#with me that kind of goes without saying but you know

[maxtermind]

A smut, or fluff story, anything really. Where reader is slightly chubby with thick thighs, and she’s super insecure and lando hates how she doesn’t see her worth and helps her. - coming from a thicker girlie 🥹

a/n :: got me thinking and like im gonna ramble😓

lando would honestly be so fucking sweet everytime you'd feel insecure even when he doesn't understand it.

you are literally so beautiful so how could you feel insecure when he's absolutely smitten but he does get it.. he gets it better than most.

maybe you're just lying in bed with a sheet covering your thighs because it's really one of those days.

lando notices and is quick to reach under the sheet to rub your thighs while continuing whatever conversation you guys were having.

you instantly feel your heart calm down a bit and when you kiss him,'thank you.' without saying it out loud. he's just smiling cheekily as his hand keeps on moving higher and higher till it's cupping you fully and a hiss is leaving your lips.

calls you 'pretty girl,' in public whenever he feels like you're closing off with the insecurities creeping in.

glares at people if they stare till they stop.

he is proud of you and none can ever make you feel bad about yourself when you're his

imagine how he eats you out, teeth dragging sinfully against your soft thighs he is holding securely in his hands. dragging out a low,"patience baby!" when you try to grind against him to get his mouth where you need it the most.

"let me show 'em some love before I get you off, baby," and like who are you to reject such a princess treatment when he's making you feel so good.

you know you can approach him whenever.,

"do you think this makes me look ugly?" and he'll look up before his brows would draw together because like what the fuck?

looking at you literally reminded him that his heart beats because of how fast it goes suddenly.

"you look eatable if anything," lando replies nonchalantly before throwing the phone that was in his hand on the couch, pulling up to his lap so he can show you exactly what he thinks the dress makes you look like.

your cheeks burn and you're sure he can tell when you feel a very hard evidence of how that dress makes him feel.

"this is all for you, love. don't go shy on me now."

lando makes sure to keep an eye out because he knows you are chronically online when you want to be and salty people hiding behind their screens aren't exactly kind.

the minute he comes home and sees you slumped on the couch with your phone in your hand, he is snatching it away.

"babe I'm starving so I think we should cook together."

drags you across the room till you're sitting on a chair while he cooks, keeping you engaged in whatever gossip he gets from the paddock.

you get distracted for a bit and with a smile, lando is leaning against the counter and gently pressing his lips against yours.

hours later, when you both are fed and happily in love, he is again getting on his knees to show him just how much he appreciates your pretty curves.

the world is loud but all you can hear is his voice, he makes sure you know it's the only one that is valid.

it gets easier because he is able to love you at times it's hard to love yourself.

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

Musician Age Gap AU Pt 10

Kara sets her phone on do not disturb the instant the first unrecognized number flashes across the screen. Keeping hold of Lena's hand, she sits them both on the edge of the bed as she dials the only other person she wants to talk to.

"Kara!" Alex exclaims. Her voice then dims as she turns to call the others. "It's Kara!"

"Hey," Kara says, keeping her voice steady. "You're on speaker. I've got Lena with me."

Lena leans closer to the phone, resting against Kara's side in the process.

"Hi."

"Hi, Lena." As Kara expects, it takes more than a global superstar to faze her sister. "Are you two okay?"

Kara nods. "Yeah. We're okay."

"We're more concerned about you guys." Lena glances at Kara. "I'm worried your family might be pulled into this."

It will only be a matter of time before internet sleuths find Kara's old social media, and for her identity to be shared with the entire world. But where Kara had consented to her relationship with Lena, her sister's family hadn't agreed to be drawn into it along with her.

"We'll be okay," Kelly chimes in.

Lena shakes her head. "Let us send a car. We can get you to a hotel until we see how far they'll dig."

"Oh, I don't think that's necessary..."

"But what if it is?" Lena asks softly.

What about Esme, goes unsaid. A long beat of silence passes, and Kara imagines Kelly looking to Alex for guidance, and Alex's own indecision.

"Lena's team has more experience and greater resources to handle this sort of thing," Kara adds. "They can book you guys under fake names, assign security--"

"Security?" Kelly interrupts, her voice laced with fear. "You don't think..."

"We don't know anything at this point," Lena rushes in, doing her best to allay the immediate worry without downplaying the risk. "But I don't think we should assume the best, either."

Alex is the next to speak. To Kara's surprise, her sister doesn't speak to her.

"Lena."

Kara glances at the woman beside her. Lena's features are as somber as Alex's voice sounds, but her brow is creased with thought.

"How bad can this get?"

Lena takes a deep breath.

"I can't say for sure."

While it's not a firm answer, Kara knows Lena isn't sugarcoating anything-- it's just too soon and too volatile to anticipate an outcome with any kind of certainty.

"You've had high profile relationships before," Alex counters.

"Yes," Lena concedes. She takes a breath, shoulders sagging as though in defeat. "But this is different."

Alex makes the connection before Kara does.

"Because you're women."

A jolt travels down Kara's spine. She shoots a glance towards Lena, who looks at her helplessly.

"Yes," Lena confirms. "I've been in relationships with women before, but not publicly."

"Do you intend to hide this one too?"

Lena glances at Kara, cheeks flushing with guilt.

"That decision hasn't been made." That the option is even on the table sends a frission of displeasure through Kara, but Lena's tone-- while conciliatory-- is pragmatic. "But even the implication could make a lot of waves. And if people get angry, and they can't get to us..."

"They'll go after us," Alex finishes for her.

Lena nods, her features mournful. "It's a possibility. Online, in the media, or even picketing..."

Kara knows Alex's decision before she says it.

"Okay." Then, "just until we know more."

"Of course."

Alex sighs over the line. "Any other recommendations?"

"I would limit screen time; things might get... nasty. And the less you see, the less you might be tempted to join the fray."

Kara's thoughts turn to Esme, and as though reading her mind, Lena continues.

"Alex... Kelly... I know you don't know me. But-- I want to protect you and your family as much as I can in this. I wasn't much younger than Esme when all this started for me, and-- I don't want to make this any harder for her than it has to be."

Kara gives Lena's hand a squeeze, prompting Lena to lean a little more of her weight against her shoulder in return.

"Thank you, Lena," Kelly says, voice soft. "We appreciate your guidance on this."

Kara leans forward intently, bringing the phone a little closer.

"Lena's team will coordinate everything," she offers, "and I'll be in touch with more details as soon as I have them. We'll take each day as it comes, and adjust however we need to."

"Kara can send you my number," Lena agrees. "If any of you need anything, at any time, please call me."

"We will," Kelly promises.

Alex sighs. "We should go tell Esme."

Kara bites her lip. "She's seen?"

"Who do you think showed us?"

Shit. Kara's teeth grind in frustration. "Is she upset?"

"Nah. Not really. I think maybe a little hurt that she found out with the rest of the world, but mostly thrilled?" Alex sighs. "I don't know. Teenagers are hard."

That makes Kara chuckle. She wipes a tired hand over her face. Barely an hour had passed since she woke up, but it feels like a lifetime. "Yeah."

"We'll let you two go. Stay safe."

"You too," Kara returns. "We'll be in touch."

[hawkinasock]

haiii pls spill abt ur chimera yq ideas... i have my own (https://www.tumblr.com/waterfrontcomplex/758520749229277184/dunmeshi-chapter-37ep-17-spoilers-look?source=share)

i also drew my own idea of him (swallow + abundant deer)

Yes ofc!! I'm so happy that someone else has had this idea too, it has so much potential. I want to see all the chimera Yanqings.

Mine looks like this. I actually didn't have a design drawn out for him initially, so I had to whip something up quickly. That's why it took me so long to answer </3

Originally, he had a more swallow-based design.

I still really like it, but I changed the lore a lot, so I made the new one, the current au, which goes something like this:

(CW for blatant body horror, descriptions of digestion, as well as brief details regarding real world animal death)

Here's my idea. Like most aeons, Lan The Hunt has emanators that carry out their will. One of these emanator's is currently unnamed and without a solid design yet. It has an animalistic appearance in my head. Imagine Feixiao's inner beast, or the Mourning Aix from WuWa. That'll give you the best reference.

It travels the cosmos, tracking down and eliminating the Abundance. it does this with the use of extremely powerful olfactory cells. Even with galaxies separating them, the emanator can detect abominations through smell alone, and when it finds one, it will consume it to ensure it cannot possibly regenerate.

Suffice to say, it's very good at its job, and Yanqing, unfortunately, is not an exception to their heightened senses. Surprisingly to no one, Abundance Yanqing coexists with this au, and he is immediately recognized as an abomination when the emanator is in proximity of the Luofu. Yanqing is unaware of his status as an spawn of Yaoshi, so when the devourer of monsters (working title) visits the Luofu, he never would have expected it to turn its eyes onto him.

To say the Luofu is thrown into chaos when one of Lan's emanator's eats a Liuetenant of The Hunt is an understatement. The emanator insists no mistake has been made and it is justified through Lan's divine will. It actually shifts the blame onto Jing Yuan for assigning an abomination as his Lieutenant in the first place, citing incompetence on his part. Kind of a shitty thing to do after eating the man's son but okay...

Not long after, the emanator starts to... change. It begins experiencing sudden and visible signs of mara: bouts of aggression, delirium, and eventually flora and fungus sprouting from its flesh. It's incorrectly concluded that Yanqing's death was a result of early unset mara in the emanator, and Jing Yuan decides the emanator has to be killed via decapitation, such is their duty as followers of The Hunt.

You can probably guess where this is going.

So, you know how bones are capable of fusing together or into other objects during the healing process? Like that deer that was shot by an arrow and the ribcage actually fused itself with the arrow? That's essentially how chimera Yanqing is born.

As an abomination, Yanqing is capable of postmortem regeneration, and as an abomination that is particularly favored by Yaoshi (in my delusional mind) his regeneration capabilities far exceed that of the average denizen, and one this emanator's digestive system was not capable of overriding.

Much like how that deer bone fused with the arrow, Yanqing's body begins the process of fusing back together after partial consumption, and during that process, he inadvertently fuses with the emanator's body, which triggered those mara symptoms. Additionally, because there had also been remains of other denizens in the emanator's stomach, they were unintentionally included in the revitalization process. This, in the end, gave the chimera's body the claws of a Borisin, the wings of a Wingweaver, and the head of a human (his body structure is also the same as the Houyhnhnm, but that's obviously a coincidence on my part lol).

The flowers and mushrooms don't really serve any other purpose besides looking pretty and emphasizing his connection to the abundance - his power is so palpable that life is literally sprouting through his skin. I just think it's kinda neat.

Anyways, in terms of psychological aftereffects, Yanqing himself is still there. However, his sense of self is muddied and most of his memories suppressed. Because he's at the head, he's in control of his own movements and actions. Usually, he's completely docile, but in the face of people currently trying to kill him, he becomes confused and scared, and fights back in self-defense. He's also experiencing prolonged dysmorphia from his new form, which causes him greater confusion and even pain.

For Jing Yuan? I think everyone would agree he wouldn't want to kill Yanqing. He believes there's still a way to reverse Yanqing's affliction, even if the Ten Lords insist otherwise.

Currently I don't have an detailed outline of what happens next. My current ideas are similar to yours actually, where the disciples take an interest in Yanqing for whatever reason, be it desperation to stop the Luofu from killing him and seeing him as blessed by Yaoshi, what have you. It could honestly go a similar route as Dvalin's manipulation by the hands of the Abyss. If I were to give this au a happy ending, I could incorporate the Viscorpus' ability to shapeshift and have Yanqing hone that ability, allowing him to regain his human form.

That's all I have for what was meant to be a short, detailed summary </3 All these asks always end with me yapping, forgive me. I've had this au cooking in my head for so long now, and I'm glad I have an excuse to spurge about it now.

(p.s. pls make more of your chimera au, I would eat it up)

[epickiya722]

I don't think I expressed enough how much I do actually like that Yuji is this... I don't know how to really put it into words but... how Yuji is this unique embodiment of horror and strangeness.

Like, just the details of his character makes him stand out to me. Everyone in JJK has some bit of oddness to them, and he has own unique kind.

He looks like sunshine personified and he is. He is the sweetest kid there is. And he looks like the typical "Oh, he must be the normal one who has to adapt to the horrors the other have to go through" character. Ha ha... no, he is the horror. He is the "creepy child" trope without even showing that he is.

Yuji is the kind of horror you actually have to put thought into to even realize "Oh, wait, that is actually fucked up". Fridge horror, the horror that you think nothing too much of until you really open your mind to it.

Like, he's this own level of odd with how he behaves and thinks.

First, it's his interests. Yuji didn't mind really being in the occult club. Of course, his reasons was that the club time allowed him enough time to see his grandfather. But also, even though he didn't have to really participate, he actively does. Iguchi and Sasaki exploring haunted places? Yuji tags along and isn't frightened at all. Mind you, they like going go haunted places because they like being scared. Why folks watch horror movies and go to attractions, right?

Yuji will play with an oujia board.

Fan of a movie series titled the Human Earthworm and actually can find the beauty and love in said movies. He's so real for that.

So far it's just simple stuff like that, right?

First time seeing a curse? Admits to being scared, but barely even flinches. When Megumi talks about the Cursed Finger and mentions how curses want to eat it? His response?

"Why, is it good?"

IT'S A FINGER?!

When informed about Inumaki's technique? What was the example he uses? "So if he says 'die' then it will happen?" Out of all the examples?! He was more impressed by the technique than actually fearful of it.

That Cursed Doll he had to train with? Called it "cute" and Gojo questioned that. In fact, when meeting Yaga, Yuji commented on how the dolls were cute.

How he fights is even a little odd and unsettling. He immediately goes into action, doesn't even need to hear the bell. He always has this look on his face that "Yeah, your kneecaps are mine". Not once has I ever recalled he actually smiles during a fight. Unlike some of the others who have showcased some enjoyment or some type of being unhinged in a "to hell with it" mood, Yuji always has this almost animalistic glare, that kind of unhinged. He isn't holding back, even against normal people like the high school bullies in chapter 163. Sometimes I question if he even knows how to hold back.

He doesn't like to get violent or kill. If he has to, he will. But it's just not anything he can brush off or be like "Yeah, I like doing it".

Then the idea of dying? Yeah, Yuji makes it clear he knows people will die. Execution placed on his head? He accepts dying with Sukuna instead of asking if there's any way to work around it, find a solution. Keep in mind, Sukuna is downright evil and does nothing but make life hard for Yuji every chance gets.

However, by the end, Yuji changes from choosing to die with Sukuna, so that no one else has to suffer, to offering Sukuna to live along side him even if no one accepts that.

Oh, let's not forget his family.

Yeah, Sukuna I just mentioned? That's his uncle by soul reincarnation. Jin, Yuji's dad who we don't really know what happened to him, is the reincarnation of Sukuna's twin that Sukuna ate in the womb. Doesn't stop there.

Yuji's mother, Kenjaku? Actually a 1000+ year old sorcerer who body hops by implanting their brain into whatever body they find convenient for their plans. One of those bodies happen to be Kaori Itadori, Jin's wife. Jin's dead wife. Kenjaku played wife in a woman's dead body, the same body Yuji was born from.

Yuji was born out of a corpse. With one of the Cursed Finger somehow already sealed inside him.

His other family members include Death Paintings: Choso, Eso, Kechizu, Noranso, Sho-oso, Tanso, Sanso, Kotsuso, and Shoso. His older siblings (technically) through Kenjaku, who was possessing Noritoshi Kamo's (the ancestor) body at the time. And guess what? Their blood consists of a human's blood, a cursed spirit's and Kenjaku's.

Yeah, like them, Yuji isn't really human. Again, born with one of Sukuna's Cursed Fingers already sealed in him. Without Cursed Energy, he was already outrunning cars and possessing strength not normal for the average human.

Oh, wait, and let's not forget his 'appetite'. He will eat anything if it means saving people. And he has. Other than Cursed Fingers, the other Cursed Objects Yuji consumed are his own siblings 4 - 9. Mind you, they were akin to fetuses contained in glass jars. (He isn't happy about eating them or anything for that matter though. I wouldn't be either.)

In all, he's just fridge horror with a some goodness mixed in there. I'm just rambling here.

[copperbadge]

Hey Sam!

I recently purchased a second hand bread machine, and I know you like to bake! (I got King Authur's Flour per your recommendation.) I was wondering if you have any recipes or tips and tricks for bread making? I don't have an oven in my apartment so sadly that's not an option for me 😔

Without an oven, a bread machine is a great acquisition! You can often also make rice, oatmeal, and sometimes even yogurt in a bread machine, depending on the model. If the machine didn't come with a manual, try googling for it, or googling the model name and "recipes" to see what else people have done with theirs. It's great you bought KA flour, because materials really do make the difference -- good flour and yeast are key. Freshness can matter with yeast so buy something with a long expiration date, and keep the yeast somewhere cool, dry, and dark.

For bread making, there are two main things I always think about: you are nurturing yeast, which is a living thing, and you're forming gluten (presumably, if you're not cooking gluten-free). The yeast wants to have food and be warm, so you want to use pretty warm water (most machine recipes say something very specific like 115-125F or similar, but it should be warmer than your skin and not so hot it hurts your skin, that's how I measure it). Sugar helps feed yeast, so often there will be sugar or honey in a recipe even if it's not a "sweet" bread. If you're using older yeast, adding a bit more sugar can help it work. Meanwhile, protein helps support gluten formation, so milk or milk powder are common ingredients often listed as optional but which are very helpful. If you have a stove, you can even make milk bread, which is one of the best, fluffiest kinds -- google "hokkaido milk bread" for recipes. Nearly any bread recipe that doesn't have a super long rise or need to be shaped can be made in a bread machine, but often (especially on the King Arthur site) a recipe will include special tips for adjusting it for a machine.

Specifically for bread machines, the bread can stay warm in the pan for a bit, but the longer it cools in the pan the more likely it is to form condensation, which leads to moisture on the surface of the crust in contact with the metal. That dries out pretty quickly if you leave it out for a bit, but moisture reduces the shelf life of homemade bread a LOT (moisture feeds mold). Your best bet is to remove the bread as soon as it's cool enough to handle -- it used to be the hardest part of making machine bread was getting it out of the damn pan, but they may have gotten better since I had one -- and wrap it in a tea towel or leave it out to cool completely before putting it in a package of some kind. I used to keep mine in the fridge because without preservatives it can mold quickly. These days most breads I bake included a few spoonfuls of King Arthur Bread and Cake Enhancer, which is a mild preservative and worth every penny -- it makes the bread softer, with better crumb, and it stays good for longer. There are other brands you can get cheaper on amazon, probably, but I've only ever used KA so I can't speak to their efficacy. It's generally not sold in stores.

Okay, two last things: one, I always put the bread machine on the floor when I was making bread in it, because it rocks back and forth a bit when kneading and I have had machines "walk" off the counter before. The floor or a wide table are best. Two, bread is difficult and even a machine for making it isn't perfect, so you may fail when you first start out. Even if you don't fail the first time, you may not get a good loaf at some point, and that's the nature of yeasted breads. Don't take it personally -- and don't give up! After a while, you start to notice if something seems "off" but it takes time to learn that sense.

Happy baking! I hope it goes well for you.

[icarusredwings]

Thinking about Logan trying to comfort Kurt's guilt.

It's a full moon. For the others, it's a pretty normal night. This isn't to say that they don't give it a second thought, or a tenth, but Kurt takes it upon himslef to find out the names of every single person that dosn't make it during their missions.

While most, Like Logan, would rather forget, Kurt had another job to do. It's his duty to make sure these lost and scared souls find heaven.

Walking up to the nearest church, Logan grunts, already halfway through his bottle since they've returned. He hears whispering. Small prayers that he's heard all before whether when muttered on the field or heard through the walls, his rosery intertwined between his 6 fingers, gripping it as if someone would rip it from him.

"I thought you'd be here.." he mutters.

Kurt doesn't answer him. But there he is, on his knees in front of a statue of Mary, tears soaking the fur on his face, hands together. The way the moonlight is coming in, it hits him in a way that makes him look ethereal. Like a blessing from above from the man himself. If only Logan believed in that kind of thing.

It was so ironic that someone so innocent, pure, and beautiful actively visited hell. Perhaps this was why. For he's seen what goes on and has chosen that he's seen enough.

Letting out a big sigh, He comes to crouch next to him, taking a swig of his bottle as he picks up the list. He wants to crumble it up or perhaps shred it, the handwritten swoopy german being nothing but a reminder of how much he failed too. Hero's weren't supposed to let people get hurt. Especially not almost a dozen.. 11 lives ruined. 11 loved ones ripped from their families grasp. And all because they weren't good enough.

Finishing his whispers, he goes to grab the page but Logan had already picked it up. Kurt looks at him with those big black hole eyes of his, almost begging him not to ruin his list, but he dosn't grab for it. He lets his friend look over it only to shove his head back again, drinking for a few seconds think.

"...Emily Stripe..." He read, shifting to actually sit his ass on the concrete step, grunting as he let his arms hang over his knees. "Jessica Stripe...Are they sisters?" He asks the praying man, begging for forgiveness and to help serve these innocent souls towards the stairs and the gates.

More tears fall down his face each couple of words. In the end, he bows his head and doesn't bother looking at him, his eyes glistening in the light. "They were..."

Logan offers him the bottle, and without hesitation, he takes it, starting to chug a quarter of it. "Woah woah! Elfs can't handle that much, ya'know!" He says, and Kurt mumbles something along the lines that he's German, alchool is in his viens from birth.

Taking the bottle back, He shakes it around, Giving a playful glare now it was almost gone. Putting it to the side, he wraps an arm over his shoulder, Kurt's tail wrapping around his waist as well. For a bit, they were just two guys, silently mourning the casualties of what it was like to have constant city villans at hand.

"...It ain't your fault, Fuzzball... or should I say buzzball. You okay there, Mr. Blue?"

"I.....I was so sure I could have saved them.."

"Not your fault, Bub."

"..But what if it is..? If I was just.. a bit better.. I could have saved them."

"Yeah... well, if it's your fault, it's mine too."

Kurt lays his head on his shoulder, wiping his face on his arm. Logan doesn't actually mind, but he knows he wants to play. "Augh! Did you just wipe snot on me!?"

Kurt smiles softly and says something Logan doesn't recognize.

It could be a million things, but deep down, he has a feeling of what it might be.

"Yeah, yeah.. whatever." Pulling him close he headlocks him to his chest and rubs his fist over his head, making Kurt whine and squirm. "Ah! Nein!"

"That's what you get for rubbing snot all over me!"

He scoffs, saying something else, but Logan only catches the end of it.

"Du bist vild, mein freund"

He remembered another scrawny german who said the same. Swallowing, he lets go, letting him lay against him.

"...You really shouldn't be smoking in here." He muttered after some time of them sitting, taking this time to make sure that the people on this list were not fotgotten.

Logan smirks, blowing some smoke into his face as he coughs drimatically and waves his hands infront of his face with a smile.

[stxrslut]

I think the reason why so many people hate dark content is because they don’t understand it.

Incest for example has been a big topic on this side of tumblr as kinktober approaches and a few writers, including myself have mentioned it.

why is writing incest bad? It’s not, up front. the moment it becomes bad is when you romanticise it. the same goes for other dark topics, for example necrophilia or blatant rape.

acknowledging that these things exist is not a bad thing, and neither is acknowledging that there are certain people out there who do it. it is a horrible truth that nobody wants to exist, but it does.

using the infamous rafe cameron as an example, why would you want to read an incest piece about him?

rafe is a complicated character, and a very bad person. a lot of writers don’t like to take that into account. I’m sure we’ve all seen many works where rafe is portrayed as a sweetheart, a perfect husband who cares and would never do anything to harm you.

this portrayal of rafe has become the norm for many people on this platform. and so upon seeing dark content, they are trying to imagine it with this completely different character. the version of rafe that is romanticised.

when we write this content we don’t write it with that rafe in mind. we don’t want to be with this version of rafe that we’re writing, this is a bad character and we absolutely recognise it when writing him.

of course, as mentioned there are people who are imagining it with romanticised rafe, and also assume that was the rafe it was intended to be written with.

if that was the case then writing this content most definitely would be bad.

but why would we write dark content with a reader insert if we didn’t want this to happen to us? what is the point? that’s a valid question.

primarily, self insert or ‘x reader’ is just the format that we write in. even though we may be imagining our name and or face it’s not necessarily us. reader is just a character, let’s use puppy!reader for an example, she has her own characteristics specific to the reader or character. I don’t think I am puppy reader, but I love to use her character to write a reader.

self insert and second person writing is also a very good way to explore the thoughts, feelings and actions in a character in very great detail, which a lot of writers very much enjoy doing.

this is also another misconception that people make. because in some of the situations the reader goes along with / wants these things to happen, which is very easy to mistake for writer wanting it too.

so now we know that self insert does not mean desire. but even if we don’t desire this, why do we write it?

there are many reasons. one is character analysis. there are plenty of bad characters out there, and they would do that. we are simply acknowledging that.

we like to explore complexities and nuances of characters. this character would want to do that and so how would that play out? who would it be with and what would the feelings and emotions be? it’s interesting to explore darker parts of different characters.

another reason is trauma, to people without it that sounds ridiculous. but people with trauma in these kinds of situations may find comfort or control in reading about it in a safe environment.

I have a lot of childhood trauma, and there are certain pieces of writing centred around that kind of thing can really help me to think about it and help me to control the way I think about it.

now there are some aspects of dark content that we may say we “want”, but that is generally misunderstood.

let’s use a sentence I have said many a time, “I want rafe to fuck me with a gun”. no, I absolutely do not.

I am into humiliation and power play, I also enjoy a little bit of fear and pain in some circumstances. in a safe environment, for example, a fictional one, a gun would be a perfect way to do these things.

obviously in real life I wouldn’t let anyone come near me with a gun. it’s all about interpretation and understanding of safe environments.

when I’m reading a fic where gun play may be involved I read about the humiliation and power play and all sorts and think oh fuck that is sexy. because it is, in this very safe place where a gun is not going to harm me or anyone.

the same goes for lots of other forms of dark content. we might not necessarily want the exact action, but more the sensation or feeling that comes with the action.

but why would we write it when people are going to be triggered by it?

simply put, that is not our problem. I haven’t ever come across a piece of dark content that wasn’t correctly labelled and warned.

I’m not responsible for anyone else’s media consumption, if they choose to ignore my warnings it is entirely their fault.

also, free will exists, if someone decides they don’t like what they’re reading they can simply close the piece, stop reading.

in a nutshell, if someone who writes dark content is 1. not romanticising it and 2. labelling it correctly, you don’t have a reason to target them.

learning to distinguish between dark content and predatory content is so important so we’re not attacking the wrong people.

please stop targeting writers who write dark content when there are people out there who genuinely are horrible who we do need to be targeting. focus your attention on the real issues.

[rafaelsilvasource]

Husbands (we love typing that as much as you love reading it) T.K. (Ronen Rubinstein) and Carlos (Rafael L. Silva) are coming into the fifth and final season of 9-1-1: Lone Star (premiering Monday, September 23 on Fox) already dealing with the unsolved murder of the latter’s father. But there’s more drama to come.

Carlos’ obsession with that investigation is going to put their marriage to the test. T.K.’s half-brother, Jonah, is coming to Austin (which is sure to affect Rob Lowe‘s Owen as well). Below, co-showrunner Rashad Raisani previews that and more that’s ahead for the fan-favorite couple.

Carlos is investigating his father’s death. What can you preview about that investigation? That’s also going to involve Campbell (Parker Young), right?

The way we’ve been talking about Campbell and Carlos is that they’re like two brothers, the big brother and the little brother. Carlos comes along, and in Campbell’s mind, he got kind of a free pass because of who his dad, Gabriel Reyes, was, the legend, and to go to the front of the line and become a Texas Ranger. The first episode is about these two brothers both fighting for daddy’s love and daddy being Chief Bridges, their boss. But what’s gonna happen is they learn to respect each other and they’re gonna discover that they’re so much better when they work as a team and they really complement each other brilliantly, not just as investigators, but as characters and frankly to me, as actors. I think just they have a wonderful dynamic that only gets richer as the season goes forward.

Carlos’s father’s murder is a thing that Carlos is not giving that up. It is the central driving force in Carlos’ life. And there’s no way we’re going to end the series without giving that poor guy some answers. So there will be some answers at the end of the day on that.

The season description says that T.K. and Carlos’ marriage is put to the test because Carlos becomes obsessed with solving his father’s murder. What can you tease about how we see that play out and how tough things are gonna get in the middle of that for them? I do have faith that they’re gonna be okay by the end.

A big part for me about their marriage was I really wanted to treat it like a real marriage, and by that, I mean that even though these guys are so wonderful to each other and they’re so handsome, life isn’t perfect no matter who you are and everybody has real struggles that affect even great relationships. And the true strength of a relationship isn’t the absence of challenges and problems, it’s how you grapple with them and encounter them and if they make your relationship stronger or weaker.

And so for Carlos, this burden of his dad’s murder is going to sit there and take up a lot of oxygen in the room and T.K., who is an incredibly supportive husband, is gonna try and be patient and graceful and allow Carlos to have that space. But at a certain point, he’s got to advocate for them to have a future together, and that’s part of what you were talking about with Jonah. I like to think that little boy, in some ways, represents the future of their relationship and Gabriel’s murder represents the past of their relationship, and there’s gonna be a tension between those two things and that’s gonna be their central dynamic this year, is that one person is struggling to get answers in the past and the other person is struggling to move on and build a future, which I think is a very relatable human experience.

All of this makes me think about kids, and that has been a bit of an issue for them in the past. How does that come into play?

I think that’s another pressure point because Carlos was very upfront with T.K. about, “Hey, I’m not ready to have kids and I don’t know if I ever will be,” and then now that his dad’s been murdered, in his headspace, that’s the last thing that he’s got the bandwidth or the emotional energy to deal with. But like I said, T.K. is feeling like life is happening right now, like we don’t get moments back, and especially as a first responder, they see that you can’t take anything for granted. And circumstances are going to align that are going to [lead to] a situation where T.K. is like, I know that you were uncomfortable with taking this next step as a father, but I feel like it’s something powerful that I need to do, and to make that a crisis point for them as well.

I hope that the audience can see the argument from both of their points of view and just go, “S**t, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I would do either.” That’s what I hope because I feel like people have real problems that aren’t so simple as to say, well, he’s right, he’s wrong, whatever. We just wanted to put them through that.

[storytellering]

Do you think DMC has a incestuous subtext? I am kind of new to the franchise (and also the fandom... Which isn't really respectful that I can see) and I want to know if I am not the only one who thinks that it's pretty obvious why the ships between DVN have many believers.

First of all, welcome to DMC, anon! And OH BOY, you'll definitely find that that's the majority opinion, at least within the Spardacest circles - honestly, most "normie" circles too. Every grass-touching, non-internet poisoned dudebro I've ever met and talked dmc with has made one or two incest jokes at me about it, definitely noting how the rivalry between the twins is very charged - the only people I've found who flat out deny it are the antis. To go more in depth about the actual subtext there - well, one should start with the roots of dmc in dmc1, right? DMC1 is definitely a gothic game - it's everywhere in the aesthetics, the inspirations, the imagery and the environment, and what is gothic horror without the incest? The initial incest in Kamiya's dmc, before Itsuno stepped in, was definitely obvious in Dante and Trish (who I'm pretty sure according to kamiya at least were supposed to be endgame) - and like, c'mon. You can say all you want that she only looks like his mom, she isn't actually Eva, she doesn't even have her personality... but from a moral perspective, that's still weird as fuck if we're going by real life standards, right? You wouldn't fuck a clone of your mom without it being at least a little bit incestuous.

Then Itsuno stepped in from 3 on, and the incestuous undertones became more focused on the immediate Sparda family - the twins, and eventually, Nero.

...Do I need to even explain it? Sure, in 3 the twins bicker and banter like real brothers, but there's definitely a suggestive edge to it - so many quips between them that really cannot be explained by "oh haha brotherly banter" without it getting at least a little bit weird. Not to mention all the "impalement as penetration" comparisons that can be drawn, and I'll leave a nice little video that goes deeper into a lot of that (as well as the gothic inspirations in the dmc franchise) so you can hear it from the mouth of someone far more eloquent than me.

And then in 4... I mean, if the amount of people who almost ubiquitously shipped Dante and Nero as soon as 4 dropped and continued doing so until 5 officially confirmed their relation (which, to be fair, Nero being Dante's nephew had actually been hinted at all along, but exactly because of so many people shipping them and not wanting it to be incestuous/the dudebros not liking Nero very much when 4 was new, pretty much everyone in the english speaking side of the fandom had been in denial about it until 5 spelled it out in big, bold letters) is kind of the test, no? That the tension and chemistry is so obvious the moment the incest element is hidden or unclear, everyone is suddenly in agreement about it. I could go on and on and on about Nero's obvious puppy crush/hero worship on Dante, Dante's immediate fondness of Nero, how if you read the 4 novels it's even more blatant and in your face... but all I'm gonna say is that that initial fight scene was softcore porn and no one can convince me otherwise, lmao. Listen, I'm just saying that if the intention wasn't to be suggestive, having Nero wrap his legs around Dante to pull him closer, bite his gun, and then straddle him like that was a very poor choice. Honorable mention for the reboot, whose devs were VERY aware of the tension between the Spardas in the og franchise, called it out by saying their game wasn't gonna do "all that gay shit" (obviously in the early 2010s the issue wasn't the incest, but it being GAY incest 🙄) and then accidentally made their version of the twins SO very....... whatever the hell is going on with the reboot twins. Not not-incestuous and definitely not straight, I'll tell you that.

And then 5, again. Do I need to explain it? Nero and V are, once again, a perfect textbook example of "couple that had so much natural chemistry everyone was flocking to it before it was revealed to be incest", plus the way everything about Dante's story, at the end, now that he's a weathered old man, is made to revolve around Vergil... yes, Dante is a depressed old alcoholic because he pushed everyone away, because of the laundry list of issues he ended up with because of everything that happened in his life, BUT Vergil was always front and center within it, even when he wasn't there. That Dante's story quite literally begins and ends with Vergil... well. I dunno about you, that just doesn't feel like your regular siblings dynamic. Also another honorable mention: "I'll make you submit" is a totally normal thing to say to your estranged father. Not weird at all with absolutely zero implications. OH, not to mention, even if we stay purely within canon and don't even look deeper at any implications or subtext... the literal only canon couple is incestuous, too. Let's not forget Kyrie and Nero are adopted siblings, Nero was raised as her brother, and the game itself calls it out in the character descritption (in 4's character bios it says Kyrie is at once Nero's "lover and family") + it's quite literally spelled out in the novels (having Nero think that "well, while it's true that he's been raised with Kyrie as siblings, he would've liked her even if they weren't family"). There's SO much more I could still go into, I have quite literally spent the past 3 years replaying the games over and over and overthinking/hyperanalizing every single frame, rereading the novels and the mangas to the point I could cite them by memory, and it's just... I dunno. I saw someone else say this somewhere, but if you're into DMC and grossed out by incest... this might not be the franchise for you.

[rememberwren]

A Dichotomy of Thought || 10

Prior and future chapters here.

A visitor in the park.

CW: domestic violence, rape, ableist language, homophobic slurs (f-word), internalized ableism, suicidal ideation.

-

It seems cruel that such terrible things must happen at moments when you are your happiest. There’s logic in it, sure—there can be no joy without pain, and happiness is bracketed on either side by sadness—but logic and cruelty don’t have to live apart from each other. In fact, you would often say they are married. 

Your boyfriend stands over you, blotting out the sun like a raincloud come to pour down on the briefest moment of peace you have felt in the last several days. Everything about him is innocuous: his clothes, his posture, hands shoved deep into his pockets as he stares down at you with unspeakable fondness in his eyes. 

“Hi honey,” he says. “How was work?” 

Johnny goes to stand, but your boyfriend is quicker, banging his shin violently against Johnny’s knee. Johnny sucks in a breath as the pain winds him, body bowing over to protect his most vulnerable areas. 

“Don’t stand on my account,” your boyfriend says to his crumpled figure. “Did I get the right knee? I did, didn’t I? I wasn’t sure if it was the right or the left—“

“Hey!” you bellow, the volume of your own voice surprising you. You stand between them, put both hands against your boyfriend’s chest, and push. He nearly goes sprawling on the sidewalk, only barely managing to get his feet under him in time. You point a shaking finger in his face. “You don’t fucking touch him!”

“An accident,” he laughs, lifting his hands. “I stumbled into him. It could have happened to anybody.” 

“Yer a fucking cunt,” Johnny groans, both hands gripping his thigh above his knee, knuckles pale. “And so’s yer mother. Syphilis-infected-cocksucking bitch.”

“Not nice,” your boyfriend says mildly, shoving his hands back into his pocket. “Do you kiss my fiancé with that mouth?” 

“You don’t even know what you’re talking about,” you hiss. All three of you quiet down as an older couple inches by, hand in weathered hand. When they are a safe distance away, you ask: “How did you know I was here? Were you following me?”

“I can’t reveal all my secrets,” he says, lowering his voice to a dangerous timber, one that promises violence. “The same way you’re not willing to give up all of yours. You thought I wouldn’t notice you coming home late all the time? Do I look stupid?” 

Johnny makes a sound, some kind of wounded laugh that only serves to put you on edge even more. You can imagine his answer—but he doesn’t know your boyfriend. He doesn’t know the kind of grim, intelligent cruelty that is wielded against you every day. Johnny is hot headed and craving violence, but he’s in no condition to experience it. 

You have to protect him. 

“We can talk about it at home,” you mutter, making sure to keep between the two men who seem eager for each other’s blood. Your boyfriend tongues his cheek, eyeing Johnny, weighing his options. 

“Come on,” you say, louder. Reaching out, you grip his arm, nails digging into his skin. He doesn’t even flinch. But after an endless moment of waiting for further provocation from Johnny, he decides Johnny isn’t worth his time. He laces his fingers in yours and pulls you along, further away from the bench, from Johnny, from the sunlight. 

“Get in the car,” he says, walking to the driver’s side. 

“You’re not supposed to drive.” 

“I won’t say it again.” 

He won’t, either. You know him. So instead you slip into the passenger seat. There’s no worse feeling than being in an enclosed space with him. The air feels heavy and oppressive, weighing you down. At the same time, your body buzzes with adrenalin, preparing for pain. You numbly buckle your seatbelt while he starts the car. 

“How long have you been cheating on me with that cripple next door?” he asks calmly. 

“I’m not.”

The calm snaps, nothing but a thin sheet of icy veneer over a deep, dark lake of fury. 

“Don’t—lie—to—me,” he says through his teeth. He holds out a hand and wiggles his fingers. “Phone. Hand it over. You’ve lost your privileges.” 

“I don’t have it,” you lie. “It’s at work.” 

“You really do,” he says, staring at you with borderline awe. “You think I’m a fucking idiot, don’t you? Oh, baby. Oh, honey. You’re in for it. How do you think I fucking found you? Give me the goddamn phone.” 

You shake your head. You can’t give it up. Not when it’s the only safe way for Simon to contact you. 

He reaches for your hand. The two of you struggle as you try to avoid his touch, briefly banging your knuckles on the car window, but then he has your hand in his grasp, and he takes your smallest finger and wrenches it back, back—you feel the pop, pain lancing through your hand all the way to your wrist. 

You screech. 

“Give me the phone,” he says, letting you cradle the misshapen hand against your breast. You grit your teeth, tears dripping off your chin. When he reaches for your hand again, you break and turn out your pockets, handing over your last lifeline. He takes the phone and beats it against the dashboard, again and again and again until the screen is a spider’s web of cracks, glass littering your knees. 

He hands you back the broken phone. 

“You broke my fucking finger,” you cry, voice warbling embarrassingly. 

“You broke your own finger by not listening to me the first time,” he says, tossing the phone in your lap when you don’t take it. He puts the car in reverse. “Don’t blame me for your mistakes, baby.” 

-

The two of you spend five hours in the emergency room together. This is an integral part of the experience; when he hurts you, he has to heal you. 

Your pinky isn’t broken, only dislocated. They set it and splint it and warn you that it could take months to feel normal again, like you know at all what that word means. Beneath the tinny lights of the exam room, your makeup job must be failing, because the nurse asks your boyfriend to step out so that she can ask you a few questions alone. 

This isn’t your first time in the emergency room, and you know the rules. You stick to your story (the one he had stitched together on the drive to the ER) even without your boyfriend’s oppressive presence looming over your shoulder. The nurse gives you a look that is both professional and pitying. You spend the rest of the visit refusing to meet her eyes, chewing on the nails of your good hand. 

“Could you be any more suspicious?” your boyfriend asks mildly while the two of you leave. He waves to one of the nurses, who gives back a cheerful little salute. 

Making friends wherever he goes; that’s your boyfriend. 

-

Walking into your apartment is like walking into another world. 

Everything has been upended: the couch cushions, the silverware drawers, the chairs at the table. DVD’s have been removed from their boxes. Even the fucking lamps have had their lampshades removed. The bathroom and bedroom doors have been taken off their hinges and laid neatly against one another in the bedroom. 

“You weren’t the only one busy today,” he says, relishing in your grim expression. “You know the drill. Clean up. Then we’ll go to bed.” 

This is an old trick of his that you know well. He tore the place apart searching for contraband—but he knows that even he isn’t all-powerful. Now he waits to see where you will rush to clean up first, where your anxious mind will take you, desperate to find out if he’s found whatever you’ve been hiding. Once it was money. Another time, a business card for a lawyer. 

This time, a lighter that’s not your own. 

You’re smarter now, though. You don’t go straight for your sock drawer where the lighter is hidden. You begin at the northernmost point of the apartment and clean north to south, east to west, methodical, your hand throbbing as the anesthetic wears off. 

It is deeply late by the time you make it to the bedroom to find your clothes strewn across the bed. Your eyes burn with exhaustion, body aching from a long day at work (and a longer day after work). You can’t help but think of Johnny as you clean, tucking clothes back into their drawers, putting clothes back on their hangers. Did he make it home safely? Did he finally message Simon? Did he try to walk home? Thinking about Johnny out alone in the dark makes your stomach turn unpleasantly. 

Sock drawer now. Most of these are still in the dresser, though some have been pushed out into the floor in your boyfriend’s search for ammunition to use against you. You pick up the few outliers and stuff them back into the drawer. 

No lighter. 

It’s not there. You know even as you continue to search without hope, rifling through your paired socks as subtly as you can. This is all just another game. He’s found the lighter and has just been waiting for you to notice it’s gone so that he can torment you with it. Maybe he’ll flick the spark wheel (the way Johnny can’t—God, Johnny, please be okay—) and hold the flame to your skin or your hair—

You touch something hard, plastic. Your breath catches. It’s there. It’s still there, tucked inside a pair of socks. He hadn’t found it. Relief rises up in you so poignantly that tears fill your eyes, even as you force yourself to shut the drawer and move on to another part of the room, feeling your boyfriend’s presence at the door, watching. 

The lighter was so little, but it meant so much. You couldn’t even put into words why. Because it was Johnny’s, maybe. Because it was yours, now. Because it was one thing your boyfriend hadn’t put his hands on and destroyed or claimed as his own. Nothing belonged to you—not your money, not your body, nothing. Except maybe that silly lighter. 

You wait until after he fucks you to speak, stubbornly maintaining your silence even through the pain and humiliation he inflicts on you. There’s something even worse about the way he draws your body against his afterwards, an arm looped possessively over your waist, the imitation of a loving cuddle. 

“I want to break up,” you say. 

He gives a long-suffering sigh, breath rustling your hair. “Keep dreaming, baby.” 

The words won’t stop tripping out of your mouth. 

“I mean it. I hate you—and you hate me. All we do is fight and hurt each other. Why…” you get choked up, swallow past the lump in your throat. “We don’t have to do this anymore. You can’t possibly be happy. Is this really how you want to live the rest of your life? Tormenting me?” 

He is quiet for longer than you expect. You hold your breath, tears dripping from your eyes and over the bridge of your nose, down into your pillowcase. Maybe he’s thinking about it. Maybe he’s really considering it. 

At last, he says: “Don’t ever think that there’s anywhere else in the world…anything else I’d rather be, than right where I am.”

Your heart plummets.

“Now go to sleep,” he says, kissing your neck. “You work in the morning.”

-

The sun goes down before Simon finds him. Johnny sits shivering on the bench where you left him, his eyes red rimmed and unseeing even when he hears the familiar footsteps of his lover against the pavement. 

Simon sits next to him where you once sat, and for a long time, neither of them speaks. When Johnny finally breaks the silence, his voice is rough from hours of crying and disuse. 

“I brought her here,” he says. 

Simon nods. He knows. Of course he knows. 

“I think she liked it,” Johnny adds, trying to find any brightness in the dark that encompasses him. 

But all at once the tears come back, his throat burning, head throbbing. He bends at the waist, elbow on his thigh, and shakes, trying to keep his crying quiet, still clinging to the remnants of a dignity that God tears more from his grasp every day. When Simon’s warm arm wraps around him, it just makes him cry harder, even as he leans into the heat of the other man like a flower bends toward the sun. 

“I’m useless,” Johnny weeps. “Fuckin’ useless. He showed up and just—took her, and I couldn’t do a thing to stop him. Even you think I’m useless—druggin’ me to keep me from getting in your way. I can’t dress myself, can’t tie my own shoes. What fucking good am I, as a human being? What’s the good in being alive if I have to live like this?”

Simon says nothing. Johnny leans up, letting the moonlight wash over his tear-soaked face. He wipes at his cheeks. 

“You can’t be happy, either,” he says, taking in the solemn lines of Simon’s face, the shadows under his eyes. Simon looks older than his age, and Johnny knows who is responsible, who has aged him. Terrified to know the answer, he asks: “Is this how you want to live? With an overgrown child as your lover? One who can’t remember where he took off his shoes? Who needs you to, to cut up his food and button his shirts?” 

“If that’s how it’s going to be,” says Simon simply. “If that’s how I get to be with you. Then yeah, Johnny. I’m solid.” 

Johnny shakes his head. He can’t even find the energy within him to be angry. All that’s left is disbelief. “You can’t mean that.” 

“I mean it. I—“ Simon ducks his head. “—I never should have put those pills in your juice. I should have trusted you. I wish I could take that back.” 

Johnny sniffs wetly. It’s as close to an apology as he’s ever heard Simon give, and it makes no small amount of guilt bloom in Johnny’s aching chest. 

“You were right not to trust me,” says Johnny. “I was lying.”

“I know,” says Simon. He reaches down and laces his fingers with Johnny’s one hand. “But I want to be a man who trusts you, even if I’m wrong.” 

Johnny is quiet for a long time, turning those words over in his head. A painful longing rises up in his chest, one he hasn’t felt since the days when he was still in the 141, days when he could barely breathe for wanting the man beside him so badly. When they’d had to love each other in secret, and it felt like he would happily have given anything if it meant they didn’t have to hide anymore. 

I miss you, he thinks. I miss myself. Leaning in, he lays his cheek against Simon’s shoulder. 

“Are we gonna make it?” he wonders quietly, watching the last of the fireflies twinkle around the dim park. Soon it will be too cold for them. Soon it will be too cold for Johnny. 

“Whatever we do, we’ll do it together,” Simon promises, laying his temple against Johnny’s head. 

-

He waits until you are asleep to creep out of the bed. There is no rest for him—not when he gets in these restless, paranoid moods. Not when he has a hunch to follow. 

Quietly, he drifts through the apartment like a ghost. Everything is back in its place, but he tries to think of anywhere he might have missed to search. You are hiding something; he knows it. He knows you. You’re see-through to him, predictable in a way that used to thrill him but now just irritates. 

“Where is it?” he mutters, standing in the living room, turning a slow circle. 

Was the lighter really all you’d been hiding? That stupid piece of plastic and metal? He’d found it easily and decided it served him better left in its place. Let you think that he had missed it. Let you think that he was slipping. 

“I’m sharper than ever, baby,” he mutters to himself in the darkness. 

Halfheartedly, he searches a few places that he had already gone through: checking some of the mugs on the top shelf in the kitchen, feeling beneath the table in the foyer for anything taped beneath it. 

He thinks about the cripple next door while he does it. Johnny. A problem, if he’s ever seen one. Him and his boyfriend both. What two faggots want with you, he can’t imagine—good Samaritans, perhaps? Well they would find out in good time what happened to people who put their noses where they didn’t belong. 

Regardless, he doesn’t like it. It leaves a sour taste in his mouth. 

Sighing, he braces his hands against the table, resting his weight against it. If he’d known that this building would cause so much trouble, he never would have moved you in here. Not that the two of you had been swimming in options. 

Your keys on the table catch his eye, but he doesn’t know why. He nudges them with his hand, metal dragging over the wood. On a whim, he counts them. 

There is an extra key. 

His brows lift. He picks up the keys and goes through them one by one, wracking his brain to remember what each one is for. At last he’s left with a single unfamiliar key. One that looks identical to the key to their apartment. A duplicate? he wonders. For when she’s locked out? 

But no, the keys are different. Just similar. 

An idea tickles at the back of his brain, but he’s never been the kind of man to ignore his instincts. He goes to the door without bothering to slip on his shoes, and steps silently out into the hallway. At this time of night, there is no one out and about, no one peeking at him from their doors.  On silent feet, he pads to his neighbor’s door and grips the knob. Locked. 

He slips the key into the lock—and it opens. 

Oh that little bitch. Fury rises up in him until he can taste it in the back of his throat. He wants to go and wake you, take a fistful of your hair and drag you out into the hallway for all your nosy neighbors to see, wants to hear that shriek of pain you give when he hurts you so unexpectedly—

But no. He has to be smart. 

He locks 5C’s door again, checks the handle, then slips back into his apartment. There will be no rest for him tonight. Not when there is so much to think about. 

[hannahssimblr]

Her shoulders begin to shake with her sobs. “I hate this,” she says. “I hate all this bloody change all at once.”

“I know.”

Startled, we both look up as the patio door opens. Evie slips out. Perhaps she is looking for me, but she diverts her course and begins collecting the empty plates on the table instead. She goes back into the kitchen. 

“Fuck sake,” says Jen, swiping at her face like she could shove the tears back where they came from. “Here I am, crying at you, after Evie’s already cried at you, and who knows who else, Jesus Christ.”

“It’s alright. There’s a kind of sad, crying vibe in the air these days.”

She laughs. “Except you, right? You’ve not shed a tear.”

“I’ve cried,” I say mysteriously. “Just not tonight.”

“You will.”

“I don’t think so. To be honest, I’ve been feeling a bit numb in general.”

“Makes sense. I wish I was.”

“No, you don’t.”

She rests her head on my shoulder. It’s a familiar, specifically Jen kind of action, the feel of that soft, warm cheek through my t-shirt and the smell of her shampoo. This action is one she’s repeated a thousand times before, like when we watch a film, or when she’s tired, or sad, or wants to talk about her day, or read a book with me and comment on it without context. I know it will be the last time for a while. 

“I’ll miss you,” she says. “I think I’m going to miss all of this time in my life when it’s gone.”

“Nah, things will get better than this. Don’t hold these years up as the best you’ll ever have. That’s depressing.”

“Do you think we’ll romanticise our teens some time in the future? Whether we’ll think about how young and gorgeous we were, all the fun we had, and give absolutely anything to get it back?”

I chuckle. “No. I’ve hated this mess. There’s barely anything I’d like to preserve.”

“Except me.”

“Yeah, except you, exactly as you are. Obviously. I’d keep you in a glass jar if I could and take you all over the world in my bag.”

Evie crosses the kitchen window with another handful of bowls, and we both watch her slot them neatly into the dishwasher. “And her,” says Jen. “You’d keep her too.”

“Jen.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Of course not.”

“I think that if you had half a brain, you would.”

It’s true. This girl that I watch through the window, with whom I spent just a summer, has trusted me with her dreams. Those whispered to me in a parked, idling car. Her secrets, she revealed as we lay on the grass under a canopy of blossoming trees. There are parts of me only she has seen. I know that if the timing were different, and a girl like this would have me, I would build my world around her, but we’re too young, and by the time I met her, it was already much too late.

She flits around the kitchen until she’s cleared away the last dish, and then with idle hands, for one moment, she stands and stares out the window. I know she is looking for me, and won’t see me in the dark, yet I feel like there’s a frisson between us. It’s striking and strange. It’s some sort of knowing. We are watching one another with a stillness, like two animals of the same species spotting one another in the wild. 

Then she turns and is swallowed up by the darkened hallway behind her. 

Beginning // Prev // Next

[minmin-vs-physics]

HUP, EPR, and Bell’s Theorem

Abstract

An educational document discussing the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the EPR (Einstein- Podolsky-Rosen) Paradox, and Bell’s Theorem, written for an audience without a background in physics, but with their head still screwed on right.

1 Introduction

Ah, quantum mechanics. A bizarre theory which unfortunately describes our physical world exceed- ingly well. Einstein didn’t get it. Bohr didn’t get it. I don’t get it. And soon, you won’t get it either. As the saying goes, the more you know about quantum mechanics, the less you understand it.

I will be skipping around in terms of topics covered in undergraduate quantum mechanics courses to prepare you for the actual beast, Entanglement.

Entanglement, the property of quantum systems to remain correlated even when separated, is a concept which has transformed from a worrisome byproduct of a thought experiment [1] into a cornerstone of quantum mechanics itself. What is a quantum mechanics? Google is your friend, my dear reader. My time with you is limited„ and I cannot teach you the alphabet to make you read Shakespeare. I can only explain what you directly need to understand this article. Anything else shall be your homework, and if I am feeling kind at the end, I will provide a list of accessible resources on learning quantum mechanics the RIGHT way.

As we dive into the frankly confusing world of entanglement, it is vital that you remember one thing– A quantum particle is described by a wave function, Ψ. This wave function is a solution to the Schrodinger equation.

This is what they mean when they say something is both a particle and a wave; It’s behavior can be described by a special kind of wave equation, which we all know and love as the Schrodinger Wave Equation. But that’s not important right now. I’ll explain more if I need to. We need to get to HUP.

2 Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle

Formulated by Werner Heisenberg in 1927, the Uncertainty Principle is an indomitable tenet in the field of quantum mechanics. Its premise is simple. The more precisely a particle’s momentum is determined, the less precisely is its momentum. In one dimension, this can be summarized with the following mathematical statement: ∆x∆p ≤ 2

Here, ∆x is the standard deviation or “spread” of the position x, while ∆p is the standard deviation of the momentum p. As the spread of one quantity decreases, the other must increase in order to maintain the inequality. I will not bother proving the Principle in full, but I have Heisenberg’s original proof in the references.

Is that it?

Ummmmm, no. An important thing to remember about HUP is that it is not exclusive to x and p. HUP applies to any two quantum mechanical operators, A, B, which do not commute with each other i.e. [A, B] = AB − BA = 0. But that’s all mathematical nonsense, Min! What does it really mean?

Fine! I’m only doing this because it will be useful when we get to measurements in the EPR paradox and Bell theorems. In order to understand what “not commuting” means in the physical sense, let’s use our favorites, position and momentum, as an example. In quantum mechanics, xˆ andpˆ are referred to as the position and momentum operators respectively. (Why the little hats? Firstly, they’re cute, and secondly, well, you’ll see.) The whole point of calling them operators is that they act on wave functions. And in the crudest sense possible (please don’t try this at home, folks), hitting an operator on a wave function and taking the expectation value, gives a measurement of the quantum mechanical system.

There is about three semesters of quantum mechanical education I’m waving off right now, but bear with me. When we act the momentum operator on the system, in some sense we extract the momentum. Same thing for position. However, the whole deal about x and p is that they do not commute. So, the order in which you conduct the measurements absolutely does matter. First measuring x and then p would give you a different answer than first measuring p and then x. This is because the very act of measuring a quantum state changes it. That’s right! It changes. This makes all the difference when you consider the standard deviation of a bunch of measurements. If my memory of introductory quantum mechanics serves me right, after about three pages of algebra you arrive at the familiar position-momentum uncertainty principle.

The moral of the story is that the non-commutativity of these operators manifests as a sort of granularity in the accuracy of measurements you can make on a physical system. This granularity is retained between any other kinds of non-commuting measurements you can make!

On second thought, do you really need this? Probably not. But, the algebra of uncertainty principles is a pet project to me. Especially the strangest of them all, the energy-time uncertainty principle. Enough on that! Here’s the main takeaway (other than the actual HUP statement) that you need from this section:

Making a measurement on a state changes its wave function. No exceptions. None. The detached observer is not a reality in the quantum mechanical world.

3 Spin

I realized that the following sections will not make any sense if you don’t at least know what spin is. So, let’s make a short pit-stop at Spin City to learn about this nonsensical physical quantity.

We’re all aware of angular momentum– its the rotational analog of linear momentum (which we talked about the previous section). We all agree that it is a property related to the motion of an object, right? WRONG! Sometime in the 1900s (Seriously, 20th Century Physicists should chill out), it was discovered this angular momentum from motion i.e. “orbital” angular momentum, as it was called in the atomic physics context it was first described, does not account for all the angular momentum of a particle. Long story short, the remaining angular momentum, which is intrinsic to a particle, is now called Spin. Every fundamental particle has a particular value of spin, which, in quantum mechanical jargon, is the eigenvalue of the spin operator.

For understanding the following sections, we really only need to care about spin-1/2 particles, which are lovingly called fermions, and are the building blocks of all ordinary matter. The shining feature of spin-1/2 particles is that their spin can either be +1 or −1 , which is often referred to as spin-up (↑) and spin-down (↓) respectively.

Physically, the up or down comes from whether the measured spin is along the axis it is measured, or opposite to it. Yes, spin is a vector, so it does have three independent components in the three spatial directions, but it is convention to consider the z-component of the spin for calculations and experiments. Any references to up and down in the next sections are along the z-direction.

Oh, and one more thing, spin-0 particles have no intrinsic spin. This will be important when we encounter the EPR Paradox.

4 EPR Paradox

After skipping a whole bunch of most-likely important concepts in the study of quantum mechanics we arrive at the EPR paradox.

The EPR paradox is a thought experiment first described in the groundbreaking paper [1] by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen in 1935. Einstein was quite vocally a hater, and the EPR paradox was proposed as evidence that the description of reality provided by quantum mechanics is incomplete. Reality doesn’t care, of course, and the EPR Paradox isn’t really a paradox. In fact, it is the foundation of entanglement– a magnificent, very real feature of reality which spans black holes, quantum computers and even my field of research: Entanglement in elementary particle physics.

In fact, I’m so self-centered that the example we will use to illustrate the EPR paradox is from particle physics. Just kidding, my explanation follows Chapter 12 in Griffiths’ Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, and is a simplified version credited to David Bohm

EPRB Paradox

Suppose a pion (funky particle with spin-0) at rest, decays to an electron and positron which fly off into opposite directions. Since the pion has spin-0, conservation of angular momentum dictates that the electron and positron occupy the following spin configuration.

√(1/2) (|↑↓⟩−|↓↑⟩)

BE NOT AFRAID of the mathematical jumpscare. The fancy bracket |·⟩ is what’s called a “ket”, and is used to denote the state of a quantum system. All the expression says is that either the electron is

spin-up (+1) and the positron is spin-down (−1) or vice-versa, because the total spin of the system 22

must add up to 0. (Since the initial state is spin zero, the system must stay spin-zero even after the decay occurs. That’s what angular momentum conservation is all about.) We don’t know which combination we will get, but it must be one of the above. Measuring the spin of one of the particles will automatically tell us what the spin of the other particle is. This means that the spins of the electron and positron are correlated. In modern terms, such a state is called entangled.

Now, let’s pretend that these particles fly off in opposite directions, until say, they are several light years apart. What would happen if we found the electron and measured its spin to be +1 ? We instantly know that the positron’s spin is −1 . This is obvious. Why are we mad about this?

Naturally, we may think that the electron really was spin-up from the moment it was created and it was only that quantum mechanics did not know until we made a measurement. But by the principles of quantum mechanics, neither particle had a definite spin, until we made a measurement, causing the wave function to “collapse” and instanteously produce the spin of the positron which is lights years away!

The EPR bros were NOT having it. Einstein famously called this phenomenon “spooky action at a distance”. They stated that the quantum mechanical standpoint must be wrong! The electron and positron must have had well-defined spins from their creation, even if quantum mechanics does not know it. Quantum mechanics is not a complete description of reality and there must be some hidden variables which describe a physical system that we do not yet know.

The fundamental assumption guiding the EPR argument is that no information can propagate faster than light. This the principle of locality. In order to appease this, we can say that the wave function collapsed at some finite velocity and is not instantaneous. However, this violates conservation– If we measured the positron spin as well before the information of collapse reached it, there is a 50–50 chance that both particles are spin-up, which means the system has total spin-1. Preposterous! You can mess with anything you want in this universe, but you don’t mess with conservation laws. What do we do now?

Okay, let’s calm down. The theorists may say whatever they want, but experiment doesn’t lie. Experiment tells us that in these cases, spin is perfectly correlated. The wave function collapse is instantaneous. That’s crazy. Call your mom and tell her you want to go home. The EPR Bros are frightening you— Quantum Mechanics is NOT local so it is NOT complete.

...Except. It is. Enter, Bell’s Theorem.

5 Bell’s Theorem

Now, what’s the situation? The EPR gang is not happy. I’m not happy. You’re not happy. Is quantum mechanics wrong? No, silly! EPR said it themselves: they think it’s merely incomplete. So, in order to completely describe a quantum mechanical state, you not only need the wave function Ψ, you also need some unknown, hidden variable λ. Lots of hidden variable theories were proposed after the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paper, but none of them ever gained traction. It was still a respectable area of study until 1964, when J.S. Bell proved that any local (Remember locality from the last section?) hidden variable theory is incompatible with quantum mechanics.

I’ll spare you the details of Bell’s work, dear reader. One thought experiment in an essay is gruesome enough. (It is also getting quite late and I still didn’t code my calculations. I have spent far too much time on this already.)

Bell’s proof involves the wonderful use of probability, and the barest assumptions that can be made about local hidden variable theories. Basically, in any local hidden variable theory, the probabilities of various outcomes are related by what’s known as a Bell inequality. If EPR’s conjecture is right, and there really are hidden variables we don’t know about, then any physical system must obey its Bell inequality.

Except, there have been various experiments since the 1960s confirming that Bell’s inequality is indeed violated. This came as a rude shock to scientists as it is not fun to learn that reality is very much nonlocal. It was all fun and games when this was all merely a mathematical artifact, but nonlocality felt like a gateway drug to a much grimmer violation.

Causality

Bell inequality violations, no matter how surprising, are merely wonderful correlations between two sets of otherwise random data. Sure, the measurement of the spin of the electron affects the positron, but it does not cause it in any meaningful way. The person measuring the electron spin cannot use this collapse of the wave function to send a message to the person with the positron, since they don’t control the outcome of the experiment. They can decide whether to measure the electron at all, but the other person only has access to the positron’s spin and cannot tell whether the electron has been measured or not.

Phew! This sort of nonlocal influence does not transmit any energy or information, so it is exempt from the speed of light. Meanwhile, causal influences, those which do transmit information or energy, cannot travel faster than light. According to special relativity, if this was possible then, there are reference frames in which information can propagate backwards through time. And that, my dear reader, is what we call a big nono. Since the EPR paradox does not imply that causality is violated, we can lie uncomfortably on our bed of nonlocal but causal theory of quantum mechanics.

So rest easy, quantum mechanics is weird, but safe. Entanglement is not a fairytale, but also not the boogeyman. It’s probably more scared of you than you of it. Just give it some time. More answers will follow.

What Do I Do Now?

So, you want to know more? Or curl up in a ball and never think about this again? Either is fine. I won’t judge. If your answer is the former, here are some resources to guide you through the thickets of quantum mechanics.

PopSci Sources

1. IDTIMWYTIM: Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle 2. Why did Quantum Entanglement Win the Nobel Prize in Physics? 3. Bell’s Theorem: The Quantum Venn Diagram Paradox

Surely, you’ll get more out of these wonderful science Youtubers than you did from me yapping for four pages. There are a bunch more probably, but you’ll have to find them yourself.

Academic Sources

1. An Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, D.J. Griffiths.

Of course, there are other quantum mechanics textbooks that I like much more than this one. But, this is the least daunting, so I’ll leave it here.

Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more silly academic style papers.

References

[1]  A. Einstein, B. Podolsky and N. Rosen, “Can quantum mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete”? Phys. Rev. 47, 777–780 (1935) doi:10.1103/PhysRev.47.777

[2]  Heisenberg, W. “Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik”. Z. Physik 43, 172–-198 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01397280

[3]  D.J. Griffiths, D.F. Schroeter, “Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Third Edition” Cambridge University Press (2018) 978–1–107–18963–8,

[bratbarzal]

On Your Side (NH13) / Chapter Six

Pairing: Nico Hischier x Fem!OC Poppy Jensen*

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

WC: 15k

Chapter Warnings: believe it or not there's fluff in here. very very cute scenes I have to say. but obviously encompassed by angst. a fluff sandwich with angsty bread if you will. and the butter is nico's continuous pining. luke being the ultimate girls girl, wise beyond his years god bless him, the rest of the boys being soft, Nico's family being endearing, and then here we go!!! mentions of vomiting and food aversion, mentions of pregnancy & early pregnancy symptoms, I want to say there's mentions of drowning I remember thinking of the imagery and I can't remember how detailed I went with it sorry! it isn't actual drowning just like a metaphor of sorts. mentions of the birth control patch if you've ever had it you KNOW that needs a full trigger warning whoever came up with that deserves jail it's hell it's horror!! and mentions of poor parental relationships.

Series Masterlist

Previous Part (Chapter Five)

A/N: potentially fun fact the last scene in this chapter is maybe the second thing I ever wrote for this fic!! like as a concept/idea it was one of the earliest scenes in my head and it's one of my faves!! I've been dying to get to this part to flesh it out and figure out how to build to it and I'm really happy with how it turned out!! writing for families of real people is such an odd concept but I really like the differences in their parents lmao it's fun to write and compare the dynamics obviously it goes without saying I do not know these people lmao

I know the last chapter broke a couple hearts so I'll leave you guys to crack on! as always, never proofread, and as always, would love to hear your thoughts and opinions!!! all the love in my heart to anyone who messaged me this last week on anon or not or private or whatever it may be I appreciate you so much yous have been so so kind to me and it means the world 💖

Nico

If anyone were to ever ask Nico what his favourite trait of Poppy’s is, he knows for a fact he would not be able to narrow it down. She’s a culmination of all things good, has been from the day he met her, and even the things he shouldn’t like about her, he loves.

He shouldn’t like that she’s sarcastic, quick-witted - scarily so - and sometimes says things before she has the chance to properly think about them or any problems they may cause her. He remembers his first couple of years in Jersey, when he was one of the more junior players on the team, still considered new to the country and the culture, and a lot of people had underestimated how familiar he was speaking English despite his years playing in Canada and growing up learning multiple languages. They would often default to explaining things like he wouldn’t understand, like common terms or jokes told amongst a group - and he, being too polite to correct them, had always ended up feeling like an idiot for it. 

There had been one instance prepping for a media day, where he had only met Poppy once a week or so before, and she had been prepping him to be on camera, clipping his mic pack and checking the settings. 

One of the other media staff, a guy called Liam who was in his second year where Poppy was in her first and had been the one she had to initially shadow, had cracked some misogynistic joke to her about how she was messing around with controls she didn’t understand just to be able to stand closer to Nico, as if he wasn’t right there or couldn’t hear him - and then when he had seen Nico’s furrowed brow and downturned lips, had assumed he didn’t understand the joke because he hadn’t laughed.

“It’s because she thinks you’re hot!” The guy had obnoxiously enunciated every word, capturing the attention of some of the more senior assistants in the room who had rolled their eyes just as hard as Nico had.

“He’s from Europe, Liam, not Jupiter. You don’t have to speak to him like he’s some alien.” Poppy had shook her head, caring so little about the fact that Liam had seniority over her, fitting the pack into Nico’s back pocket without him even feeling it, “He understands your slimy little jokes, he just doesn’t find you funny. Nobody does.”

Nico shouldn’t have liked her speaking on his behalf as much as he did, coming to his defence with her sharp tongue and cold glare, but no one had ever picked up on how uncomfortable that kind of thing made him before. The stupid jokes and the belittling tone Liam had used toward him. Poppy saw through both.

And all of her good is even better.

Poppy is positive. He has never seen her leave a room without having caused at least one smile or laugh. She’s someone he’s seen most of the guys perk up around, seek her out for help or even mundane conversation just to lighten the load, and he knows he’ll never be able to keep track of all the times he’s gone to her for a pick me up over the years.

She’s generous. Generous with her time when it comes to her friends, always making sure to maintain plans even when she’s at her busiest. When it comes to her work, staying late to help out a colleague or finish a project so it isn’t left to the last minute. With her knowledge and experience, always there for new members of staff or additions to the team to show them all her favourite spots in the area and get them up to speed with their role.

She is patient - waits around for him when he gets stuck doing media, or held behind to see the physio, and she never complains. She’ll never watch an episode of a show they start together without him, despite the fact his schedule doesn’t often allow for him to stay up late catching up, and she doesn’t moan when she gets spoiled if it’s something that comes out weekly and ends up being a hot topic in the office, doesn’t even spoil it for him out of spite. She even pauses the tv as soon as she notices he’s fallen asleep, and she’ll busy herself doing something else until she feels like he’s rested enough to drive home. 

And, above all, she’s forgiving. If someone were to push for an answer, and they were to have done so before this whole mess happened, he probably would have said that was his favourite thing. It’s like her superpower - to be able to understand things from a different perspective without judgement or a major confrontation. It’s like her default process is to give people grace and make things easy, even if they aren’t entirely deserving of that way out.

She had done so with Nico, that night up on the roof. He hadn’t deserved her leniency, not entirely. He had expected he would have to grovel and beg, and he had been more than willing to do so, but she had wanted to avoid further heartache for the both of them, and had decided to move on. 

And sure, she hadn’t technically forgiven him at that point for the way he had treated her, not properly, but she had put him on the path to redemption, and had made it clear what was expected to make it all the way there.

She’d gone easy on him, in spite of how much he had hurt her. She’d been patient with his reasoning, generous with her time, and had done so with an affectionate glint in her eyes that even now makes his heart warm to think about.

It’s the same glint she’d had when she’d come out of that elevator and had seen him by her door. He’d watched her take him in, eyes cast over him in a concerned assessment, and he knew then that no matter what he said, no matter how he explained what had led him to leave her that morning without a word, she would have forgiven him.

She would have found some way to rationalise what he had done, and put how it made her feel to the side in the name of moving on.

And he had seen his life flash before his eyes. 

Nights of coming home to her, muscles weak, brain fogged, and she’d give him that same look and accept what little he had to offer her. She’d be patient, she’d be forgiving. She wouldn’t get mad that he didn’t have time to take her on dates or trips, wouldn’t bite back when he got snappy after a couple of successive losses and let his frustrations come between them, would resign herself to those little parts of him she’d get to herself in the summer, when he wasn’t training or travelling or trying to fit everyone else in, and would swallow down the longing for something more because she loved him. 

And he couldn’t subject her to that, no matter how much she tried to fight him on it, or tried to call him out. 

No matter how much he wanted to be better for her, how much he wanted her to change his mind, the one quality he loved so much was going to be their demise, and so he had relied on it to cling on to the one thing he can give her.

Friendship.

Even if she won’t accept it for a while. Even if she wants to tell him to leave, and to ignore his texts, and his calls, and his efforts to bump into her at work, she has to forgive him. It’s who she is. 

She’ll forgive him and they can be friends.

Eventually.

And so with the weight of her bracelet in his pocket the whole walk home that night, Nico had decided that he could take a leaf out of Poppy’s book. 

He could be patient while she came to terms with what he had done. He could be generous with the space she needed. He could be positive and push down the bubbling doubt that she’ll forgive him at all.

—

Space happens to be the one thing Nico struggles with the most when it comes to Poppy. Especially conceptualised in the way that it has become - because he can’t physically give her space, they work in the same building. They share the same friends, they end up in the same rooms, and his resolve is as weak as ever where she is concerned, especially when she’s so close, so his generosity ends up being the trait that wains first.

He will give it to himself, he has been trying. He hasn’t been texting her as much as he wants to, understanding that bombarding her with begging and pleading is not only pathetic, but could also be considered harassment. And that will do him no favours in trying to earn back her favour.

But the other night he had been up on the roof after a long day, the air cold but the evening nice, and as he looked out across the Hudson, he had remembered how Poppy had once said her favourite time of the day, and her favourite thing about where she lives, was getting to see the sunset. 

On the early winter evenings, when she’d not long gotten home from work, she liked looking out her window and basking in what she had called cotton candy skies. Swirls of pinks and greyish purples behind the rows of skyscrapers on the other side of the river, all of which reflected the lowering sun in a glimmering, golden glow. He had taken a picture and sent it straight over with the thought that she might be missing it, and he just wanted to let her know. 

Even avoiding him, even wanting space, he was hoping she would at least appreciate that.

The sentiment attached to the picture had read, Just in case you don’t catch this yourself. And as he periodically checked his phone for the rest of the night, he had realised she had probably turned her read receipts off.

At least she hadn’t blocked him.

Nico had, however, started to get creative when it came to work.

Unable to stifle the need to check up on her, or to make sure something happened to brighten her day, he had taken to recruiting the rest of the guys to help.

He should have known how easy it would be, his first enlistment being Jack, who he knew would visit Poppy often, anyway. Only, now he did so with a drink in hand. Peach iced tea if his trip to her office was anytime after lunch, and a hot chai with oat milk if it was before. Nico had initially suggested snacks, but Jack had ended up eating them, himself, which turned out to be useful when it came to bribing him for information.

According to Jack, she was doing okay. Cracking jokes, rolling her eyes at the stupid nicknames he would come up with, and overall she seemed like her normal self. No signs of insurmountable heartache - not Jack’s words, but his own deduction.

He had been surprised at the lack of questions from him, but Jack knows when not to push something, so maybe he had decided to go easy on Nico for now.

Timo had been making sure she was breaking for lunch, checking in every few days so it wasn’t obvious.

John and Bass had taken to calling dumb jokes out to her every time they saw her in the halls, just to make her crack.

Curtis and Dougie had signed themselves up for the mentoring sessions she had been chasing them for since the season had started.

She had been fine with everyone - she smiled, she laughed, she joked, she engaged in conversation - and it was like nothing had happened.

Only, when Nico had felt brave enough to attempt even just eye contact, she wouldn’t even look at him.

No matter how many of the guys reported back that she was doing fine, he could see it every time he looked at her. 

He could see it even when he wasn’t looking at her - that teary, pleading frown she had given him as she had tried to take his hand, the resigned acceptance he had seen when she’d monotonously told him that they had made a mistake, assuming she was mirroring his own sentiments, the tremble in her lip as she had waited for him to leave with her head down at the door.

He thinks about it more often than is healthy, in situations where his focus should really be elsewhere.

Like in the gym, arms shaking as he attempts to lift more than he has in a while, and Jonas who is spotting him has to intervene before he ends up getting crushed.

Like in training, adrenaline pumping as his mind races all over the place, weaving around the defensemen and making sloppy attempts to swipe the puck until he finds himself on the weaker side of a nasty check by Luke that he can’t even argue was unwarranted.

Or in important debriefs in the small team auditorium, where one of their associate coaches, Travis, is going over team strategy before they travel to play the Canes, and he really should be absorbing all the information for such a crucial game - the potential to build on their current 2 game winning streak theirs for the taking - but all he can think about is the looming distance between him and Poppy.

They’re going down to Tampa after, and then head straight into the All Stars break. He isn’t going to see her for almost 2 weeks. Isn’t going to be able to send anyone to check up on her - not without rousing suspicion at least.

He thinks having Bratter knock on her door at home might ring alarm bells.

The distracted glance Nico casts towards the creaking door of the auditorium as it opens is instinctual and fleeting, but all his senses go into high alert when he sees who comes through it. 

The guys have been right, for the most part.

She does look okay.

She looks put together - probably more than he has looked the last two weeks without her, having barely shaved and punishing himself with a borderline dangerous lack of rest - her smart casual attire is neat and co-ordinated, a buttoned up red cardigan and long, dark trousers, her hair up in a ponytail that sways with her movement, and the only indicator that she has any sort of discomfort is the slight purse of her lips where he can tell she’s chewing at the corner.

Travis has become background noise - whatever he’s saying Nico is sure he can catch up on another time - and all he can focus on is the way she watches the coach with genuine interest.

Poppy is the kind of person that gives anyone the time of day - makes them feel like whatever it is they’re saying is the most important thing in the world, and he yearns for a day where her attentions are directed his way again. 

“And Poppy is here from the Youth Foundation,” Her name is one way to get his focus back, Nico’s eyes having not left her figure since she snuck in, leaning beside the door with a binder in hand. He follows as she descends the few stairs to the bottom and moves beside Travis, holding the binder to her chest as she smiles to the rest of the guys. “They have a favour to ask of anyone with some free time that you’re willing to give in your week off, she’s more likely to convince any of you than I am so I’ll just hand straight over.”

“Thank you, Mr Green,” she flicks the binder open, and Nico finds himself holding his breath in anticipation of her looking up and accidentally meeting his eyes, even for a second. “I know you guys are well overdue some time off, and we’d never usually ask so close to the fact, but we have a clinic out in Garfield on the 29th, we’ve donated a bunch of equipment and have some money to donate for the programme they have, and we were supposed to have Patrik Elias out to present it to the kids up there but he’s been held back in Czechia and won’t make it.”

Nico fights the urge to do something stupid like shoot up and volunteer straight away - if not for the fact that he’s supposed to be giving her space and shouldn’t force himself into her good graces, then for the fact his parents will be back in town by then, and he has plans throughout the week with them. Him looking desperate is the least of his concerns.

“If any of you are gonna be around, it would just be for the afternoon, a couple pictures and maybe some skating with the kids. There’s also one of those huge fancy cheques if you’re into showboating,” she tries to sell it, and earns a few affectionate snickers, but Nico knows these guys - while they’re generous people, and he loves them all, and knows they all love her, they’re exhausted, and have been waiting too long for a week of reprieve. 

He kicks at the shin of whoever happens to be sat closest to him. Holtzy. Perfect. He knows he was planning to stay in Jersey. It earns him a glare, but it captures his attention enough so that Nico can level him with a stern look back. 

“If anyone wants to do it, just swing by my office-,”

“I’ll do it,” Alex raises his hand after rolling his eyes and acquiescing to his captain, faking a smile Poppy’s way.

“Oh,” she doesn’t mask the surprise on her face, her lips parting in shock and eyes rounding in disbelief. She looks to Travis who just gives an approving nod in response. 

And, only because he snickers in amusement, Nico kicks Dawson, too. He hasn’t sent him Poppy’s way yet, he’s overdue his turn, and it���s his own fault for laughing at Holtzy’s misfortune. 

“Me too,” Dawson sighs, raising his hand as well and kicking back at Alex when he laughs in turn at him. 

“That was easier than I thought, thank you guys, the kids will be over the moon with the two of you!”

Nico wishes he was the recipient of the smile she gives the both of them. It’s the biggest smile he’s seen her wear in recent weeks, and he can see the light reflect in sparkles in her eyes from all the way across the room. 

That should hold him off for a bit - that little bit of warmth she gives. And sure, it isn’t directed his way, but he can settle with the fact that he’s technically the cause of it. Maybe when he’s down in Raleigh or Tampa he’ll see that smile instead of the other look etched into his recent memory.

“That’s all I’ve got, I’ll leave you guys to your meeting, thanks again!”

He watches her the whole way out, until the door swings closed behind her retreating figure, and his mind races with a surge of misplaced adrenaline for the rest of the debrief.

That’s most of the guys checked off his list, now.

Dawson and Alex are going to help her out with the hockey clinic, John and Nate have been making their way through the worlds worst dad jokes for the past two weeks to relay back to her, Jack is on drink duties, Timo on lunch, Curtis and Brendan are hopefully slowly thawing the ice with cute pictures of their kids. Jonas, Dougie, Haula, Dawsy, Pally - majority of the team have been recruited on his mission to keep her spirits up. Those who haven’t yet had a task are more than willing to play along.

All except one.

His attention drifts over to a mop of curly hair a few rows down, slumped in his seat with his arms crossed over his chest, and though he can’t see his face from where he’s sat, Nico imagines it bears the same angered frown it had when he’d checked him on the ice, earlier. 

Luke is pissed, even as distracted as Nico has been lately, that much is obvious, and he needs to get him on side if he has a chance of ever fixing things with Poppy.

He had underestimated their relationship, when he’d given it some thought, before. When they had been talking about Poppy that one time on the flight back from the Capitals game, and Luke had suggested she had deeper feelings than Nico had ever previously considered.

He had assumed because he’s never seen them together much, that they weren’t as close as Poppy and Jack seem to be, but he knows now he was wrong. 

Luke can be reserved to most, cast in the ever present shadow of his older brothers and held to unfair standards, but he is quietly observant, Nico has noticed, and he clearly sees more of Poppy than he lets on.

He knows Luke is protective over her, that he cares more than he’ll probably ever say.

He hadn’t overshared something she wouldn’t have been comfortable with when they’d had that initial conversation about him and Poppy pretending not to be into each other. He had told Nico to talk to her, had called him out on suppressing his feelings for her and pushed him to take action.

And when he had encountered Nico with Talia in the elevator back in their apartment building, he had been disappointed. 

Jack had been awkward, and evasive, but Luke had a clenched jaw and a purposely avoidant gaze. 

He thinks he gets it.

Luke had encouraged Nico to pursue Poppy, and in his pursuit, Nico had ended up hurting her.

As much as he definitely blames his captain, Luke also blames himself, and Nico of all people knows how frustrating that can be. 

When Travis calls time on the meeting, and the group disperse, Nico rushes down the steps as the boys flood out of the room and catches up to Luke with hastened steps.

“I need to talk to you,” Nico falls in line beside him, a hand clapped authoritatively on his upper back to guide him off his path and toward the locker rooms.

“Can it wait? I’m hungry,” Luke huffs, trying to resist the rerouting but falling victim to one of Nico’s infamous glares.

“Don’t make me pull rank,” he sighs as he yanks the heavy door open, his free hand gesturing for him to enter while the one on his back gives a light shove, “In.”

“Look, I’m sorry for the check earlier, it was a dick move, I didn’t mean it,” Luke starts as Nico follows him into the otherwise empty room, closing the door behind him and gesturing for Luke to take a seat.

“Come on, Luke, I’m not an idiot,” Nico scoffs, “You’re pissed at me. You have been since you saw me with Talia back in our building, but you’ve got the wrong idea,”

“Your personal life is none of my business,” Luke says like it’s something he’s been taught, something he’s rehearsed, and there isn’t a doubt in Nico’s mind that he and Poppy have been the topic of conversation in the Hughes household since the day he had run into them, maybe even before. Jack has been avoiding the topic like he’d never seen it happen, giving Nico a breather where he had initially thought he would call him out - but it’s becoming increasingly clear that Luke is the actual confrontational one of the two of them.

“If you have something to say to me, I’d rather you just come out with it than check me in a practice game, Hughes.” Nico sighs, leaning against the door to block Luke’s path out and staring him down until he relents. He has never thought he would be thankful for someone checking him before, especially not in a practice game, but the minor hit has given him the perfect opportunity to clear the air.

“Fine. I don’t like how you treated Poppy,” he says, plainly, “She’s supposed to be your friend, you don’t do that to someone you care about.”

“Carry on.” Nico thinks a part of him is urging Luke to argue because Poppy won’t, and he needs to have someone he can vent to - even if it’s someone who won’t side with him. He probably prefers it that way, ever the glutton for punishment.

“If you didn’t like her the same way, you shouldn’t have led her on, she deserves better than that.”

“I agree.”

“And she-,” his eyes narrow, “You agree?”

“I didn’t break things off because I don’t like her the same way, I did it because I do,”

“I hope you understand how stupid that sounds.” Luke rolls his eyes as he throws himself into his cubby, running a hand through his curls in frustration.

“I know it might not make sense, but I’m trying to do what’s right. She deserves someone who can give her one hundred percent of themselves, who isn’t away all the time and isn’t constantly stressed out of their mind or too tired to function.” He finds himself relaying Talia’s exact sentiments, and the memory of that particular conversation makes his stomach churn. 

“I care about her too much to end up being the guy who can’t make her happy. I know you of all people understand that to some extent, Luke.” It’s one of the few flaws of making it to the elite level of their sport - the lack of balance between their career and their personal entanglements. They’ve both spent their lives wanting nothing but to win and succeed, and it’s always going to be difficult to come to terms with, but the cold, hard truth is that they can’t have everything without paying the price for it. Something will have to give, and it would be an injustice for that something to be Poppy. “It wouldn’t be fair to her to start something that I can’t put my all into. So, I agree, she deserves better.”

“You know what else she deserves, Nico?” Luke stands from his point on the bench, the inch between them seeming more than it really is when he’s dishing out home truths like punches to the gut. “She deserves to make her own decisions. She deserves for you to be honest with her and not let your ego get in the way of what she might want.”

There it is again. Luke letting on that he knows something he doesn’t about Poppy. Unease spreads throughout his every nerve ending.

He’s always been the one who knows Poppy. Who understands her. Who gets how she thinks and grasps how she feels. 

Luke might think he does, but he doesn’t. Not like Nico.

Nico, who can’t quite fathom how he’s ended up being schooled on how to treat a woman by a 20 year old. By Luke. 

“It isn’t ego,” he mutters in denial, but it’s no use. Luke is scarily prompt to retort - especially when it comes to defending Poppy, Nico knows by now. It would be endearing if it didn’t frustrate him to no end.

“Really? ‘Cause it sounds to me like you’re so afraid to fail with her that you won’t even try.”

“I don’t want to hurt her.” He knows again that’s a pathetic excuse. Poppy had called him out on it, herself. But surely the hurt now is nothing in comparison to the hurt that could be. 

The hurt that comes with the demise of an actual relationship. Of building and building and building something, putting in years of tiresome efforts only for it to be demolished just as the final brick is laid. Of the ever-growing love between the two of them wilting into something sad and lifeless.

He can take the silent treatment. He can take the avoidance.

He won’t be able to handle that.

“How’s that going for you?” 

Luke isn’t trying to be mean, he knows that, but it doesn’t lessen the sharpness of his words - the truth digging into the most sensitive parts of Nico’s skin so deep that he feels like he’s bleeding out.

Nico sits down himself, no longer blocking the exit and allowing for Luke to leave of his own accord - only, the younger boy sits beside him, heaving out a prologued sigh and giving his captain a friendly pat on his leg. 

“Just give her time, she’ll come around, and then the two of you can talk. And when you do, you owe it to her to be open about what you both want. If you can promise me you won’t do anything else to hurt her, I’ll promise you to stop checking you in practice.”

“Sounds fair,” Nico agrees, mustering up a weak smile to give to the younger defensemen before Luke stands up. “Sorry for cornering you.”

“You’re fine, I was being an idiot.” Luke shrugs, making his way over to the door, and only because he clearly can’t help himself, he stops before leaving. “You see how easy that was to admit?”

Nico usually has better aim, and he blames Luke’s speedy departure for the way the pad he throws hits the wall with a soft whack.

Frustration is a feeling Nico doesn’t think he has ever been as familiar with as he has been lately. 

He’s frustrated as a player - the team unable to keep a winning streak to save their lives, having lost both of their games on the road last week and the mentality of the locker room dwindling with every week that passes that they don’t keep their momentum going.

Frustrated as a captain, specifically for the teammates they keep dropping to injury. Jack, Timo, Eric, Pally all dipping in and out with scratches, the roster dwindling with every passing game.

Frustrated as a friend, guilt building every time he thinks about Jack becoming more reserved in the days leading up to the All Star break, his shoulder putting him out of contention to play and the team having to send Jesper as their representative in his place. 

And, it goes without saying, frustrated when it comes to Poppy - who he had hoped would be in attendance when he had elected himself to take Jesper’s place at the signing and Q&A session he had scheduled at the end of the week. When he had come all the way out to the Rock and sought her out in the Foundation offices after volunteering, he had found out she had been off sick since that day in the auditorium, so his frustrations had crescendoed to an all time high. 

Even his parents being back in town hasn’t helped - his mother more observant than he likes to think, and she has been pecking away at any attempts of a cool exterior with more questions than he thinks he’s going to be on the receiving end of at this Q&A.

Nico has never been one to complain about any kind of community event, but the thought of having to spend all day plastering on a fake smile and pretending he isn’t at his boiling point is proving to be difficult.

So, when Jessica, the media admin who had been debriefing him on what was going to be posted on the team socials, had finally finished and had left to liaise with one of her colleagues, he had sent his mother, Katja, away to grab him a drink before the signing started. 

He just needs a moment of quiet. Where he can self-level the anxiety that is currently crushing him like a bug, take some deep breaths, and mentally prepare for the overwhelming social interactions he is about to endure. 

He wishes Poppy could be there.

He had tried texting her, just to check on her, but again, she hadn’t replied, and the thoughts have been swirling into something ugly within him the longer he has gone not knowing where or how she is.

Is she actually even sick, or is this just another attempt to stay out of his way?

The breathing clearly isn’t working, he thinks. Maybe walking might help.

Or maybe walking straight into the front of the girl who is the cause of all his frustrations might help.

As soon as he sees her, he feels guilt prick at his nerves like continuous, thick needles pushing into the flesh.

When he thinks back on the weeks before, he doesn’t entirely know if he had wanted her to look worse for wear, but as he takes her in now, he realises he hadn’t.

This is the furthest thing from what he had wanted for her.

Poppy stands before him a paler version of herself - eyes sunken, lips chapped, a slight sheen to her forehead that has caused the baby hairs around there to curl up and stick to her skin. 

Her boss Elaine had said she was sick and he had selfishly spiralled into the assumption it was just another attempt to avoid any contact him, but now his chest feels heavy with a mixture of shame and worry.

She takes a moment too long to gather herself after their initial collision, and his words feel heavy in his mouth as he asks, “Are you okay?”

“What are you doing here?” Her voice is hoarse, and the way she blinks up at him is slow and fatigued. 

“What are you doing here? You don’t look like you should be working.”

“I’m fine.” She definitely doesn’t sound fine. “Where’s Jesper?

“Bratter went to Toronto to take Jack’s place in the All Stars, they didn’t tell you?” It hadn’t been a last minute decision, so he isn’t sure how she wouldn’t know already.

“Oh,” she frowns, and if he wasn’t so worried, he’d find it cute how she looks like she’s trying to recall a memory where that information had been relayed to her. “Yeah, I think they did. They didn’t tell me who’s replacing him, though.”

“That would be me.” He doesn’t point out that it should be obvious.

“That seems like overkill.” There’s a hint of familiarity that he feels at the quip, and Nico doesn’t know if she’s trying to crack a joke or trying to be rude - he doesn’t care, either way. When he notices her squinting against the light, he subtly shifts until she’s no longer facing it directly.

“I volunteered.” He admits, and he watches as realisation sinks in. He volunteered just to be near her, and if she calls him out on it, he’s in no fit state to deny it. Of course he did, she has barely spoken to him in almost 4 weeks, and if he’s being honest with himself, he’s losing his mind a little. “I was hoping we could talk after,”

“Nico,” she sighs, touching her palm to her temple and seemingly applying pressure, pinching her eyes shut as she tries to breathe through a wave of what looks like disorientation, “I really can’t deal with this today,”

“I miss you, Poppy,” he hums, and he knows it’s an asshole move, to take advantage of the current situation, of her being sick and having lowered her defences, but he knows he’ll regret it if he doesn’t take the opportunity to touch her. He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, strokes a thumb softly at her cheek, and tries not to think too much about the way she seems to lean into it. “I’m worried about you.”

“You’re supposed to be giving me space.” She sounds defeated, and there’s a selfish part of him that hopes she is - that she is relenting to his advances and giving in - but he knows Poppy too well to assume it’s going to be that easy.

He doesn’t even like to think about how much he has hurt her. When images of that evening flash through his memory - when he closes his eyes and sees her teary ones looking back at him, can hear how she’d fought for him to listen, to figure things out together - his chest aches in a way he doesn’t think it has before. It’s relentless, and excruciating, and he hasn’t yet found a coping mechanism that gets rid of it.

Except for seeing her. When he sees her, it lessens. When he hears her laugh from around a corner, or spots her in the halls at The Rock, talking with her co-workers or perusing one of the vending machines, he can pretend he’s okay. He can pretend that they’re just not talking because they’re both busy - not because he monumentally messed everything up with her.

And now, talking directly to her, touching her, seeing her up close - despite the difference in her usually bright complexion - he can convince himself of the same. Things are okay. They’re okay.

“I also said I still wanted to be friends.” He tries, his hand still cupping the side of her face before she shakes him off.

“Except that we’re only friends when it suits you.” She accuses with a frown, a little energy seeming to flood back into her system. “And when it doesn’t, you just toss me off to the side like I mean nothing to you.”

“That’s not true, I-,”

“I really don’t feel well enough to be having this conversation right now.”

“Then when? Every time I see you, you can’t get away fast enough. We work together, we have to see each other, you can’t avoid me forever.” He knows he doesn’t deserve to rush her. He knows he has no right to be making any kind of demands, and that the situation they’re in is entirely his doing, but he can’t help himself.

He’s frustrated.

He’s desperate. 

He had thought he could give her the patience she deserves - the space she needs - but it has been proving immensely difficult, and he just wants her back.

In whatever capacity she’s willing to offer, he’ll take it - as long as her eyes meet his for longer than a second at a time and he gets to be on the receiving end of one of her heart-stopping smiles, he’ll take it.

Even if they can’t be what they were. If the texts cease, the dinners together stop, the drives home from the Rock aren’t on the table anymore - he just wants to know there’s still love between them. That when she looks at him she doesn’t only feel the crippling hurt he fears he has caused her.

“You had no problem shutting me out the last time,” she scoffs, crossing her arms over her chest and scowling up at him, “It should be like second nature for you to ignore me again.”

“That isn’t fair, it’s not the same-,”

“Poppy!” 

Nico has always loved the way his mother is enamoured by Poppy.

The first time they had met, she’d been besotted with her. It had been during Poppy’s first year with the team - his parents had come out quite late in the season, late enough that he hadn’t seen them in a while since the summer, and he was anticipating their arrival with child-like excitement. 

Their flight into Newark had been delayed, and with them coming out on a game day, he was shut in the locker room by the time they had arrived, and he had asked Poppy for his biggest favour yet in the course of their friendship.

She had agreed to it no questions asked, no favour held over him in return, and she had pretty much hosted the two of them from their arrival at the Prudential Center to when the arena had emptied.

When Nico had reunited with his parents in the family lounge, Poppy had still been with them, waiting until she saw them off into their son’s company before leaving them alone, and he had never been more grateful to someone in his life.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he had apologised as he embraced his father, a firm clap coming down on his back as his arms wrapped around him, and he had smiled at Poppy over his shoulder. “Did you guys enjoy the game?”

“Of course we did, we had the best company in all of New Jersey,” his mother had her own arm around his best friend, Poppy’s cheeks flushing as she smiled bashfully back at him. 

Nico had kissed his mom on the cheek and had given her a side hug with the arm not around Poppy before he moved his attention to his friend.

“Thank you for looking after them,” he beamed at her, wrapping his arms around her once his mother had released and giving her a little squeeze. “I owe you,”

“That’s alright. Your dad got a little rowdy in the second period, but other than that they weren’t too much trouble,” Poppy had shrugged, a mischievous smirk cast toward his father who gave a humoured scoff in return.

“You were yelling louder than me, Poppy,” he remarked, his accent thick and his tone fond. “Katja tell him.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Nico chuckled, shaking his head toward his mom as she opened her mouth ready to pick a side, “I believe him, she gets creative when it comes to calling out the refs, I’ve heard it before.”

“Sorry for being passionate about my team,” she had pouted, “I’ll just sit in silence while you all get high-sticked to holy heaven next time.”

Nico had felt warmth wash all over him when he heard his dad’s loud cackle of a laugh - the kind he gave over family game nights when Nina outsmarted both her brothers, and they would turn to their father for some kind of defence, the kind of laughter filled with familiarity and affection - and had seen his mother’s crinkling eyes and dimpled smile.

“Do you need a ride home?” He had asked, swallowing down the attraction that was spiralling within him before it was too obvious to ignore. They had rode in together that morning, and he would usually drive her home if that was the case, but he had also promised his parents he would treat them to a nice meal after their long flight in.

“I’m alright, I can hitch a ride with one of the other boys,” Poppy declined, “You guys enjoy your dinner, it was really nice to meet you.”

“Nonsense,” Katja had exclaimed, a hand on Poppy’s arm as she moved to hug her goodbye, “Come with us, Nico can drop you home after,”

“We’ve been dying to hear someone tell us all of Nico’s secrets about his life over here.” Rino had joined in, egging Poppy on until she couldn’t say no.

When she had looked over to Nico, he hadn’t realised she was silently asking for his permission, too busy looking at her with a dopey grin on his face before he pulled himself together enough to nod his approval.

“Okay, yeah, thank you,” Poppy had agreed, “I just have to grab my bag from the office, I could meet you at your car in five minutes?”

“Yeah, I’ll see you in five.”

Nico had watched her go off as his mother looped her arm through his, leaning into him and watching Poppy until she disappeared through the far doors. 

“I like her,” Katja had a big, complimentary grin on her face when Nico looked down a little at her - and despite slipping into their native tongue, Nico had thought it would be obvious to anyone listening in what they were talking about just from the look on his mother’s face.

“Yeah, she’s great,” He had concurred, shaking her off his arm so that he could wrap it around her shoulders as they walked, and in a true show of his denial at the time, he had added, “A really good friend.”

He still remembers the sound of his mother’s knowing hum, that interaction between the four of them a catalyst for the feelings he had for the longest time suppressed.

Weeks ago, Poppy had asked him the last time he had wanted to kiss her. He’d told her about a night in a bar after the team had crashed out of the playoffs last year. A night where, in all the anguish and misery and regret, she had made him feel like he could breathe again. It was the last time he had felt overwhelmed by the urge to take the leap into something more with her.

The first time had been that night with his parents, when he’d dropped her back at her apartment after an evening of them oversharing embarrassing childhood anecdotes and Poppy sharing her own stories - ones she had of her favourite memories with Nico, and even ones without, letting his mom and dad into the strongroom that was her life before she met their son. 

Looking back, he thinks that night truly would have been a catalyst for his blossoming affections if he didn’t feel the watchful gaze of his parents waiting in his car while he made sure Poppy got inside safe.

He would have kissed her, he knows it.

Instead, he had returned to the driver’s seat and tried to ignore the smug grin his mother kept sending through the rearview mirror from her place in the back seat the whole journey to their hotel.

In the years since, her affections for Poppy have only grown, and so he should have expected that she would get excited the second she saw her - he only wishes her timing was better.

“Hi, Mrs Hischier” Poppy smiles despite her discomfort, the apples of her cheeks rounding and endearment sparkling in her previously dull eyes. The energy she gives to his mother is a stark contrast to that she had just been giving to Nico. “It’s so nice to see you!”

“It’s Katja, sweet girl, it’s clearly been too long since we have spoken!” His mother’s arms wrap around her, and he watches as Poppy’s body seems to melt at the touch, tense muscles relaxing and hand rubbing at her back. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t look too good, are you feeling okay?”

She presses the back of her hand to Poppy’s clammy forehead as Nico remembers her doing so often to him as a child, gauging her temperature and casting a concerned glance over her from head to toe. 

“I’m alright, I’ve just been off sick the past week, I still probably look a little like a zombie,” Poppy chuckles, dismissively, still maintaining an eyre of warmth in the way she looks at his mother.

“Not at all, as pretty as ever, isn’t she, Nico?” His mom nudges him as if he needs any prompting to compliment her.

“Yeah,” he agrees without hesitation, and he starts to feel palpitations when her eyes glance quickly over to meet his before darting away.

“You’re a terrible liar,” Poppy huffs, and he doesn’t entirely know who she meant that for. “Did you and Rino enjoy your trip to Canada?”

Nico doesn’t know why he finds himself surprised by the way Poppy effortlessly recollects the information - a throwaway comment he had made to her in the back of that bar all those weeks ago of his parent’s whereabouts. Poppy remembers because she cares. She has always cared. Always listened to what he has to say, even if he thinks it’s irrelevant, and has always shown interest. 

He finds himself watching her as she catches up with his mother, giving tired smiles but engaging nonetheless, the conversation flowing between the two of them just as effortlessly as it had on the day they had met - where they had conversed over dinner like they had known each other for years, and Nico had blushed every time he met his mother’s eyes from across the table.

He remembers his birthday dinner with his family at the beginning of the month, where he had sat in mostly-silence and wished for her company, and he starts to wonder if it’s always going to be like that, from now on. 

If he’s always going to be longing for her. If he’s always going to feel like something’s missing if she isn’t around.

“I should go,” he hears her say, “I have to check some of the questions with the moderator and they’ll be opening the doors for the signing, soon.”

“Of course, don’t let me keep you,” his mom presses a comforting hand to Poppy’s arm, thumb rubbing in a soothing gesture before they part with goodbyes and a promise to catch up, properly, at some point. 

Nico doesn’t miss the way she hadn’t given him the same courtesy. And neither does his mother.

Her eyes narrow in his direction, and just as her lips part to no doubt call him out, a figure comes up beside them,

“They’re ready to start the signing if you are, Nico.” Jessica’s unusually perky voice rings out beside him, and he’s never been more thankful for an interruption in his life.

He hasn’t seen that disappointed glint in his mother’s eyes since he’d told her he was bringing a girlfriend home to meet her at the end of last summer, and had shown up to the house with Talia in tow.

Poppy

As backwards as it might seem to some people, the only part of Poppy’s life where she is able to seek complete solace in recent years has always been in her work.

When she had first gotten her job within the organisation - a co-op internship that covered her final year of college - she had been almost overwhelmed with pride for the first time in her life. She had always been a good student, had got into college of her own merit and hadn’t used family connections like she suspected her brother had done, and she had worked her butt off to prep for the application and interview.

And when she’d gotten the call to tell her they wanted her on the team, she had been over the moon.

She’d gotten along so well with the people she had met in the team so far, had loved their ethos and the environment at the Rock, and she couldn’t wait to build something great for herself when she got started.

She had immediately called home after accepting the position, buzzing with excitement to tell her father that she of all the alleged thousands of applicants had been accepted to work on the media programme for the New Jersey Devils, a respected establishment in one of the biggest sporting leagues in the country. She had expected he would be proud of her, too, but he had ended up heaving out a disappointed sigh, and she could hear him fold up his paper in the background before he had asked, “Hockey, Poppy? Really? What kind of success do you expect to find in such a barbaric environment?”

As much as his disapproval had hurt at that time, she credits her father’s aloofness with her happiness in her role to this day.

It turns out, she can find a lot of success in a barbaric environment if she puts enough of her heart into it.

Even back in her media days, acting as a lackey for some of the more senior guys and trudging through those first few months of hazing, she had loved her job. 

Sharing insights into the team and the sport, determined to break any stigma associated with the guys who played it and all while highlighting the way it brought pride and community to her home state, she left the building every day with a pep in her step and a giant grin on her face.

And it only got bigger when she was recruited onto the Youth Foundation team. The projects she has worked on, the people she has met, the incredible things they have all achieved together - she doesn’t think she could have gotten any luckier with her career - despite what her judgemental, uppity parents think of it.

So, when things get hard elsewhere - when she spends a little too much time with her family and goes a little stir crazy, or when she gets her heart broken by the one guy she had trusted to handle it with care, and ends up fixating on the possibility of him rekindling things with a woman he had told Poppy didn’t make him happy - she resorts to her factory settings of knuckling down and putting her work first.

Which is how, in the weeks since Nico had left her apartment that horrific night, she has attached her name to every project she can pick up. She has accepted every meeting, answered every call, returned every email, all with a smile she had felt like she was forcing at first, but has started to feel real as time has gone one.

And she thinks it’s working.

She doesn’t dread coming into the Arena - doesn’t pace the length of her office to prepare herself every time she needs to leave it, doesn’t hold her breath as she turns the corners in anticipation of seeing him, doesn’t wince every time someone knocks on her door until they pop their head in and reveal themselves.

Poppy has well and truly immersed herself in her work, and she can’t even feel the rattling of the shattered pieces of her heart anymore.

She’s too consumed with other stuff. With hockey clinics, planning fundraisers, local rink openings, development programmes, the Sweep The Deck gala, mentoring sessions, preparations for the Stadium Series in the next month. 

She should be exhausted. 

If she actually gives herself the brain power to think about anything other than work for a second, she probably would be - but she’s turned into a hammerhead shark of sorts, and she knows she’ll suffocate in all the other feelings if she stops swimming. 

If she gives even a second of her time to the constant urge to think about Nico, she’ll drown in him. In the hurt and the ache she feels when he’s even in the same room.

She has taken to pretending he isn’t there. To looking at others, immersing herself too deep in conversations that he won’t dare to interrupt, and she is actually satisfied with how she’s managed to hold herself together when it comes to the rest of the guys.

When the season had started last year, and Poppy had been avoiding Nico for the other reason over the course of those months, she had pretty much locked herself in her office during work hours, and had stayed home outside of them. She didn’t go to games, didn’t go to team events that she wasn’t working, didn’t attend birthdays or dinners or celebration trips to whatever bar could accommodate the whole team for the night. She had had stopped engaging as much with the other guys - Jack had even taken to calling her a recluse if she remembers correctly - and she’s determined not to let this mess get in the way of the great relationships she has with the rest of the guys. 

If not for the fact that it would be petulant for her to take out her frustrations regarding their captain with them, then for the fact that she needs the companionship.

She needs it so much that she doesn’t run from it, or even pretend like she doesn’t like their company. 

Weeks ago, if she had been coming up from the parking level with Nate Bastian, and he had tried to crack the joke, “Hey, Poppy, why are elevator jokes the best kind? Because they work on many levels,” she honestly would have scoffed and called him lame. But she had felt her lips twitching earlier in the day, and had let him boast about how he had made her smile as they walked together through the building to anyone they passed without even denying it.

The guys have been doing more for her mentality than she can ever thank them for - holding her up while her every instinct is telling her to crumble - and she couldn’t be more grateful to be a part of such a great team.

The Hughes brothers, especially. Luke, who texts her his every rambling thought sandwiched between memes and links to Tiktoks about giraffes, because he knows they make her smile. And Jack, who, despite being out of play with his shoulder, still, checks in with her every day he comes in, a drink in hand when she needs a pick me up the most, and an ever growing list of ridiculous names to call her. 

His continued visits have made her grow less weary of the knocks at her door, and so when one echoes through the room as she’s replying to some emails, she doesn’t feel the stutter of her heartbeat like she would have done last week.

“Hey, Pop,” he pokes his head into her office, fingers flexed around the door jamb as he edges his way in, empty handed, this time, but Poppy can’t hold it against him. Her day is almost finished, after all.

“What, no stupid nickname today? Did I upset you or something?” She pauses typing as she looks up at him, watching him close the door behind himself as he takes her lighthearted tone as an invitation inside.

“I did have a joke lined up about Snap and Crackle, but you’ve ruined it now actually,” he rolls his eyes playfully, throwing himself down in the chair opposite hers and flicking affectionately at his bobblehead. 

“Sorry,” Poppy gives a quick, bashful smile before going back to her work, tapping away at her noisy keyboard as she works her way through her inbox, “What’s up?”

“Was wondering if you’d seen Luke?”

“Not today, he doesn’t usually make a habit of coming down here though. Did he say he was gonna stop by?”

“Not exactly.” Jack frowns, a slight shrug of his better shoulder.

Poppy casts a confused glance his way, eyes narrowing as she watches him fidget in the seat. “Do you guys think the y chromosome is meant to get you out of ever giving a straight answer to something? What do you mean, not exactly?”

“Well, Dawsy said he’d seen him with Nico, and lately that means,” he looks as if he’s weighing up what to say in his head, and Poppy wishes the lower part of her desk didn’t block her legs from his so she could give him a quick kick to the shin, “Well, people usually come straight here after Nico pulls them to talk.”

She sighs.

She had figured as much, but the confirmation of it doesn’t make her heart ache any less.

She’d had her first suspicions when Smitty had shown her every picture she thinks he’s ever taken of his kids the other day. He’d sat beside her in the lounge while the team and staff had been waiting for some sort of safety meeting - one she hadn’t even got to focus much on because he had talked her ear off for almost an hour until he was finally pulled away for some other responsibilities. 

And then Jonas had come by her office - something he had literally never done before. He had found Poppy working on a project, brainstorming with post-its on her cleared floor, and had waited around until she had finished - chipping in little ideas here and there for a presentation on the Learn To Play programme and using his 6’2 stature to take an aerial photo of all her sticky notes that Poppy never would have been able to get right, enabling her to clean them away and tidy up after herself before she finished for that day. It wasn’t that she minded his company, he’d actually been a massive help, but she had this nagging feeling that he would never come see her of his own volition.

Then there was Holtzy and Dawson volunteering for the hockey clinic in the debrief earlier like they were being held at gunpoint and forced into labour.

Nico has put them all up to it.

Even when he’s giving her space, he can’t leave her be.

“So what you’re saying is he’s abusing his position of power to get you all to come talk to me,”

“I don’t know if I’d phrase it like that,” Jack scratches awkwardly at the back of his neck, and she only feels a slight pinch of guilt. She knows he had a habit of coming to see her before all of this, but his visits have definitely increased over the past few weeks - so, he isn’t entirely innocent, either. “Maybe he misses you?”

“Maybe he should have thought about that,” she mutters, leaning onto her desk and pressing her palms into her closed eyes to relieve the headache that’s starting to build. 

Distracting herself with work had been going so well.

“You know we can’t talk about this, Jack,” she sighs, “He’s your captain, it’s not fair of me to vent about our situation to you of all people.”

“Ouch,”

“You know what I mean. If it was anybody else, I’d come to you for advice, but you guys are a team, I’m just-,”

“Don’t finish that sentence, Poppy,” Jack rebukes, sitting up straight in his chair and levelling her with a stern look, “You’re our friend. Even if Nico is asking the others to check up on you, they wouldn’t do it if they didn’t care about you. None of us want a repeat of the start of the season, okay, we just want to know you’re alright.”

“I appreciate you saying that,” Poppy gives a weak smile, the kind that doesn’t quite meet her eyes, “I just don’t want anybody taking sides, I know Luke’s been off with him about the whole thing,”

“That’s probably where he is now,” Jack realises, “He did get a little rough in practice before.”

“Yeah, I heard,” she says, knowing Luke and Nico had a collision earlier that had been the talk of the office all morning. “Look, I love you guys for it, but I don’t need babysitters. I just wanna move on. And you can tell Nico that, the next time he tries to force you out here with.another iced beverage just to keep me company or whatever.”

“Well, they go on the road tomorrow, so you should get some peace and quiet around here.” Jack still seems solemn at the thought of the team travelling anywhere without him, but she has tried one too many times to talk to him about it and, every time, he has shut her down. He’ll talk about it when he’s ready, and if she’s making a point of not wanting to be pushed on a subject, she isn’t going to do the same to him, even if her instincts are telling her to wrap the guy up in a bear hug and tell him everything will be okay. “I’ll leave you to your work, anyway, I’ll be around until the weekend if you need me, Pop. I promise I would be bringing you drinks even if he wasn’t asking me to.”

He pushes himself up from the seat with his good side before retreating back towards the door, and Poppy can’t let him go without at least attempting to cheer him up. He never usually leaves this quick, always finds some reason to hover and affectionately irritate her just a little - but she can tell he’s done figuring out reasons to linger around the arena for the day.

“I would have laughed, by the way,” she calls out to him, causing him to pause half way out and look back, a questioning brow arched her way. “Snap, Crackle and Pop would have been a good one, it’s funny.”

“They’re all funny, Poppy.”

She really is losing her mind.

As if the universe is playing some gigantic, cruel joke on her, Poppy’s promised peace and quiet while the team have gone on the road has turned into her shut in her apartment with every single curtain drawn, wrapped up under a mountain of covers to combat the shivers, and a leg poking out of them to alleviate the hot flushes - all while battling the most crippling waves of nausea she has ever experienced in all of her adult life.

She had gone home from work on Wednesday and had invited Nia around, hoping her best friend’s anger around the Nico situation had dwindled enough that she wasn’t going to harp on about it all night, and they could enjoy some movies and dirty takeout like they were back in college without Poppy having to even think about anything else.

Uptown Girls had been playing on the TV, empty containers of Korean Hot Pot had littered her coffee table, and Nia had fallen asleep sprawled out across the couch when Poppy had first started to feel off.

She had been watching Brittany Murphy and Dakota Fanning swirling around in the teacup ride, and had started to feel like her own living room was spinning.

She had barely made it to her bathroom before she was puking her guts up, waking Nia in the process who had spent the next hour holding her hair back before she tucked her into bed.

Poppy had called in to work the next morning. She had missed even watching the game against Carolina, could barely remember a solid half an hour of consciousness between that Wednesday night and Saturday morning.

All she remembers is vomiting, Nia checking in after work, bringing an abundance of electrolyte drinks and trying to get her to eat before she had to leave again She recalls burning bagels she had forgot she had left in the toaster, vomiting again at the smell of the burned bagels, and having a series of the most absurdly vivid dreams she’s ever experienced in her life. 

All of which had one common theme.

Nico.

Dreams where she’s swimming in a large, unidentifiable body of water. It’s cold, and she is exhausted, and her limbs ache from treading water and trying to stay afloat. It’s mostly dark, sometimes lit by the moon, the reflection of which shimmers in her path to something in the distance. And she’s stretching, reaching out, desperately kicking her legs to get to whatever it is until she realises it’s him, and he’s swimming away, making it a thousand times harder on her.

Dreams of her stood at the door of her apartment, the repeated knock on the other side echoing on and on as she scrambles to look for the keys to unlock it. It’s a pattern she thinks she recognises, a rhythmic knock that only he has used before, but she can’t get the door open with all her might, and her keys are nowhere to be seen. 

Dreams of their fated night together, only this time it’s like she’s on the outside looking in, watches the two of them in the throes of passion, only when she takes a proper look, he isn’t into it like she is. Or there’s another version where she isn’t herself at all. She has much lighter hair, and mutters out profanities in German as Nico presses sweet kisses into her lips and cradles her face lovingly. She’s Talia, and he looks as happy as ever when she is.

Despite the almost 3 days of round the clock sleep, she has never felt so exhausted in her life.

When the nausea fades ever so slightly, and she gets enough strength in herself to get up - to eat, to drink, to function like a normal human being, she feels sluggish and weak, and like she hasn’t had a moment’s rest in months.

Nia had been checking in, surprisingly not sick herself even though Poppy assumes her bug came from the takeout they shared - but Nia is vegetarian, so she had thought that might have explained it. She had been making sure Poppy remained hydrated, and continued to eat despite the continuous waves of nausea that kept coming back. She had done her grocery shopping, stocking her refrigerator with a bunch of different juices and smoothies, and buying her a bunch of fresh fruit, some bread, some yoghurts, pasta, crackers, plain chips, all the things that would hopefully keep her energy up and her nausea down.

And it had taken her a week to recover to a point that she felt like she could work again. She probably shouldn’t have forced herself back when she wasn’t feeling, or looking, 100%, but she had become so used to using her job as a coping mechanism, that regaining the slightest bit of her energy had her spiralling a little mentally, and she couldn’t take being at home any longer.

She had known that Jesper had his Q&A event, and had to stop by the Rock to pick up some of her files before making her way over - but that trip had proved to be more trouble than it was worth, and she had ended up getting herself all mixed up when she had returned to her office and had ended up dry heaving in the bathrooms when she caught a mix of smells walking through the hallway on her way in.

She had wanted to get some prep work done - approve the questions, meet with the photographers, catch up with Jess from Media, but she had ended up hurled over the toilet bowl for a good hour until she felt somewhat better, and was in so much of a rush to get over to the event that all she had managed to do to pull herself together was throw her hair up and hope that chomping on a breath mint wouldn’t trigger her senses all over again. 

She felt like she was fresh out of The Walking Dead.

She had to get an Uber over, had sat with her head out of the window like some kind of dog to alleviate the sweat that had broken out from her rushing around, and by the time she made it - she was so out of sorts she barely could remember why she was there.

And then she had bumped into Nico.

And she hates that she had felt a little better.

She hates that she found comfort in the fresh smell of his cologne, or the soft touch of his hand to her skin. She hates that the sound of his voice had quelled the rapid thumping of her heartbeat, and that it felt so good just to be in his presence, she had almost forgotten how much she had been hurt. How much he had hurt her.

She hates how she had felt obliged to pretend everything was okay in front of his mother, the sweetest woman on planet Earth embracing her like she was her own daughter, wrapping her up in a shroud of worry and sheer maternal instinct.

And she hates how all of those feelings have lingered throughout the afternoon. As she had watched him engage with his fans during his signing, big dimpled smiles sent to tiny children drowning in jerseys way too big for their small frames, and all adorning his number on the back. As she had watched Katja as the event unfolded, eyes sparkling with pride for her son and everything he has accomplished. As she’s stood and watched him answer questions she knows the answers to like she knows her own favourite food.

Where is your dream vacation destination?

He wants to visit Costa Rica.

What is your favourite sport outside of hockey?

He loves Tennis, loves Roger Federer, a real idol for him as a kid growing up in Switzerland, but also loves soccer, which he always says with an uncomfortable twist to his lips, because his father used to play.

What does he miss the most about home?

His family. His siblings. She probably knows more about Nina and Luca than she knows about Oliver, at this point.

“What’s your favourite thing to do in Jersey when you’re not playing hockey?”

“Uhh,” Poppy watches as Nico rolls his shoulders, his face pensive as he ponders the question, “It depends when we get time off. If the weathers nice, Jersey has some nice beaches, sometimes we go in a group and hang out,” he answers, and just before he carries on, his eyes flicker over to Poppy, meeting hers and holding her gaze until she looks away. “But if it’s when we’re playing I try to spend any downtime with friends. I have some really great friends here and I think that helps me destress a little, just being around them, going out for food and drinks and stuff. Some of my favourite people I have met while I’ve been living here.”

Poppy doesn’t dare look back up, her pulse throbbing in her temples.

“Well that’s a perfect segue into the next question, who’s your best friend on the team?”

She doesn’t stick around to listen to him skirt around that answer, pushing herself discretely through the doors back into the room that the signing had taken place in and busying herself packing up what she can without any help. 

She needs to carry on working, needs to stop thinking, needs to stop feeling so many things. Needs to be somewhere else, where she can’t look at him, can’t admire the way the deep brown of his irises shine when he smiles, or how one of his eyebrows does that cute little hop when he speaks for a little too long, or how she thinks she can still feel his hand on her face even though it’s been at least a good couple of hours since they had spoken by now.

She doesn’t realise how quick she’s moving around until the room starts to spin, and she stumbles a little into a table before steadying herself on one of the chairs.

“Hey, Poppy, are you alright?” The words are spoken in an accent she’s always found comforting, only the voice is different. Softer. Feminine.

She looks up to see Nico’s mom moving closer, concern causing her eyes to go round and her brows to furrow, and the soft, gentle touch of her hand to Poppy’s arm has her stuttering in her response.

“Y-yeah,” she breathes, “Just got a little dizzy.”

“Are you sure, do you need to sit down?”

“I’m okay, honestly,” she smiles, despite the way Katja’s warm, caring eyes mirror those of her son and make Poppy’s chest ache just a little. “I haven’t really eaten much today, I just got a little lightheaded, I’ll be fine once we’re done here and I can go home and eat.”

“Here,” Katja reaches into her purse, digging around before she pulls out some sort of granola bar, “I got this for a snack on my flight and didn’t eat it, you can have it to keep you going.”

Poppy can hardly decline the motherly gesture, and takes the snack with a thank you before unwrapping it and taking a cautious bite. She probably isn’t doing herself any favours, the nausea creeping up when she chews on a bit of dried fruit, and the unexpected flavour immediately triggers her stomach. She’s been sticking to crackers and dry toast, and hasn’t really eaten anything sweet in a week - the combination of the fruit and the syrupy coating making her feel so uneasy she has to sit down. 

“You’re still sick?” Katja sits beside her, watching over her in the way only a loving mother could, concern etched upon her beautiful features and a tilted head examining Poppy from head to toe. 

“I usually shift bugs a lot quicker than this, but I think the not being able to eat and the exhaustion is making everything worse.”

“You aren’t sleeping, either?”

“Technically I might be sleeping too much.” Poppy takes another bite, trying to put her mind over the matter, knowing that it should actually make her feel well enough to get through the rest of the event to have something in her belly. “But I keep having these crazy dreams, and they’re so vivid that I don’t feel rested at all when I wake up, even if I got enough hours in. Then I just feel anxious and it makes me more tired.”

Katja nods understandingly, a knowing smile plucking at her lips until her cheeks dimple, just like Nico’s do. “How many weeks?”

“Have I been sick?” Poppy asks, too busy trying to ignore the sickly sweet flavour on her tongue to notice the woman sat beside her shaking her head, “Just last week. I think it was bad takeout or something, combined with work stress probably-,”

“How many weeks are you into your pregnancy, Poppy?” She chuckles, a gentle hand placed on Poppy’s lap. “You don’t have to pretend to me.”

“My-,” Poppy covers her mouth as she swallows a hardly-chewed bit of granola, “I’m not-,” she struggles a little with her words, cringing at the way she can feel it going down her throat, and clears it with an awkward cough when she can, “Pregnancy?”

“Oh Goodness, I’m sorry,” Katja’s eyes widen in alarm, the hand on Poppy’s knee squeezing apologetically, “I just thought, the dreams, the sickness, the exhaustion, that’s how it started for me with all 3 of my children.”

“Oh.” At least she isn’t the only person Nico has ever caused to have such torturous dreams, she thinks. “No, I’ve just had a bug, I’m pretty sure it’s gonna clear up,” she says, her voice much smaller as she continues to speak through trembling lips, continues to grow more unsure of her words as something akin to dread settles in the pit of her stomach. “And this is like the aftershocks of being sick, or something, one last hurrah for the germs.”

“Of course,” Katja nods, giving Poppy’s knee a comforting rub before placing her hands on her own lap, a sheepish look given as she makes eye contact, the same dark eyes she’s been dreaming about looking right at her. “I would never usually assume, I swear you don’t look it, it was just my first thought when you mentioned the sleep. It just took me right back, my pregnancies were all like that. Heavy sickness, exhaustion, even in my bones I felt tired, and the dreams were crazy, especially with Nico, it was like full movies playing out in my head every night for the whole 9 months.”

“I never knew that was a thing.” Poppy has obviously heard of morning sickness. She’s heard of expectant mothers being exhausted, their bodies worn out from the oh-so-minor task of creating life, but she hadn’t ever heard anyone talk about dreams being an indicator of pregnancy.

“Babies make your body do crazy things.” She gives a reminiscent chuckle, and Poppy notices her lose herself a little in the memory, warm eyes melting with the recollection. “But at least you don’t have to worry about that.”

“Right.” The empty swallow Poppy takes next hurts more than the granola had before, the scratch of the cereal a minor irritation in comparison to the lump currently forming there. “What other symptoms did you have?”

“At the start, food was my enemy. Rino used to have to make me smoothies to get all my vitamins in. You wouldn’t think with the appetite my boys had growing up that they would have made me fear eating so much, but it was bad. I always envied the women who just had a little morning sickness.”

Poppy feels her eyes well up - more so at the way Katja’s eyes glint with pride and love when she talks about her family than anything else. It’s beautiful. Even recalling how sick her babies had made her, Poppy can tell from the look on her face that her pregnancies brought her unadulterated joy.

She remembers when Oliver’s wife, Kimberley, had been pregnant with their first son. They had lived in Jersey, still, back then, and family dinners were a staple every Friday night. They were all sat around the dining table back at the Jensen house, and Kimberley, God bless her, had misguidedly asked Priscilla what her pregnancies were like. 

“Hell.” Poppy’s mom had said, sipping at her wine and looking over the glass at Oliver with a measured glare. “He gave me uneven breasts and dry skin,”

“Mom,” Oliver had grunted in disgust, a protective hand reaching out to take hold of his wife’s.

“And she,” Priscilla gave an accusatory point in Poppy’s direction, “Gave me thin hair and postnatal depression. But she evened my breasts back out, so there’s a silver lining, I suppose.”

Kimberley hasn’t made the same mistake of seeking motherly advice since then. 

“And Nina made me have super-human scent, I could smell things from floors away.”

Poppy can barely look at her anymore.

After she’d spoken to Nico when he’d turned up before, she could still smell him from across the room. And she hadn’t been able to step foot in the common area in her office when she’d dropped by to pick up her files earlier, thinking she could smell someone’s microwaved food and feeling like she was about to vomit. She has only been able to nibble at dry crackers all week just to avoid eating or smelling anything that would set her off.

But that’s the bug, right? She’s been sluggish, she’s been tired, running hot all week, and her body has constantly ached, especially-

“I should get all this stuff packed up,” Poppy shoots up from her seat, thankfully able to suppress the dizziness. “I think I feel better, thank you so much for keeping me company.”

She shouldn’t hope so much that she isn’t being rude, shouldn’t expect or want Katja to hold her to high esteem, but she finds herself cringing at her quick subject change, and caring a little too much that it will make her think less of her.

Her son doesn’t want her to be a part of his life in that way, Poppy thinks, so it shouldn’t matter what Katja feels about her. Not anymore.

“That’s okay, Poppy, thank you for listening to me reminisce. It was nice. Nico usually gets too embarrassed for me to talk about stuff like this.” Katja follows Poppy up, mirroring her to help her pack up the rest of the merchandise that hadn’t been bought or signed.

“I don’t think he could ever be embarrassed by you.” Poppy chuckles despite herself, defending him like it’s second nature, even though she knows Katja wasn’t trying to put him down in the first place. He’s her son, for crying out loud, Poppy thinks, she doesn’t need some random girl he works with acting like she knows him any better than his own mother. “He probably just doesn’t want to think about ever making you uncomfortable, even as a foetus or whatever.”

Katja gives that same knowing smile she had worn just before turning Poppy’s world upside down mere minutes ago. The smile that would be patronising on anyone else, but the warmth in her eyes holds nothing but understanding and appreciation.

“He’s a sweet boy,” she remarks, proudly, “I never thought of It like that."

“Yeah, you raised a gentleman for sure.” Poppy had considered that it would feel more like a lie when the thought had come to her head, but as the words leave her mouth, she finds comfort in them.

Despite how much he had hurt her, she still knows Nico’s heart. She knows he cares deeply, knows he is selfless and warm, and loves with everything in him. He just doesn’t love her - not how she wants him to, at least - but she can’t hold that against him forever.

The words weigh a little heavier when the situation dawns on her, but she tries not to get ahead of herself. Not again.

She can’t be pregnant. That’s insane. 

And she can’t rack her brain trying to remember if either of them had protected themselves with his mom sat right in front of her, she knows for a fact she can’t suppress the heat that rises up her neck at the memory - she may as well wave a gigantic flag that reads Hey, I had sex with your son!

“We’re heading for dinner when he’s finished here, would you want to join us?” Katja asks, motherly concern etched upon her features, and Poppy’s heart warms at the gesture in spite of the panic rousing in her chest.

“That’s alright,” she shakes her head, guilt plucking slightly at her with the telling of the minute lie, “I have plans with another friend.”

“We’ll be going home next week, so there’s plenty of time to catch up, if you’re free at all.”

Poppy can’t help but relent with a soft smile, nodding at the suggestion without overthinking it. She’d accidentally gatecrashed a couple lunches Nico and Katja had together in some of her previous visits, and she was always so welcoming and kind - it would hardly be putting herself out if she were to do it again. “I’d like that,”

“If you’re busy, Nina and Rino will be over for the Stadium game, don’t let them convince you to come out when I’m not there.” She jests with a pointed finger, and Poppy finds herself laughing despite her nerves. 

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Good girl.” Katja reaches out and pinches softly at Poppy’s cheek, “Make sure you keep drinking plenty, and eating too, even if you feel sick you should try make sure you’re keeping your energy up. Try soup with lots of vegetables and bread. You can make it in a big batch and freeze it.”

Poppy can’t remember the last time her own mother had cared about her like this - not without belittling her, at least. When she’d spoken to her mom last week, had told her she was off work sick and couldn’t come over at the weekend, she had heard her roll her eyes over the phone. She’d been told that this is where eating poorly gets her, and that if she was keeping on top of her supplements and vitamin shots, she wouldn’t be so prone to illness. 

Even as a grown woman, with her own career, her own life, her own home, she still feels like a berated child when it comes to her mom. 

Nico’s mom makes her feel child-like in an entirely different way. In a way that’s warm and comforting, a way that wouldn’t give her anxiety every time her name comes up on her phone.

“I will, thank you for looking out for me, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it, Katja.”

Kindness comes like a second nature to Katja - to all members of the Hischier family she has encountered thus far - and a pang of jealousy and longing hits her at the realisation that some people have just been raised around this level of benevolence their whole lives, and think nothing of it.

Though, she knows Nico appreciates it.

Katja departs back through the doors into the Q&A with a soft smile and an enthusiastic wave, and Poppy waits until they have closed properly before she retrieves her cellphone from her back pocket.

Frustrated at the way it refuses to identify her face, she prods her fingers into the screen, typing in her passcode and swiping until she finds her calendar app. 

She knows she had an appointment scheduled in December with her gynaecologist. She had been in the middle of trialling a new contraception back in October - a sticky patch that had made her bleed continuously for 3 weeks and turned her into a raging nightmare to be around - and had stopped using it despite the 6 week recommendation she had been given, figuring she’d just wait out the rough periods until her next time she was booked in and speak to the doctor about it. But she’d been so busy in the back end of last year, she doesn’t remember how long it’s been since she stopped. 

Her eyes widen when she locates the appointment, clicking into the date, December 15th and reading the notes she left in there.

NEED TO RESCHEDULE!!!! busy w/ work, gynae breaks 4 xmas 22nd, comes back Jan 2nd.

She remembers the phone call as soon as she reads it. She had cancelled instead of rescheduling, knowing she was picking up extra work and would be busy until pretty much after the Christmas break. She was supposed to call in the new year. She’d gotten distracted. She hadn’t thought it was an emergency, it wasn’t like she thought she would need it for contraceptive purposes. And her periods hadn’t even been that bad since she stopped using it. Light flow, 21 day cycle, barely any cramps. She’d even been keeping a track of it, herself. She had nothing to worry about, which is probably why she hadn’t remembered to book herself back in. Hadn’t thought to start taking any other birth control in the meantime.

Her Cycle app is the next stop, flicking through the dates until she realises she was on her period after Christmas, and that the 10 or so days after that had ended were marked another colour, given another meaning.

She can feel her heartbeat in her ears. 

No, no, no.

This isn’t happening.

She’s jumping to conclusions.

It’s just a sickness bug from the takeout.

The dreams are just her broken heart playing tricks on her.

She isn’t pregnant.

She can’t be pregnant.

Next Chapter

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[scarrletmoon]

you have permission to outright block izzy fans btw. you know the kinds i’m talking about: the ones who think izzy’s death came out of nowhere and that ed should’ve taken his place. the ones who think ofmd is abuse apologia. the ones who’ll cuss me out for this post. bc it’s actually SO much more peaceful without them in your field of view

look, as someone who LOVED izzy and who tried for over a year to understand them and got condescended to at best and told to shut up and repent at worst? you’re not missing much. let them fester. you don’t need to bear witness to it. i know it feels like maybe, MAYBE if you just keep them around you might get through to them. maybe if you reach out, they won’t spit in your hand instead of taking it. maybe if you listen, they’ll tell you something you’re missing

but you’re not a martyr. it’s actually EXTREMELY hard to help someone out of a vindictive pit like that. you have to stick with a single person for YEARS, bc at that point you’re dealing with far more than izzy apologia. are you willing to do that? that’s amazing and i support you 100%. but you, as one human being, probably don’t have the capacity to do that on a large scale

this actually goes for most things: if a stranger is saying something that upsets you, that feels deeply cruel, just block them. if it’s something actually important and you’re truly trying your best to keep an open mind, you will learn the truth eventually. if you are a compassionate person, sitting with your discomfort and hurt and confusion will bring you FAR more answers. but you won’t get it if you’re festering, reading tantrums from people who think the world is against them for no reason. you’re not going to get much from people who don’t actually want compassion — they want a punching bag, they want someone to enable them, they want someone else to hurt as badly as they are currently hurting. they don’t want an open dialogue. they’re not ready to hear you yet. that’s not on you.

i’m not saying that it’s good to cut out people who clearly need help, but i am saying that you should pick your battles and not set yourself on fire for people who think you deserve to burn for their warmth

block them if you have to, find joy in other people, and don’t let people like that convince you that you’re a shitty person bc you won’t silently take their cruelty

(you also don’t have to block them. i’m just a random person on the internet. what am i gonna do, snatch your computer/phone of your hands and do it for you? come on)

and if you want to cuss me out for this post, i’m so sorry that you think that’s the only way you’re going to feel something. if you’re ready to be better, you WILL find your people. otherwise, i hope you get well soon.

[awrkive]

PLS SHARE THE DOYEON CONFESSION SCENE DRABBLE PLS RACHEL SEND IT TO US X🙇🏻‍♀️🙇🏻‍♀️🙇🏻‍♀️🙇🏻‍♀️

summary: tlp drabble #1 where doyeon confesses to jk in first year med school

w/c: 1.5k

note: this ask was sent a few days ago and i actually already have this drabble in the drafts so.... yes 🤓i welcome u to the ribbon cutting ceremony of the unlocking of a new tag in awrkive nation: tlp drabbles

Doyeon believes that she’ll only live until sixty-five – seventy, if luck’s on her side. Ultimately, she’s firm on her stand that life is short and everybody needs to get off whatever is on their chest before it’s too late. 

It’s why when she sees Jungkook arriving in Moon’s Printing Shop – where their study group holds their sessions – she sits upright and fixes her already neatly piled books and notes on the table once again, preparing herself.

Just ask the question and get over it quickly. She reminds herself.

“Where’s __?” Is the first thing that comes out of Jungkook’s mouth, taking off the straps of his backpack and setting it down on the chair across hers, as well as some of his bound reviewers and iPad. 

Doyeon raises her brow.

It’s weird when Jungkook does that. Asking about you whenever and wherever when you’re not around. She knows you were friends first before you both found her, and you are close – it’s second nature at this point. Still, Doyeon can’t help but be a little suspicious.

But she decides to ignore that, not wanting to put malice in Jungkook’s intentions because it would be unfair to him. She doesn’t want to be that kind of person who thinks that men and women can’t be purely platonic. You’re just good friends, is all.

Though, she definitely did assume that you both were a couple the first time she saw you. Physiology had just ended and Jungkook said he needed to go to the next floor to meet someone for lunch. Doyeon asked to tag along, and that was the first time she met you. Fast forward, you actually weren't his girlfriend. She couldn't stop thinking about the way Jungkook blushed though when she asked him about it.

Glancing at her phone, she sees the empty notification bar, indicating that you haven’t replied to her text from twenty minutes ago. 

“She said she was coming. Twenty minutes ago. She also said it’s okay if we start without her.” Doyeon responds, and she watches as Jungkook settles on his seat, nodding at her.

He goes for his own phone, clicks on it as if also texting you himself. 

Doyeon watches him with furrowed brows. Jungkook is definitely… conventionally attractive. He sports a medium-length hair, is quite tall, and has a good sense of fashion – even now when he’s just wearing the university hoodie and a pair of baggy sweatpants, he looks good. Naia from Physiology has been asking about him.

Doyeon has had a few crushes from highschool to college, and she thinks Jungkook might be her first in post-grad school. 

She’s been thinking about it for a while… though, she’s only known him for two months. Still. He looks good, and most of all, he’s nice. He let her borrow a pen from him the first day they met and was extremely friendly. 

And also really smart. Doyeon likes that most about him. 

Doyeon rids her head off the thoughts.

“Anyway. Anatomy.” She starts flipping through her book, ready to start the session. But she remembers about what she has to say to him.

Oh, well. She's already mentioned Anatomy and studying. Might as well put off the confession for a few more days. The exam is more important.

Putting his phone down, Jungkook looks through his book as well. "Midterms is next week, right?"

Doyeon nods. “Yeah... and brachial plexus is convoluted to me.” 

“Oh, yeah. Threw me off at first, too,” Jungkook chuckles and shakes his head to himself. He grabs a piece of paper. “You just really have to figure out how the branches and divisions work. Let me show you something,” 

Jungkook turns the paper to Doyeon’s direction, and with a pen, he sketches out a simple diagram of the brachial plexus, starting with the roots, then moving to the trunks, divisions, cords, and finally the terminal branches.

“Okay, so it starts here with the roots— C5 to T1. Think of it like the beginning of a tree. Then these roots combine into trunks,” He scribbles it, and then looks at Doyeon for awhile, making sure she’s still following. She gives him a slight nod. He smiles. “Annnd, there’s the superior, middle, and inferior trunks… and they split into anterior and posterior divisions.” 

He’s talking calmly, methodical in his words. He simplifies such a complex system with clear, organized steps, and this makes Doyeon lean closer, impressed not only by Jungkook’s understanding but by how easily he breaks it down.

When Jungkook’s done explaining, Doyeon leans back to her chair. “That is a really neat diagram.” She looks at the original illustration that the lecturer presented a few weeks ago, and when Jungkook sees that, he laughs lightly. 

“Yeah, that diagram is just a mess. But it does click when you just think of it like a pathway—kind of like navigating through a map,” As if he remembers something, he lights up a little. “And oh, __ also taught me a mnemonic. You just have to remember the terminal branches, MARMU. Musculocutaneous, Axillary—’

“Radial, Median, and Ulnar nerves.”

Jungkook grins. “Exactly.” 

Nodding her head, she starts to do the same drawing on her notes. 

A few minutes passed, comfortable silence hanging in the air. Doyeon had kept on looking up from her book to Jungkook, who’s diligently reading and scribbling on his iPad. 

She remembers the confession again.

Doyeon can't help it. She has to ask. Now.

“Hey,” she calls.

Jungkook looks up from his device. “Hm?” 

“I have to ask you something.”

With a raised brow, Jungkook says, “You look serious. I’m a little scared.”

She furrows her brows and he chuckles, telling her to continue. 

“Are you dating somebody?” Doyeon asks straight ahead. There’s no need to tiptoe around it. She just has to get it out of her system before it becomes worse.

Obviously taken aback and not expecting the question at all, Jungkook opens and closes his mouth like fish in water. 

“... no?” 

“You’re not sure?” Doyeon asks, confused.

Jungkook stammers. “No, I mean— yes. No. I’m not dating anybody,” He raises a brow at her. “Why?” 

Doyeon nods. 

“I like you. Are you interested in going out with me?”

Doyeon waits. She watches as Jungkook seems to freeze in his seat, his hand holding his apple pencil pausing mid-air; mouth agape, eyes widened a bit. 

She waits for a few seconds, still not getting an answer from Jungkook. 

“Okay.” Doyeon says after the stretched-out silence, going back to her book.

Well. That was worth the shot. At least she's let it out now. 

“I—what?” Jungkook splutters, sounding incredulous. “What do you mean you like me? Like, like? And you want to go out with me?” 

Doyeon rolls her eyes. “Offer is now off the table. Let’s get back to studying.” 

“What— were you even serious?” Jungkook insists. “Was that a prank or something?” 

With furrowed brows, Doyeon looks at him quizzically. “Why would I joke about something like that?” 

“Because…” He trails off, then his shoulders deflate after a few seconds. “I don’t know.” 

“Okay?” When Doyeon sees him with a pouty expression on his face, she can’t help but frown. “Don’t think too much about it, Jungkook. It’s not serious. I just wanted to ask. You gave me an answer. That’s it.” 

“I didn’t give you an answer, though?” 

“Your silence meant enough.” Jungkook doesn’t say anything. She nudges his foot under the table. “Come on, don’t be weird about this.”

Sighing, Jungkook nods his head. “Alright.” 

A few beats of silence, and Doyeon remembers something. “Don’t ever mention this to anybody, not even __, you understand me?” 

He blinks at her. “Okay.” 

Doyeon can’t say the next few minutes weren’t awkward. She felt Jungkook looking up at her every now and then, as if checking up on her. By then, she started to feel the hairs on her body prickle. Is he thinking she’s like, in love with him, or something? 

“Hello!” Doyeon looks up from her notes to see you walking in the door. “Hi Doyeon, hi Jungkook!” you cheerfully greet them both with a bright smile. 

Doyeon thinks your smile is contagious, so she mirrors your it as well. When her gaze falls to Jungkook, that’s when she takes note of it. 

The way his eyes suddenly light up at your arrival. It's not the first time it happens. He has that look every single time you're in the room.

Jungkook instantly goes over to you to help you with the books you’re carrying. When he sets them down on the table, he empties the chair beside him so you can settle down on it, which you do. 

“You’re late. Where were you?” Jungkook asks, and Doyeon doesn’t know if it was supposed to be subtle— but he definitely scooted his chair closer to yours, leaning his elbow to the table and twisting his body to your direction, giving you his undivided attention.

“Oh, just good old traffic. I made a quick trip to a cafe,” you wave him off. Lifting your hand, Doyeon looks at the cup holder you’re holding. “I bought coffee. Doyeon, do you like iced americano?”

“Uh, yeah,” Doyeon smiles shyly. She’s still shy around you. She doesn’t know why. “Thank you. I’ll venmo you.” 

There’s an instant frown on your face. With a pout, you take the cup holder close to your chest, an offended expression on your face. “No, it’s a treat. Don’t venmo me anything.” 

Doyeon can’t help but chuckle. 

“Okay.” 

Your huge grin returns and you give her the cup of iced americano. Turning to Jungkoon who looks like he’s eagerly waiting for his own, you raise a brow at him, saying, “And this one's for you. But double the price.”

Jungkook frowns. 

You both end up arguing again. It’s light-hearted and good-natured, that’s what Doyeon thinks. Your friendship is just… bizarre like that. 

But as she sits across from you, watching both your and Jungkook’s interaction, Doyeon realizes something. 

She should’ve known. She’s always thought about it. She wanted to ignore her hunch because again, she thinks women and men can be friends – but that is hard to uphold when Jungkook is so painfully obvious. 

Oh, brother. Doyeon internally shakes her head. Jungkook definitely likes you.

[farmergirldulce]

Farmer Confessions Part 1

Here's a scenario: How would our romanceables react to us, the farmer, confessing our love for them? (,,>ヮ<,,)

Part 1: The Bachelorettes

♡ 𝒜𝒹𝑒𝓁𝒾𝓃𝑒

It takes quite a bit to get Adeline alone for you to talk to her because this lady is always so busy

Like?? Girl your budget portfolio can wait LOL

You send her a letter about a "potential project" you wanted to discuss with her and was able to fit yourself in her schedule for that week (okay technically a lie but you had to)

When you get to her office, as soon as she puts out the tea cakes and opens up the manilla folders on her desk you just cut to the chase

"Adeline, I like you! In a more-than-a-friend kind of way!"

She drops her pen, stunned

Her cheeks turn as pink as her hair as she's trying to process what you just said. You? Like her? What did she do to deserve this?

She finally manages to shyly respond, tucking her hair behind her ear:

"Farmer I... I like you as well. Thank you so much for telling me."

She also insists she won't let work get in the way of her relationship with you and she'll always make time for you. You also always offer to help her with work so you two can spend more free time together.

(btw she was lowkey pouting there was never a "project" you wanted to discuss but she forgave you; don't worry lol)

⋆｡‧˚ʚ🍓ɞ˚‧｡⋆

♡ 𝓒𝓮𝓵𝓲𝓷𝓮

You decide to tell her on one of the days she invites you over for tea

You take a few days to gather her favorite flowers to create a beautiful bouquet you hope she'll love

You knock on the door and she opens it to see the bouquet of flowers completely covering your blush adorned face

"Oh my, what's all this? For me? How beautiful~!"

She's floored with the sweet gesture and your nerves dissipate a bit

After she brews the tea and sets it down in front of you, she asks what the occasion is for the bouquet

Ho boy the nerves are coming back

You don't know what you'd do if Celine didn't return your feelings

You manage to croak out your confession, peeking though one eye to see her reaction

Her face is flushed, her index fingers touching each other as she says:

"Hehe... you beat me to it. I invited you over to tell you my feelings for you!"

You both share a sweet embrace, enjoying each others company for the rest of the day

You both become the sweetest couple in Mistria. Everyone wants what you two have!

⋆｡‧˚ʚ🍓ɞ˚‧｡⋆

♡ 𝓡𝓮𝓲𝓷𝓪

You two are besties so all the more difficult to profess your love without making things awkward

You've been practicing in your head all week on how to tell her without scaring her off as well as praying she returns your feelings

A perfect opportunity lands on your lap when Reina asks for your help taste testing a soup recipe she's been working on

Dressed your cutest, you head to the inn

She looks as prettier as ever when she greets you

Get it together Farmer

As the private tasting session goes on, you give her feedback what you think would be better (a little more pepper, cut back on the acidity, etc) and out of nowhere, before the conversation of culinary consultation can continue she giggles lightly and says:

"Wouldn't it be crazy if we like, started dating? We have so much in common anyways!"

You freeze at what she just says and she gasps, covering her mouth and cheeks turning red

"W-WAIT I meant like hypothetically because we both are good cooks and-"

"Nah, that's not crazy at all. In fact, let's go out!"

You're both shocked at how easy that was and just stand there like dummies, accepting each others feelings

You can feel Josephine and Hemlock behind you two with a thumbs up of approval as you squeeze Reina's hand

You're lucky to have a bestie AND girlfriend in Reina

⋆｡‧˚ʚ🍓ɞ˚‧｡⋆

♡ 𝒱𝒶𝓁𝑒𝓃

Yep; you've done it now

You've fallen for the town's doctor

You've tried so hard to put your feelings on the backburner simply because you think she's way over your league and Juniper would never let you live it down once she finds out you were rejected by Valen (oh ho ho ho ho!)

But my god; that doctor is beautiful and you had to tell her you love her or else you'd go mad

As your lovesick thoughts take over on how you'd woo Valen, you forget you're in the mines rn and one of those rock bastards make you trip and smack your head on the mine floor

You shed a tear as you pass out, regretting not being able to tell the hot doc how you feel (rip bozo)

You slowly open your eyes to see Valen over you with a light behind her

"My angel... am I dead?"

But no; you're just at the clinic and Valen is there tending to your injuries

"My, you've had quite the injury. You need to be more careful, (Y/N)."

She tells you you had a concussion and you should stay away from the mines until you're better

After a few hours of monitoring you, she discharges you and lets you go home and write to her if anything

Write? BINGO

You definitely write her, but not to whine about your injuries, but tell her exactly how she makes you feel

After a few days of silence, as you start to worry, she one day pops up on your farm with the letter in her hands, a slight blush on her face

"A love letter, hm? How cute... why don't we chat about what's happening here?"

You don't hesitate to let her inside your house to talk things further

You two will most definitely take things slow, but nonetheless you two will take care of each other and blossom this relationship to something beautiful

⋆｡‧˚ʚ🍓ɞ˚‧｡⋆

♡ 𝒥𝓊𝓃𝒾𝓅𝑒𝓇

You almost didn't want to have these feelings for this Mean Girl ₜₘ

But goddammit you wanted the hot witch lady whether you liked it or not

When you receive yet another invite to be her guinea pig you take this as an opportunity to get your feelings out of the way

You reluctantly arrive at the bathhouse to see the lady of your dreams looking as attractive as she ever has

Did she already give you some kind of potion? Under some kind of spell?

After you give the good boi Doozy well-deserved pets, you give yourself up to Juniper as she performs all kinds of experiments

You turn into a variety of things until you're a frog, in which she has trouble changing you back

"I dunno, (Y/N). This is a great look for you! Ohohohoho~!"

Before you get pissed at her, you recall a certain fairy tale and smirk.

"Doesn't a kiss from a beautiful princess turn me back?"

She nearly chokes

"A-A PRINCESS?! How dare-"

You both turn to see Doozy bark and point his paw to a page in the spell book and sure enough, a kiss in fact DOES reverse it

Yep; Doozy the Wingman LOL

She groans and gives in, kissing your froggy head, and you turn back to normal

"There. Satisfied?"

"I dunno~ Maybe the spell didn't work~"

"You little-"

You silence her with a quick peck on the cheek and dart out of the bathhouse, leaving a baffled and blushing mess out of Juniper

Not a confession per-se, but you got her thinking about you and craving more.

Once you finally tell her though, I'm sure she might warm up to you by then

(well maybe lol)

Next: Part 2 with the bachelors!