dead body.” Taehyung stated in earnest as he relayed the information, wandering further into the room.
“You really care that much about publicity?” you genuinely questioned.
Taehyung scoffed. “Not me, I couldn’t care less about what people think.” He denied instantly, almost laughably. “It’s my father. He hates bad press, especially concerning our family or the company.”
“I thought bad press is still press, so it’s good.” You suggested as you followed him further into the room, admiring that though large, his room held a sense of comfort to it. Quite frankly, all of his home felt rather welcoming and cozy, surprising of a CEO who ran such a monstrously successful company.
“My father doesn’t think so. Kim Enterprises has always been generational, each of our CEO positions strictly kept within the family. Our name is our brand and pride, it alone accounts for at least half of our success. We’re extremely well-known for our high status, it’s just plain fact in the upper social circles of Korea. We can’t afford to taint our name with petty things like bad press or corruption, our reputation is too valuable.” Taehyung stated this all nonchalantly as he adjusted his suit jacket in his mirror, like it was something he’s grown accustomed to and has known all his life.
You found your opinion impeding his words.
“So you can never just, escape this life? As long as you’re a Kim you’re bound to this company?” You found the concept wildly restrictive, clearly shackling down any person that would run the business and you felt a disagreeing shiver shoot through your spine.
“Of course, why would you want anything else?” Taehyung tiled his head to the side, eyeing you in genuine questioning and your entire being was trying to bite back the desire to correct him, tell him there’s so much more to life than just some company your family owns. Though you opted for changing the subject instead, unwilling to step on his toes and dictate his life when you knew next to nothing about it.
It wasn’t your place.
“Woah, you have a balcony?!” You exclaimed with a simper, eyes flickering towards the curtains that revealed two ajar French doors leading to an open space.
You made towards it excitedly and stopped just in the middle of the platform, enjoying the breeze of the fresh air.
“It’s my favourite part of the house.” You didn’t even realize Taehyung followed you until his towering figure stood directly behind you, feeling his proximity permeate through your body.
You swallowed.
“Why don’t you look at the view?” Taehyung cocked his head towards the railing of the balcony, though you didn’t move a step.
You weren’t about to tell Taehyung you’re terribly afraid of heights.
“I-I can see from here. Wow, looks beautiful.” You perked up superficially, trying to throw him off and changing the subject again. “By the way, what’s our closet situation gonna look like?”
“Ah, let me show you.” Taehyung strided back into the room towards the sliding double doors you spotted earlier. He almost theatrically glided both dark wooden panels open and your jaw dropped for the 47th time today.
You were welcomed by a ridiculously large walk-in closet, enough to be renovated into its own bedroom. You simply couldn’t normalize its size, especially after registering every suit, tie, watch or accessory Taehyung stored in the gracious space.
You couldn’t even begin to imagine how much money lied in here.
“Oh my God.” Was all you could manage, meandering in sparingly as you viewed each and every expensive piece he owned in the room, no doubt of the highest quality designers, finest of men’s fashion.
“You don’t have to worry about unpacking and moving in here, the housekeepers will do that for you.” Taehyung watched as you looked upon in awe, finding the way your eyes sparkled with emotion very similar to that of Bambi’s.
“How will I fit-”
“I specifically made space for you, there’s enough.” Taehyung stated, leaning against the doorway with his arms crossed. He’d resolved a while ago he really would try to take this marriage seriously, victoriously achieve the work-life balance his father kept preaching.
He saw giving up his closet space as the first step.
It was indeed so because Taehyung thoroughly enjoyed fashion. He genuinely adored every suit, accessory and outfit in his collection, though if he wanted to reach this new goal of balance, successfully add you to his list of priorities, then he had to be willing to cut down.
Even if that meant reallocating a third of his exorbitant wardrobe just for you, he’d try not to mind.
“Are you sure? I could just use another room’s-”
“I want to.” Taehyung finalized as his eyes turned unreadable from across the room, locking his gaze with yours and you were only left to look back impressed, his generosity unforeseen.
“Thank you.” You voiced a little weak, still shy by the suffocating nature of his stare.
“Don’t mention it.” He offered plainly, propping himself off the wall. He looked off to the side eyeing the empty pockets of space he left for you, until your voice called out to him.
“Taehyung.”
“Hm?” He snapped his vision back to you.
You wanted to ask him something, more so a favour and you were unsure how to word the request. “Um.. I didn’t want to ask so openly, but..” You found yourself beating around the bush, timid of what his response would be.
“Go on.”
“Um, so it seemed like there were a lot of empty rooms in this house, and I was just wondering if I could maybe.. transform one of them into an art studio for myself?” You winced at your own request.
“I’m sorry, it’s just I had one at my old place and it really grew on me. I would get most of my work done in that room and gained a lot of inspiration from it. I have a lot of art supplies and designed often in that studio, so I need a home for all my supplies and it would suck getting rid of it all. I’m sorry it means I would have to steal one of your rooms in the house, if you don’t want me to then-”
Taehyung couldn’t help but break out into a small grin as he watched you ramble on, shyly fidget with your fingers, so apprehensive of asking him for something and it reminded him why he was so eager to provide you with anything you wanted.
You spent too long trying to do everything on your own, achieve everything on your own, relying solely on yourself. Taehyung could see this all as plain as day, quite enjoying of how he’s never really met someone like you, and wanted you to know you didn’t always have to be so independent.
Especially with him.
“Y/N.” He called out to you with the same honey-coloured tone from last night, stopping you. Your eyes flickered to his, awaiting his next sentence and Taehyung already found himself having a thing for your doe-eyes.
Fuck.
“Of course you can have a room. You can have anything in this house. It’s yours.” Taehyung stated with a degree of assurance, his eyes locking with yours in earnest.
You both shared a look as your lips curved into a gracious smile, biting your lip to contain it. His stare wasn’t so much intimidating as it was merely.. calm. Gazing at you for the sole purpose of gazing, and you found some heat rushing to your face under his scrutiny.
Taehyung seemed to realize he was staring and immediately cleared his throat, turning a little nervous as he began another conversation. “So um, I’m sorry to say this,” he began with unease, almost apprehensive and you didn’t know what he was so sorry about. “But I have work today.”
You blinked. “What?”
Taehyung internally winced at your reaction, hands finding his pockets. “I took some time off for the wedding, so now I have twice the amount of work left behind. I need to complete it.” He informed straightforwardly.
“Our wedding was just yesterday, though, aren’t you tired?” You were only taken aback because you were slightly concerned for his wellbeing, wasn’t he tired from yesterday? You recalled him knocking out almost immediately upon hitting the pillow of your hotel bed last night, snoozing away.
“Maybe, but I can’t afford to rest. I’ll only have more to complete if I do, so I won’t be spending anymore time with you today.” Taehyung relayed the information, readying himself for the even greater disappointing news he’d be passing on.
“Actually, we won’t be able to go on our honeymoon, either.” Taehyung thought it was best to slip in all the bad news, growing more and more unrelaxed as he was unsure of how you’d react.
Though what you said next had him nearly floored.
“Honeymoon? Taehyung, that’s the least of my concerns, you should at least rest a day before getting back to work. That’s not really healthy.” You chastised him as lightly as possible, still afraid to be stepping on his toes when you didn’t know his life.
Taehyung was certain you’d hate having been stripped of a beautiful vacation where you could’ve relaxed in the sun and tropics of Cancun. Your father had mentioned to him you’ve always longed to visit the breath-taking city in Mexico, its clear waters and tropical air as a means to truly get away from your stifling life.
So when he found you disregarding the trip altogether and instead focusing on him, more precisely his health, he was left damn well speechless.
There you were again paying attention to the littlest things about him he didn’t care much for; he still had that bandage you offered him a month ago tucked into one of his pockets, not wanting to use the adhesive just yet.
“I’ll be fine. I’m just sorry we can’t go on the vacation because of me, it would’ve been nice, you know?” Taehyung apologized, feeling genuinely guilty for having ruined the honeymoon. Even if you two weren’t going to travel as some lovey-dovey couple, you both simply could’ve enjoyed the time off.
“It’s okay, just, at least work from home today. Heading to the office would be too much.” You suggested for the sake of the fatigue you could discern on him.
“Oh, don’t worry, I’m gonna be home for the next few days since everyone thinks we’ll be on our honeymoon.”
“Oh. That’s.. good.” You nodded faintly, half at the idea you two were even faking your honeymoon and half at the blasphemous energy he had to work after yesterday.
The sleep from last night was nearly not enough to recharge from the antics of the wedding, having drained your batteries for the next few days. You were certain his were drained too; he was half the damn couple.
“I should get going. I’ll send Mrs. Choi and Seo up with your things. They’re probably finished with lunch too, you should eat.” Taehyung advised as he stepped out of the walk-in closet, running a hand through his gorgeous hair and you couldn’t help but ogle at the sexy way his strands fell back on him.
“Okay.” You voiced as you followed him out, watching him near the room’s door and just about to vacate the premise before you spoke up. “Taehyung.”
He stopped in his tracks, peering back at you. “Yes?”
“You should eat something, too.”
Taehyung half-smiled at you with a nod “Sure”, before stepping out of the room, leaving you alone.
And you couldn’t help but kind of like the way he smiles.
It was well into the evening now, bordering dinner time as you helped the last of your clothes into Taehyung’s closet, refusing to let the older housekeepers do all the work by themselves considering it was your own luggage.
You also tried to occupy Taehyung’s room as scarcely as you could with your belongings, feeling odd about suddenly moving in with all your might and changing things around. It just didn’t feel appropriate, like you were invading his space and so you opted for scattering only your necessary items.
“That should be the last of it, Mrs. Choi.” You retrieved your last piece of clothing from the rather soft-spoken housekeeper, tucking the blazer away among the rest. You were satisfied to see not only your wardrobe neatly organized now, but fit just about right with Taehyung’s things.
He was right about space, there was enough.
“Mrs. Kim, please rest. You didn't have to move a muscle at all for us.” Mrs. Choi remarked, genuinely concerned for you.
“Yes, please, Mrs. Kim. We can finish up with the little things. I’ve just finished preparing dinner downstairs, you should eat.” Mrs. Seo chimed in as she entered the walk-in closet, gesturing towards the door.
“Are you sure? I can-”
“Mrs. Kim, you’re very kind for offering your help, we’re very grateful you’ve done so. Though we are Mr. Kim’s housekeepers, we are meant to care for his home and his lovely wife. You need not worry about helping us.” Mrs. Choi stated with an earnest tone, speaking respectfully as she addressed you.
You were going to protest again before you considered her words, registering that if you indeed helped them, it would technically negate the entire purpose of their work.
You bit back your reply as a result, crafting a new one.
“I see, I’m sorry, Mrs. Seo, Mrs. Choi. I’m just.. very used to doing things on my own,” you looked towards the ground. “I apologize.” You almost dipped for a bow until Mrs. Choi rapidly cautioned you, scrambling towards your figure.
“Oh dear, Mrs. Kim! You do not need to bow to us, you’re Mr. Kim’s wife, you are the one who is bowed to.”
“Yes, you do not need to apologize either, we appreciate your help, it was very sweet of you.” Mrs. Seo added with a warm smile, bowing to you instead. “Please go for dinner downstairs, I’ve also informed Mr. Kim for dinner, though I’m unsure if he has made his way down yet.” She added on, urging you towards the room's exit and you recognized it was probably better to listen to her.
Even if all this high-class, status stuff had yet to sink in or make sense to you after being away for so long, you understood there was an eventual tolerance you had to build for it. Just as Mrs. Choi said, you’re Kim Taehyung’s wife now, and that came with a hell lot of status you hadn’t even scratched the surface of yet.
You could already tell it was going to be a pain in the ass.
“I suppose I should. I’ll get going, then.” You smiled graciously at both women, appreciative of their kindness and began vacating the closet. You just about pulled the room door open before Mrs. Seo suddenly came to you.
“Oh! Mrs. Kim,” she halted you. “I was informed by Mr. Kim to provide this to you. He would have done so himself though he’s quite busy at the moment.” Mrs. Seo extended her hand and presented a pristine looking card, black and incredibly sleek in design. Your eyebrows furrowed until you noticed the telltale symbols, almost ominously minimal branding indicating a rare card only those with some of the highest networths in Korea could own.
Your eyes widened in horror.
The Black Card.
“P-pardon?” You needed her to reiterate, there was no way Kim Taehyung was giving you a black card, the same card that was limitless on credit and only exclusively owned by the affluent one-percenters of society.
“He’s informed me this belongs to you now, and that you’re to keep it in your possession.” Mrs. Seo elaborated, smiling through the mental whiplash you were currently experiencing.
“Belongs to.. me? This is mine?” You were still having trouble processing, why would Taehyung be gifting you this? Who’s account was it even attached to? Was it yours and he’s decided to graciously pay all the expensive fees, or worse, was it joined with his own account?
Don’t tell me it’s joined with his account.
“Yes, Mrs. Kim. It’s yours.” Mrs. Seo held it out more outwardly, nudging it in your direction.
Your mouth fell agape for another second before you mentally collected yourself, quickly grabbing the card and thanking her as you made your exit, marching through the house for Taehyung’s unbelievable ass.
Taehyung could not be providing you with this card. It was irrational, simply had to have been a decision he made with at least two bottles of soju in him, right? You didn’t care what his reasoning would be, you were denying and returning this. There was no way in hell you’d accept this card, especially if he linked his own personal account to it.
You tried loosely recalling where Taehyung mentioned his study, logically assuming he was working there. You inspected majority of the second floor, working your way through the halls until you finally caught sight of the familiar wooden doors with glass panels, slightly ajar, light bleeding through.
You made for the room quickly and stormed in without a care, attempting to steady your breathing from all the rushing around. You caught Taehyung completely off guard, having shredded his suit jacket to instead sport the rolled up sleeves of his dress shirt, adorning black-rimmed, designer glasses.
He looked 100x hotter than he should’ve.
Taehyung suddenly propped up from the leaned-back position he’d assumed on his chair, expression caught by surprise. “Y/N?” He questioned, eyebrows furrowing.
You held up the card and addressed him immediately. “Taehyung, what’s this? Why are you giving this to me?” You huffed, looking at him incredulously.
“The card? For you to use..?” Taehyung responded cooperatively, confused as to why you seemed so frazzled.
“But why, Taehyung? This is a black card, the annual fees on this are insane and I can’t pay-”
“You’re not paying for them, I am.” Taehyung cut in, shutting the binder he was holding and placing it on his desk.
“What? No, no way. If it’s my account then I should be the one-”
“It’s not your account, either, it’s mine.” Taehyung brought his elbows to his desk, hands clasped together in front of his lips. It was now he gave you that same intimidating stare he did back when you first met him, calculative and devoid of expression.
It seemed he did this when he got serious.
“Your account? But-Taehyung, this is your money, I can’t just have it. Please, take this back.” You stepped towards his desk to return the card eagerly, but Taehyung’s firm tone stopped you.
“No, it’s yours. I gave it to you to keep.” His words held this underlying sense of authority, scratch that, dominance when he spoke seriously, resolute. You could instantly tell he possessed a natural sense of alpha male characteristics, enough that even though he wasn’t being harsh or looming, his words and the tone he coated them with held more power than you could manifest.
You almost cowered, but remained adamant on returning the card. It was worse with the card attached to his account, you couldn’t just keep Taehyung’s money like it was your own, it simply wasn’t. Your money sat ordinarily in a separate account on a separate card, which you were happy enough to use. You weren’t going to mooch off of him, it went against every principle that made up your very being.
“This is your money, Taehyung. I have no right to use it.”
“You’re my wife. You have every right in the world to use it.” Taehyung countered with no emotion, or at least any you could discern, uncertain what was running through his mind with only his eyes as a guide towards the answer.
And you knew his eyes didn’t tell.
“Taehyung, this doesn’t feel right to me. This isn’t my money and I can’t use it.” You emphasized more strongly, drawing closer to his desk though halting your actions once he spoke again.
“My money is your money, you can always use it.” You knew he was relaxed, appearing practically unbothered as he leaned onto his desk and eyed you. Though with the intense look in his eyes, his aura screaming for anyone within the vicinity to submit to him, he could easily seem frustrated with the situation, namely you.
And it made you want to crawl into a hole.
“No, it isn’t. I’ve already intruded your home, taken your closet, your room and even an extra one just for myself. I will not take your money either. Please, take this back.” You held out the card more prominently, desperate to have him understand you.
Taehyung wasn’t necessarily frustrated by you, no, he was slightly pissed you kept referring to everything as just his and not yours, that he was the only one considering you two as a married couple now while you still viewed each other separately.
Did you not see him as your husband yet?
He also disliked the fact that you seemed scared of him, or unable to trust him like last night. He could see you fighting back the urge to cower away, genuinely upsetting him you still held a degree of fear and unsureness in your eyes.
Why are you so afraid of me?
“Y/N, everything isn’t just mine anymore, it’s yours, too. We’re a married couple, husband and wife. What’s mine is yours.” Taehyung tried to reason, loosening himself up more to seem less intimidating, more approachable.
“But money, Taehyung-it’s different. I didn’t even want to take my own father’s money, there’s no way I’ll take yours, please.” Pleading leaked into your tone as you lips started doing that thing where they just about pout, emphasizing their plushiness and Taehyung couldn’t help but notice it again.
He started growing frustrated as he removed his glasses, placing them on his desk and pinching the bridge of his nose. It seemed like he was digesting the situation, searching for the best approach.
“Y/N, look. I know the kind of situation you had with your father, but I’m not him. Didn’t you hear what Mrs. Choi and Seo addressed you as?”
You thought it over, unknowing of where he was taking this. “They.. called me Mrs. Kim.”
“Exactly. Even my last name is yours, everything I have is yours. I’m your husband, I’m always going to provide you with things from now on. That card is just one of many.” Taehyung offered his best explanation, making sure his tone wasn’t as serious to sidetrack any fear you still had.
“I understand. But this is a black card, Taehyung, and it’s your hard-earned money, not mine. It feels wrong even just having it.” You couldn’t fight your inner turmoil, you genuinely believed this to be wrong. After spending almost a decade trying to work for yourself, pay for yourself, seldom seeking the help of another, this just left a disagreeing feeling to churn in your stomach.
Taehyung sighed heavily before pushing his chair back, rising from his seat. He made his way over to you where you grew unintentionally defensive, retracting from him slightly as he neared you. He noticed it and pursed his lips, reaching out for your upper arms and taking them warmly, tenderly, waiting for your eyes to meet his before he spoke to you.
“Y/N, do you remember what I said before I kissed you yesterday?”
Your eyes widened having been reminded of the intimate moment, nodding at him innocently. Taehyung witnessed you trying to avoid eye contact and found himself softening.
“I didn’t say that without reason. I meant it when I said I would take care of you. Your father is a different story, if you don’t want to use his money, I respect that. But I’m your husband, and I want to be a good one. I want to give you things.. do things for you simply because I want to.” Taehyung reasoned, gripping you lightly. “I want you to use my money, you’re allowed to use it.” He tried voicing with sincerity, earnestly, hoping he could change your mind.
He saw you still hesitating to accept the offer, however, deciding on a compromise.
“Look, you don’t have to use it all the time. You can still use your own card, but you can use mine here and there. Seriously, Y/N, using it won’t even make a dent on me. I’m the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company, use it at your discretion.” Taehyung could practically see your gears shifting, searching for your eyes as he wished you’d understand him.
He saw this as a second step towards work-life balance, only feeling the responsibility and genuine desire to be the good husband in spite of the unfortunate nature of your marriage. He didn’t want any doubt concerning his ability to be a good husband, either.
After all, when Taehyung did something, he always did the best he possibly could.
“Okay, I guess you’re right. But I do have my own money, and I’ll be using that 100x more often than yours.” You relaxed and oddly let him hold you, looking down at the black card that rested in your hand and clutching it to your palm.
Taehyung realized he was still holding you and let go, retiring to fluff his hair instead. You caught a glimpse of his bicep underneath his rolled up sleeve as he did so, and you truly hated you chose a time like this to find him stunningly attractive.
“You should come downstairs, Mrs. Seo prepared dinner.” You ignored your thoughts.
“You go first, I’ll be down in a second.”
You nodded agreeably and turned away, leaving his study. You took a second look at the card in your hand, then glanced around the house as you strolled through it, trying to embed what Taehyung said into the crevices of your resistant thinking.
Everything I have is yours, you reiterated, registering that Taehyung had in fact grown accustomed to the idea of you two as a couple already. He’s accepted it, embraced it, even enforced it now with his earlier declarations and this black card. You automatically felt behind, like you were the tortoise in the race and needed to pick up your pace.
If Taehyung had already come to terms with your marriage, it was only a matter of time before you did as well. Marriage is a two-way street, and if you wanted to make this easier on both yourself and Taehyung, you would compromise with him, accept the true sense of partnership that entailed your status as husband and wife.
Thus was the exact mantra that played in your head as you fiddled with the card, remembering the way his big hands held you.
Warm.
It was night.
You could say it was like any other ordinary night, though that would be a gargantuan lie.
This night was the first time Taehyung and yourself were going to sleep in the same bed.
In your own home.
The hotel suite left you both with your own space and privacy since it was a random, public room with no personality or attachment to it whatsoever, making it easier and comfortable to sleep with him.
So when you emerged from your walk-in closet in a thin camisole, loose pajama shorts and without a bra, you were cursing yourself. God damn you for needing to sleep in minimal clothing for comfort. You’d slept in a loose t-shirt and bottoms at the suite last night since it was a public room, and long story short, it left you tossing and turning more than you liked.
You had no clue prior to arriving here that you’d be sharing a room with Taehyung. You’d expected to sleep in a different one, in the privacy of your own room where you could prance around as you wished and as a result packed your usual sleepwear.
But now that you were left having to slumber with Taehyung, clothes on the more revealing side, there was no turning back.
And what there was truly no turning back from, was when you opened the closet door and your eyes landed on Taehyung’s shirtless, wet self drying his hair after a shower.
You immediately malfunctioned.
Your eyes fell to his bare back, ruffling his wet hair as his plaid pajama pants hung loosely at his hips. You immediately exclaimed and clamped a hand over your mouth, trying to shut yourself up.
You did not expect at all for Taehyung to have such honey-coloured skin. It was like it naturally glowed, a healthy tone that made him appear all the more delectable. It certainly didn’t help that his shoulders were broader than you first observed, sincerely an other-worldly experience when he wasn’t wearing clothes.
You also got an all-access view of his trap muscles, adding to the width of his shoulders overall and when Taehyung turned around to the sound of the closet door opening, gaze locking with yours, you could confirm his neck, chest and collarbones were indeed crafted to perfection.
Taehyung’s eyes widened momentarily drinking you in, not expecting your light sleepwear when just last night he witnessed you in a full pajama set. Not to mention, and he hated that he could tell, but you weren't wearing a bra.
And the camisole did nothing to hide that.
Taehyung straightened himself up realizing you two were practically gawking at each other, resting the towel around his neck as he cleared his throat. “That’s what you sleep in?”
“That’s what you sleep in?” You retorted, arms over your chest.
“Guys usually sleep shirtless, this is normal.” Taehyung gestured towards his own body and you had half a mind to floor yourself. It’s like Taehyung knew but also didn’t know he was hot, knew the effect he had on people though never grew cocky or proud enough to purposefully parade it around.
And it frustrated you even more; he was fairly humble about being a sexy Greek God.
“Girls sleep like this too, this is normal.” You copied him, looking off to the side.
“I was kidding, I only sleep shirtless sometimes. Just get in bed.” Taehyung narrowed his eyes as he gestured towards the sheets, returning to his palace of a bathroom to toss his towel in the hamper and pull a t-shirt over his head.
You wanted to move, feet just about ready to carry you but you never abandoned your spot. Instead, you pressed your lips into a thin line contemplating that sharing a bed with Taehyung, in clothes like this and in such proximity, all held a degree of intimacy you didn’t know you two shared yet.
It’s only been a day.
So when Taehyung returned to your unmoving figure, arms holding your chest and avoiding eye contact with him, he was quick to get the message.
“Um.. if you really don’t want to sleep here, I can give you another room.” Taehyung offered, figuring himself this may be too soon.
“No, it’s okay, that’d be kind of a hassle.” You waved him off. “Besides, your bed looks comfy.”
You were honestly trying to live up to your acceptance that Taehyung was the man you’d spend your life with now, so you’d better start getting use to him. You’d sleep next to him for numerous nights, spend endless days together and share a multitude of things; this would simply just be a first of many first times.
So you paddled over to the bed and removed the covers to snuggle yourself in, the bed’s coolness sending a shiver through you before you hugged the blanket to yourself. Taehyung stood with a smile before crawling in himself, adjusting the covers to his liking.
He felt at peace in a matter of seconds, the feeling of his own bed lulling him into a state of slumber already. He reached his arm out to shut off the lamp on his bedside table, leaving the room pitch dark and only his digital clock and balcony as a light source.
You began to cower a bit in the darkness, thankful for the sheer curtains that allowed the moonlight to spill into the room.
You felt another shiver run through your body when you shifted, realizing you were cold even under the sheets. You tried warming up on your own by shimmying the blanket around more comfortably, but it didn't do much.
You were left lying on the bed trying to think warm thoughts, unintentionally breathing in the constant scent of Taehyung from his bed; his cologne, his aftershave, his body wash all filling your nostrils.
It was intoxicating, absolutely distracting and sleep began to slip your mind. It didn’t help that you were still cold too, moving around and turning onto your side where you now faced Taehyung.
He seemed to have already dozed off, face tranquil as he slept soundlessly on his back. You couldn't help but admire his side-profile, the sparse moonlight illuminating his features. It was hard to not stretch your hand out and nearly run a touch along his cheek, like he was a rare work of art that naturally called for admiration.
You realized turning towards him that he radiated a wave of warmth from his body, remembering boys were pretty much furnaces while girls usually froze.
How wonderful it is to be a woman.
You desired some of that heat and shuffled just a little closer to Taehyung, nearing the center of the bed. You discerned he was indeed warm and maneuvered slightly closer, just about stopping at the center of the bed. You fought back the urge to shimmy any closer, leaving a mindful gap between you two.
You were seconds from catching a peace of mind until Taehyung unexpectedly spoke in the silence of the night, startling you.
“You can come closer, I don’t bite.” The smirk in his voice was obvious, making you scrunch your nose and snap back at him.
“Shut up, I’m not getting closer to you.”
“You should, I’m really warm, and I can tell you’re cold.” There he was again teasing, his tone coy as he kept his eyes shut, unbothered.
“Over my dead body.” You mocked him from earlier, turning away from him abruptly and pulling the covers over your head.
Coffee was probably your favourite thing life had to offer. One of the couple things you’d fight someone over; coffee and your independence, if you wanted to be specific.
So it made you genuinely happy Taehyung had such a wide selection of coffee to choose from, ranging from all kinds of beans to instant coffee, cappuccinos, lattes, mochas, you name it. It took no time for you to craft a cup to your liking, shuffle into a seat on the island and begin picking at the breakfast the housekeepers had whipped up earlier this morning.
You’d woken up early today keeping in mind the day you had planned. You decided this to be another move-in day as part of your studio setup project you’ve entertained for the last week. The granted time off due to your odd honeymoon farce with Taehyung proved to actually come in handy, thankfully.
It had been another peaceful morning for you, having woken up with sunlight gracing the walls, certain you could hear birds chirping as if you were in a Disney film and little mice would come out to start sewing the gown you’d wear as a princess.
It had been a peaceful morning indeed, but when you stretched out to loosen your stiff muscles, the chaos that met you was anything but peaceful. Even if it’s occurred at least 5 times now, you kept forgetting that you shared a bed with someone else now, and that said someone had somehow always founds a way to gravitate towards you during the night, even daringly cast an arm over you sometimes.
It left you in a state of panic registering that Taehyung’s, dare you say warm and cozy body would be just behind you, his chest mere centimeters from your back. You would stay still for some time, calculating the optimal way to remove yourself from his hold until he eventually stirred enough to loosen his grip, darting right out of bed.
Other times, he’d wake earlier than you and you wondered what would cross his mind once he registered your oddly proximal bodies.
Did it ever bother him?
Nonetheless, it brought a mischievous smile to your face thinking about the fact that Taehyung had such a perfectly human habit like cuddling. He was always so serious, so put together and a near machine at everything he did, seeming as though he wouldn’t give anything romantic the time of day.
But it was hard to forget the fluffy feeling that blossomed in your chest when you would sense his proximity, maybe inviting a liking to it. You had always slept alone, only yourself and the darkness to keep you company in your lonely bed, in your lonely home.
So sleeping next to someone, namely Kim Taehyung left an impression on you you couldn’t quite shake. It was difficult to erase the image of his calm, sleeping face after the handful of times witnessing it. Long eyelashes delicately pressed to the skin under his eyes, lips plush as he seemed to naturally pout in his sleep. The sunlight only accentuated his honey-coloured skin, adding a glow to his features that made him appear prettier than he already was.
It was nice to think you’d wake up to that every morning.
You found your mind still playing around with the idea until you snapped yourself out of it, questioning why the hell you always ventured off whenever you thought about him.
Weird.
You were scolding yourself until your eyes caught Taehyung strolling into the kitchen with his phone in is hand. He’d foregone a jacket today, black shirt sleeves folded to mid-forearm paired with black slacks.
You were normal until you almost spat your coffee seeing he wasn’t wearing a tie but instead had the first few buttons of his shirt open, revealing a generous view of his neck and the beginnings of his chest.
Fucking hell.
You were staring stupidly until Taehyung peeked up at you, smiling “Morning.”
“M-morning.” you stuttered.
He seemed unsuspecting as he returned his attention to his phone, proceeding to the kitchen counter and retrieving a cup to fix himself a drink. He appeared to be reading something conscientiously on his device, never taking his eyes off and you quickly became bored, ready to use the weapon you’d acquired.
“So.. you’re a cuddler, huh?”
Taehyung nearly dropped his cup.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“You’re a cuddler when you sleep. Cute.” You rested your chin in your palm, playful smile on your face.
“I think you’re mistaken, I am not a cuddler. And I’m not cute.” Taehyung denied as he only focused on the cup, his back to you. You then watched him reach for his selection of tea and purposefully evade the coffee, your eyes lighting up with mischief.
“Wait, you’re a cuddler and you drink tea instead of coffee? Very cute.” You pulled on his leg, chuckling as you brought your mug to your lips
This was going to be fun.
“Shut up, I don’t like the taste and tea is healthier.” Taehyung practically sneered back, harshly ripping the packet of his tea bag.
“Doesn’t take away from the fact that you’re a cuddler.” You sipped on your coffee, unbothered as you swung your legs back and fourth.
“Doesn’t take away from the fact that you like it.”
You nearly spat your drink.
“What?”
“I remember a certain someone that shuffles closer to me for warmth, no?” Taehyung snapped back as he returned to his phone and popped his tea into the microwave, his shoulders high to the sky. You could imagine his smug face proud of his remark while searching for your own, realizing that Taehyung was damn good at arguing and you’d really have to upgrade your comeback game to counter him.
He was unfortunately your match.
“Even if I were one, which I’m not, It’s not like I’m committing a crime.” Taehyung suddenly finalized with a snippy tone, and you realized you may have hurt his ego.
Men.
“I never said it was a bad thing.” You commented under your breath and looked away, popping a raspberry into your mouth.
Taehyung bit back a smirk as he retrieved his cup of tea, taking a sip as he returned to his phone and took a seat across from you. He began compiling his plate of breakfast as he worked his device, typing away with one hand as if he was drafting the Magna Carta.
You became bored again.
“Why do you have so much coffee if you don’t like it?” You genuinely felt like inquiring, if he didn’t like the taste why would he have so much?
“For my housekeepers, they drink it.” He took a sip of his tea, all attention on his phone.
You nodded understandingly. “Why do you have two housekeepers, by the way? Isn’t one enough?”
“So they can keep each other company.” He answered absentmindedly, eyes still glued to his phone as he bit a piece of his toast. You really hated that he wasn’t actively interacting with you because it only left room to stare at him, and that was never any good.
He looked illegally attractive with the unbuttoned part of his shirt, your mind profusely bugging out over the exposed bit of his chest. You were reminded of the full view from last night, and began pondering how long you’d survive having to see that for the rest of your life.
“O-oh, that’s nice.” You stuttered back a reply, squashing your previous thought.
You were actually quite impressed by the kindness Taehyung showed behind that decision, noticing he had these small moments where he was caring, considerate, all hidden behind his unreadable face and seriousness when it came to business.
It was quite interesting.
You were mindlessly eating until Taehyung spoke up, eyes flickering towards you. “What are you going to do today?”
You swallowed your fruit. “I was planning on moving more stuff in again, start finishing my studio setup. Thank you again for the room, by the way.” You expressed your gratitude once more, forking some eggs into your mouth.
“Don’t mention it.”
“What are you doing today?” you echoed his question, taking another swig of coffee.
“I’m working again. If you need anything I’ll be in my study.” Taehyung sent you a half-smile before snatching up his plate, bringing his phone to his ear as he stepped out of the kitchen.
You sighed heavily only being left to think about your day, which would be majorly spent unpacking and arranging things. You had a plethora of art supplies, design tools and canvases to set up in your studio, leaving you constantly thinking of how to even begin.
It would be a mission alone to sort through everything you had left, knowing you didn’t exactly label out of sheer laziness and would have to individually unbox and organize everything .
It was this exact task that took up most of your day, time having slipped by in the blink of an eye. It wasn’t easy when you had to be rummaging through your belongings and situating them where you thought appropriate, also trying to envision a new look for your studio.
You hadn’t realized 3 hours had passed until the ring of the front doorbell caused you to check your phone, curious as to who would be visiting your home in the middle of the day. You assumed it be one of the housekeepers and abandoned your work, cascading down the staircase and striding towards the grand entrance.
You drew towards the monitor Taehyung had showed you just yesterday, explaining it to be your home security system. Taehyung detailed it had a camera for your front porch that detected movement and the doorbell alike, so you peered at the monitor to see the stranger outside your home.
Your eyebrows furrowed registering a woman, her back turned towards the door as she fidgeted nervously with her purse in her hand.
Sheer curiosity took you over and you paddled towards the door, unlocking it. You wore a smile on your face as you swung the door open, though it was immediately wiped off taking in the last person on earth you ever wanted to see.
“Mother?”
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tags : @thedarkwinterrose @ayujaded @couldbeyourlast @ladyarmanto @anpanman-sonyeondan @apollukee @blueevelvt @taesluttt @scalubera @laurynne5 @dreamsindreamss @thequeen-kat @awsome-small-k @wrecklesssly @kweenhu @jalexad @staerify @bangforever @dyriddle @aianloveseven @waves-and-woods @hoefortaeshands @veronawrites @nightapple4jk @wataemelonz @aomi-nabi
#thebtswritersclub#bangtanhq#kwritersworldnet#ksmutclub#thetruthuntoldnet#taehyung x reader#taehyung smut#taehyung angst#taehyung fluff#kim taehyung x reader#bts smut#bts angst#bts fluff#taehyung scenario#taehyung fanfiction#taehyung arranged marriage au#kim taehyung
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25 Days Of CHRIS-Mas
Day 13: Why Wouldn’t You Be?
Summary: Your boss is the biggest jerk on the planet…or is he?
Pairing: Lucas Lee (Scott Pilgrim vs The World) x Reader
Warnings: Bad Language, Lucas Lee’s eyebrows
W/C: 1.2k
Disclaimer: This is a pure work of fiction, any likeness to any persons or events in real life are purely co-incidental. I do not own any characters contained herein bar the reader and/or any original characters. I do not give consent for my work to be copied and posted/translated onto any other sites. If you see this fiction anywhere other than Tumblr, it has been taken without permission. By reading beyond this point you understand and accept the terms of this disclaimer and ALL warnings posted here.
25 Days Of Chris-mas Masterlist / Main Masterlist
Day 12: Jake Jensen (The Losers)
The LA weather sucked. It was wet and dreary, drab and gray. Much like his mood.
Lucas Lee sat laid up on his couch, both legs propped under a mountain of pillows in casts. He'd broken them in a boarding accident while on set of his latest action film. It should have been an easy stunt, but ever since that little prick, Pilgrim, had done him dirty that time, he’d been off his game. As such, here he was, facing Christmas without the use of his legs.
And right now, he needed to pee.
"Y/N!?" He yelled through the living room loudly, or screeched rather.
"In a second!" You called back.
“I gotta pee!”
"I said hang on," you grumbled, walking into the expansive open floor space. He watched as you grabbed the wheelchair from the corner and wheeled it to the edge of the couch.
“You know, if you’d have just let the stunt double take that jump, we wouldn’t be here now.” You grumbled.
"Uh, I get paid more for doing it myself." He stated as if it were obvious. He felt a jolt of discomfort as you harshly pulled the pillows from under him and swung his legs out.
="Yeah, and how's that working out for you now?" You huffed, clearly exhausted from your extra job duties as of late.
“Clearly not great, I’ll admit that.” He conceded, “it’s probably the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”
"Oh really? I can think of others."
“Yeah, suppose that time I got arrested when that chick went missing from that Haunted House was pretty bad.” He conceded as you helped him stand before he proceeded to just flop into the chair.
"I don't get paid enough for this crap." You grumbled.
“Lucas Lee Enterprises pays all its staff well.” He pointed at you. “Besides, no one made you stay. I told you to permanently hire that hot nurse that came out the other day to give me a sponge bath.”
"Yeah, and she refused to come back after you slapped her ass, like the one before her who said you were a little too suggestive." You stopped at the bathroom in his master room.
“Clearly lesbians.” He sniffed
"Face it, Luke, no one wants to work for you unless they're a hooker or a slut."
“Yeah, which one are you then?”
"Neither, I’m just stupid."
At that he snorted. “Whatever.”
"And I'm the only one who hasn't quit. So, stupid, broke and I clearly have a soft spot for assholes who can't do shit for themselves."
“Why do you keep saying you’re broke?” Lucas frowned at you
"Student loans, car payment, live in LA. Although that is pointless as I'm here with you until you at least start physical therapy and can drive yourself around again."
“You got somewhere else to be?”
“London.”
“What?”
“That’s what I’m missing to be here, my family vacation to London so… look, I thought you had to pee," you sighed, ignoring his question. "I'm not holding it for you. Your arms aren't broken. Sit and piss into the bowl like you're three again and let me know when you're done."
With that you left him to it, retreating to the door of the room whilst he sorted himself out.
"Merry Christmas Eve," you sighed, your eyes rolling up to the ceiling. Whilst work was important, you were beginning to question your decision to skip the family trip to London. Even the award season in the new year now seemed like a huge pain in the ass seeing as you’d be pushing an equally huge pain in the ass down the red carpets now instead of being able to melt into the background and mingle with the stars, maybe flirt with some hot, famous actor…
Sometimes you wondered how the fuck you’d gotten into this line of work.
Your frustrated groan was interrupted by a holler of your name. "Coming!"
Five minutes or so later you were back in the lounge, Lucas settled on the sofa again.
“If you need me, call my mobile. I’ll be in the den, okay?” You looked at him.
“Wait…” he looked at you, taking a deep breath, “I know you think I’m a douche bag but, well, I get how shit this is you being away from your family. I’m…well, thank you.”
He saw your shoulders slump. He heard your sigh. But you didn't turn around, "thank you." And you walked off.
He watched you go, a strange feeling gnawing in his stomach. Was that… was that guilt?
No, Lucas Lee didn’t do guilt. And why should he? Anyone in the world would give their right arm to work for him, the biggest star in Hollywood. But try as he might, he couldn’t get your defeated nature out of his mind. He even tried to distract himself with his stellar performance in “You Just Don’t Exist,” but he just couldn’t pay attention.
With a groan he reached for his phone and scrolled through to his agent.
“Lucas?” The familiar New York accent hit his ears and he took a deep breath.
“Yeah, I need a favour…”
******
You cursed under your breath as the doorbell rang, glancing at the time on your phone. It was gone eleven.
“I swear to god, if that’s a hooker I’m going to cut his dick off and feed it to the fucking guard dog.”
You stormed across the glossy tiled floor and headed straight to the camera.
“Yes?” You spoke into the intercom.
“Hi, erm, my names Lauren, I’ve been told to come over, Mr Lee has hired me for…”
“Oh for the…” you buzzed her in through the gates and stormed through to the lounge. “Are you for real? Seriously?”
“Erm…what?”
“The blonde at the gate! I mean, what the hell do you expect to do with two broken legs?”
“That’s why I hired her, because I can’t do anything for myself!”
“You could do… that for yourself!” You scoffed.
“What the-ohhhh, I see.” Lucas’ ridiculous eyebrows became more pronounced as he arched one. “You think she’s a hooker!”
“Well, who else-“
“She’s a nurse.” Lucas snorted, “taking over from you. You’re relieved of your Lucas sitting duties.” He saluted.
You swallowed, a cold feeling washing over you. “You’re… you’re firing me?”
“What?" He scoffed. "No, course not. As annoying as you are and as much as you hate me, I actually think you’re pretty damned good at your job.”
“Then…”
“Check your emails.” He waved his hand, “you’re booked on the first flight out to London tomorrow morning. Consider it a Christmas bonus.”
"What?" You gasped, and pulled your phone from your pocket. He watched your eyes light up and a grin spread over your lips. "Oh my God!"
“Yeah, so I’d go get packing if I were you.”
"Lucas, I...."
"Go, Y/N."
With a happy little chuckle, you threw yourself forward and hugged him, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you.”
"Merry Christmas, Y/N."
“Merry Christmas, Lucas.” You smiled. With a spring on your step, you headed to the doorway before you stopped and turned back. “You know, I moan about you a lot but… I really am glad I work for you.”
With a smirk, he quipped an eyebrow again. “Why wouldn’t you be?”
🎄🎄🎄🎄
Day 14: Mike Weiss (Puncture)
#wiypt25daysofchrismas#day 13#Lucas lee#Lucas lee x reader#reader insert#bad eyebrows time#scott pilgram vs the world#chris evans characters
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