#summer scarf wrap | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

prisvvner · 25 days ago

Text

⋆｡𖦹 °. ꜱᴜᴍᴍᴇʀ ʟᴏᴏᴋꜱ ɢᴏᴏᴅ ᴏɴ ʏᴏᴜ

── ⟢ ·⸝⸝ pairing: satoru gojo x female reader

── ⟢ ·⸝⸝ synopsis: you loved him once. then he ghosted you. now, years later, he's standing on your porch like he never broke your heart. but you still feel everything.

── ⟢ ·⸝⸝ content: 12.5k, romance, heartbreak, mentions of burnout, past love, college sweethearts, angst, hurt, comfort

── ⟢ ·⸝⸝ author's note: this is my little surprise for reaching 100 followers on tumblr! it's sad, fluffy and emotional - enjoy <3

let me know if you guys liked it and i'll publish part two!

masterlist part one part two

The front steps creak beneath your weight as you drop your bag down, the leather thunking against the old wood like punctuation at the end of a sentence you didn’t mean to write.

You pause there, one hand still gripping the rusted railing, as that familiar coastal wind sweeps up the porch—sharp with sea salt, softened by the sweet tang of sunscreen and the heavy perfume of overgrown hydrangeas that bloom like gossip around the gate.

It’s a scent that doesn’t just hang in the air, it wraps around your skin and memory like a silk scarf left behind in someone else’s car. The kind of scent that belongs to a very specific kind of summer.

The house, well, your mother’s infamous beach house, though she always referred to it as “the place”, sits quiet and stubborn as ever, perched at the edge of the dunes like it’s been waiting for you.

It’s aged, but not tired, the way old debutantes age: white shiplap faded gently into a sea-washed gray, powder-blue shutters blinking sleepily in the afternoon light, their paint peeling just enough to feel nostalgic instead of negligent. The porch swing still hangs by its bleached ropes, sagging a little more now, cushion flattened into memory foam by teenage limbs and late-night phone calls you pretended weren’t about boys.

This place smells like sun-warmed wood and old pages and something faintly medicinal that always clung to your mother’s linen drawers. It smells like every version of you that’s ever existed.

Inside, almost nothing’s changed.

The same woven rug sprawls inside the door, too rough against bare feet, too familiar to replace. The same ceramic turtle crouches beside it with his dopey painted smile, chipped on the shell where you dropped him during a tantrum in eighth grade—something about a missed sleepover and your mom saying no in that infuriatingly calm voice that meant it wasn’t up for negotiation.

On the narrow table in the entryway, tucked beside a bowl of half-melted seashell candles, is the same frame. Whitewashed driftwood, corners worn soft, still holding that photo of you from the summer you were ten.

In it, your arms are wrapped around a Cavalier King Charles spaniel, your eyes squinting against the sun, your hair stuck to your forehead. You’d named him Charlie. Begged for him all June. Got your wish in July. Sent him back to the breeder in August when your mother said she “wasn’t made for full-time pets.”

You cried for a week. You still think about him every time you see a dog like that.

But the difference now?

You’re here alone.

Well, alone-ish.

The invitation—or rather, the politely guised suggestion—came from your mother in one of her characteristically breezy, emotionally evasive phone calls.

“Take the house for a bit,” she’d said, her voice full of the crisp detachment of someone who believes that problems can be solved with ocean air and pressed juice.

“To rest,” she’d added, as if rest was a thing you could uncap and pour over your shoulders like after-sun lotion. “You’ve been working too hard. Burning the candle at both ends.”

She’d said it like burnout was an aesthetic choice.

Like peace could be found at the bottom of a wine glass and not in the absence of an email inbox that never sleeps.

You'd said yes because saying no would have involved explaining why you didn’t want to go back. Not just to the house. But to that version of you.

Now you’re here, and the silence inside the house, apart from the slow tick of the wall clock and the distant wheeze of an old ceiling fan, is so complete that your heartbeat feels like an interruption. You drop your keys into the chipped ceramic bowl shaped like a hibiscus flower, its glaze spiderwebbed with age, and toe off your sandals. The floorboards are cool beneath your feet, familiar in their uneven rhythm.

A salty breeze slips through the open screen door and rustles the linen curtains like applause from some distant room you can’t quite access anymore.

And, for one traitorous moment, you let yourself think: Maybe this will be okay.

But then you hear it.

Laughter.

Not the abstract kind that wafts from strangers in the distance. This is close. Immediate. Warm and low, carried on the breeze with too much familiarity to be anonymous.

Your spine stiffens before your brain catches up.

Male. Carefree. Just this side of cocky.

Too familiar.

Your stomach drops like a stone tossed into the tide.

“Oh, no,” you mutter, already moving toward the porch again.

The sun stings your eyes as you step outside, hand lifted to shield your gaze as you squint across the narrow stretch of windblown dune grass and faded wood fencing that separates your property from the one next door. The grass is taller than you remember. The fence shorter. And just past it, right where the wild reeds part near the path to the beach, he’s there.

Of course he is.

Satoru Gojo.

Tall, barefoot, irritatingly relaxed in that way he’s always had, like someone who lives in the sweet spot between the world bending for him and him never needing to ask.

He’s wearing linen pants that hang loose and lived-in on his hips, and a white button-down that looks like it costs more than your rent, open just enough at the collar to hint at sun-kissed skin beneath. His sleeves are rolled up. His hair is windswept, gleaming silver and salt under the late-afternoon sun, and his sunglasses are pushed up into his hair like a crown.

He’s tossing a red squeaky lobster toy in easy arcs for—of course—a Cavalier King Charles spaniel, whose glossy copper coat shines like she’s just stepped out of a shampoo commercial. The dog yips, catches the toy midair, bounds around him like she’s in love with gravity itself.

And then he turns.

Spots you.

Grins like the goddamn sun.

“Hey,” he calls, too casually, as if this were inevitable. “You again.”

You blink. “Me again?”

He jogs the toy once in his hand and lets the spaniel snatch it back with a satisfied squeak. “You’re the one invading my peace.”

“Your peace?” you echo, arms crossing before your chest as your voice lifts into polite disbelief. “Pretty sure this is my family’s house.”

“Pretty sure you didn’t warn me you’d be this cute in sunlight,” he fires back without missing a beat, as if charm were currency and he’d never known debt.

The words hit you in the chest and cheeks at the same time, hot, unwelcome, but not unfamiliar.

Because, of course, you know Gojo.

You’ve known him for years, in the way people who orbit the same social circles do. Family friends of family friends. Weddings. Charity events. He was always the one at the end of the hall with a glass of something expensive and a comment that walked the knife’s edge between outrageous and annoyingly accurate.

You’d known him in sharp glimpses and long summers, too good-looking for his own good, too clever for yours.

The last time you saw him, you’d both been at some rooftop bar in Tokyo, and he’d leaned in close, grinning that maddening grin, and said something like, “If we were ever in the same place for more than five minutes, you’d fall for me.”

You’d rolled your eyes.

And then maybe thought about it later.

Now here he is again. On your porch. In your quiet. With that damn grin.

The dog barks once, its tail a metronome of approval.

You try not to smile.

Fail. A little.

He strolls toward you now, the dog at his heels, both of them moving like this lawn has always belonged to them.

“You’re house-sitting for your mom?” he asks, stopping at the porch steps, one hand braced lazily on the railing like it’s all part of a script he wrote.

You shrug, adjusting your stance like it might steady your pulse. “Something like that. She said the neighborhood was quiet.”

His smirk softens into something almost tender. “Only till I moved in.”

You glance down at his bare feet. His tan. That slouchy, ruinous charm that always feels like a dare.

He looks like the kind of man you only meet once and spend years inventing better versions of.

He looks like he belongs here.

And that’s the problem.

Because Satoru Gojo, the man in question, barefoot in expensive linen and looking like the human embodiment of a smug Instagram filter, is not supposed to belong here.

Not on your mom’s sleepy little cul-de-sac, not this close to your peace and quiet, and definitely not this tanned.

So you fold your arms and tilt your head in that way that usually scares off investment bros and Tinder dates with too much jawline confidence. “Okay, but seriously. What the hell are you doing here?”

His smile twitches. “What, not even a ‘nice to see you’?”

“Not until you explain why you’ve apparated into my beach exile like a preppy cryptid,” you deadpan. “Last I checked, you were the newly crowned corporate overlord of Gojo Holdings, terrorizing boardrooms and interns across Tokyo.”

He snorts. “Overlord?”

“I mean, CEO. But tomato, to-mah-to.”

That earns you a low whistle and a slow, impressed grin. “Oof. That sounded rehearsed.”

“Maybe it was,” you challenge him, arching a brow. “Maybe I practice in the mirror for moments just like this.”

He slips his sunglasses back down over his eyes, probably to shield himself from the nuclear-grade sarcasm. Or from the fact that you’re right.

“Well,” he grins, toeing at the edge of the bottom step. “Contrary to popular belief —and your excellent burn— I do know how to take a break. I took a sabbatical. Temporary, of course.”

You narrow your eyes.

“You don’t take sabbaticals,” you shoot back. “You take conference calls at 2 a.m. and fire people over sushi.”

“Wow,” he says, mock-offended. “Have you been stalking my calendar?”

“Please. If I wanted to stalk someone, I’d pick someone with less ego and more plausible deniability.”

His laughter is low, easy. Annoyingly charming. The kind of laugh you can feel in your stomach even when you reallydon’t want to.

But you keep going, like a freight train of petty. “So, let me get this straight. You, walking headline, just happened to show up next door to my mom’s beach house for a little R&R?”

He stretches his arms behind his head, shamelessly. “Not everything’s a conspiracy theory. Sometimes I just like the sound of the ocean.”

You squint at him. “Bullshit.”

His smile flickers, like you’ve hit a nerve. And that’s when he says it, more casual than it should be.

“The board and I had a... let’s say, difference of opinion.”

You raise both eyebrows. “Did this difference involve yelling, threats of legal action, and you dramatically walking out with your sunglasses already on?”

“Maybe,” he grins, smug.

You roll your eyes. “God, you’re exhausting.”

“And yet here you are, talking to me on your porch instead of slamming the door.”

“Tempting,” you mutter.

He grins. “Three-month leave. Unpaid. Voluntary, technically.”

“Voluntary like a hostage situation?”

He shrugs again, but this time it’s looser, weightier. Like something in the space between his shoulder blades has finally cracked under pressure.

“They wanted a figurehead,” he tells you, softer now. “I wanted to rip the mold apart and build something that didn’t suck the soul out of everyone it touched.”

You pause.

Because beneath all the arrogance, there’s the same restless heat you remember. The same streak of recklessness that always ran just under his skin, like lightning waiting for somewhere to strike.

And maybe that’s the part that gets you.

Because if anyone knows what it means to walk away from something that looks perfect on paper, it’s you.

“So,” you continue slowly, arms still folded. “Let me get this straight. You got bored of being Tokyo’s favorite capitalist nightmare and decided to tan in linen pants while throwing lobster squeak toys with a dog that looks like she owns a line of organic shampoos?”

He glances down at the spaniel sitting obediently beside him, tongue lolling.

“Her name’s Miso.”

You blink. “You named your dog after soup.”

“It’s cute and comforting. Like me.”

You stare at him. “You’re not cute.”

He smiles, teeth and trouble. “You used to think I was.”

You try not to react.

You really do.

But the flush crawling up your neck is the kind of betrayal your sarcasm can’t cover.

So instead, you gesture vaguely toward the house. “Right. Well. I came here to be alone, so if you and your soup dog could maybe tone down the charm offensive—”

“Offensive?” he interrupts, mock-wounded. “Is that what we’re calling chemistry now?”

You fix him with your best unimpressed glare. “Pretty sure what we had was called a mistake.”

His gaze lingers on you a beat too long.

And then: “Yeah,” he says quietly. “But it was a good one.”

You don’t answer.

You just turn on your heel and disappear back inside before the porch starts feeling like quicksand.

But even as you shut the door, you swear you can still hear it:

The faint sound of Miso’s squeaky toy.

And the way Gojo Satoru says your name like it’s something that still matters.

By sunset, the house feels too quiet.

You try to make peace with it, pour yourself a glass of whatever your mom left behind (a buttery Chardonnay, of course), pad barefoot across the creaky floorboards, and plant yourself on the porch swing like it doesn’t still have your name carved into the underside in messy, hormonal eighth-grade script.

You swing gently, wine glass resting on your thigh, eyes fixed on the horizon as if the ocean might offer some cosmic answer.

Or at least distract you from the fact that Gojo Satoru is next door, barefoot, tanned, possibly shirtless by now, and allegedly on sabbatical from being the cockiest CEO Tokyo has ever reluctantly admired.

The sky melts into shades of apricot and mauve, the kind of palette you’d kill to capture in oil paint if you still did that. If you still had that version of yourself.

Instead, you sip wine and pretend you don’t notice the shadow moving across the edge of your vision.

You don’t look.

You absolutely don’t look.

You definitely don’t—

“I brought an offering,” says Gojo’s voice, somewhere to your right.

You sigh. Loudly. Dramatically. Like the ghost of a Victorian woman mourning the loss of silence.

“I thought the dog was the offering,” you mutter, still not looking at him.

“Miso is offended. She wants you to know she’s far too good for bartering.”

“I’m honored,” you deadpan, finally turning your head.

He’s holding two beers. One of them is sweating in the golden light, already opened, clearly meant for you.

You eye it suspiciously. “What if I don’t drink beer?”

He lifts a brow. “You drank half a bottle of wine and told the porch swing it ‘wasn’t emotionally available enough.’ I think you’re past pretending to be picky.”

You narrow your eyes. “You were eavesdropping?”

He shrugs. “You were monologuing.”

“… Touché.”

You accept the beer with a grunt, scooting a few inches over on the swing. Not enough to invite him, exactly. Just… making room for the tension to sit somewhere that isn’t in your chest.

But he takes it as an invitation anyway and drops down beside you with a sigh that’s irritatingly content.

You sit like that for a while.

Sipping.

Swinging.

Saying nothing.

The breeze picks up. Somewhere down, a wind chime sings its glassy song. The first stars begin to surface, faint and far away.

And still, he says nothing.

Which, honestly, is worse.

“Gojo,” you start finally, unable to take the silence. “Are you gonna give me the full story, or are you just here to haunt my summer like a shirtless corporate poltergeist?”

He laughs. Quiet, this time.

Then, after a pause: “I was supposed to propose.”

You turn your head so fast it nearly snaps. “To who?”

He grins like he knows exactly what he’s doing. “Relax. No one you’ve met. And it didn’t happen.”

“…What stopped you?”

His smile fades a little. Not completely, just enough to remind you there’s a person under all that charm.

“I got to the dinner,” he says. “Sat down. Ordered the wine. Reached into my jacket pocket for the ring.” A pause. “And realized I couldn’t do it.”

You blink. “You forgot the ring?”

“No.” He looks down at his beer, rolling the bottle between his palms. “I looked across the table and realized I didn’t want to give it to her.”

You stare at him.

Not because he’s being dramatic, but because he’s not.

And suddenly the tan, the linen, the sabbatical? All of it makes sense.

You sigh. “So you torched your engagement and your job in the same week.”

He tips the beer toward you in a mock-toast. “Efficiency.”

You clink bottles. “You’re an idiot.”

“You always said that,” he murmurs, and your stomach gives a little kick.

“Yeah, well.” You look out toward the water again. “Some people grow out of being disasters. Some people double down.”

“And which am I?”

You exhale. “Ask me when the beer’s gone.”

He smiles again, but this time there’s a softness to it. Something quieter. Realer.

The swing creaks as it sways gently beneath you, and Gojo leans back, one arm thrown across the backrest, not touching you, but close enough that your skin buzzes like it’s reading too much into things.

You hate how comfortable it feels. How familiar.

Because the truth is, you’ve always known Gojo Satoru.

Long before he became “the CEO of Gojo Holdings,” before the headlines, before the dog with the ribbon and the tan and the goddamn linen pants.

Back when you were nineteen, and he sat behind you in that painfully boring ethics seminar.

When he made up imaginary text messages to get you both out of class. When he kissed you one night at the vending machine outside your dorm and said, “This is probably a bad idea,” right before doing it again.

When he ghosted you for a year.

When he came back and said, “I wasn’t ready. I might never be.”

When you promised yourself you’d never make that mistake again.

And now here he is.

Not in a bar or a boardroom or some reunion you could easily leave.

But next door.

At sunset.

With beer and that damn dog and a smile you used to believe in.

“You’re thinking too loud,” he murmurs.

You roll your eyes. “You’re imagining things.”

“Probably,” he hums. “But I’m also right.”

You look down at your bottle. The label’s peeling.

“So,” you drag the word. “What happens now?”

He leans back, stretching his legs, gaze lifted to the deepening stars. “I was kind of hoping you’d fall asleep on my shoulder again.”

You choke on your beer.

“Excuse me?”

“That’s what happened last time,” he says, casually. “Back in college. Under that awful cherry blossom tree. You fell asleep. I didn’t move for two hours.”

You scowl. “You told me you left because you had a shift.”

“I lied.”

You blink.

He turns to you, his cerulean eyes suddenly bright in the dark, no sunglasses, no smirk.

“Didn’t want to wake you.”

You open your mouth.

Close it.

Open it again.

And then: “You’re still an idiot.”

But you don’t move away.

You stay exactly where you are.

Letting the swing sway.

Letting the ocean breathe.

Letting the past become something more complicated than regret.

And when your head eventually tips sideways, resting—accidentally, definitely not on purpose—against his shoulder, he just exhales.

Soft.

Careful.

And says, “Told you.”

Later, after the swing stops creaking and your beer’s gone warm beside your bare ankle, you say the five words you’ll probably regret until next morning.

“Wanna walk down the beach?”

You say it like it’s nothing. Like it doesn’t feel like a pulse between your ribs. Like it’s not 10:47 PM and your heart isn’t behaving like it’s 19 again.

Gojo doesn’t answer with words. Just tilts his head like you’ve said something obvious and rises, barefoot and quiet, offering a hand that you do not take. You walk past him instead, stepping down from the porch with that practiced nonchalance you’ve weaponized since high school.

The sand is cool, still warm in patches where the sun baked it for hours. The moonlight is silver and clean, the air thick with salt and the faint scent of plumeria from someone’s overwatered garden.

You walk in silence for a while, just the two of you and Miso—the absurdly fluffy Cavalier—who bounds ahead like she’s scoring a Nancy Meyers soundtrack in real time.

Gojo, to his credit, keeps pace a few steps beside you. Close enough that you feel the warmth of him. Far enough not to press.

“Does she always have that much main character energy?” you finally ask, nodding toward the dog, who’s currently flopping belly-up in a dramatic sprawl of sand and moonlight.

“She’s a Sagittarius.”

You snort. “You did not just say that like it explains everything.”

“It does,” he argues, dead serious. “Loud, dramatic, emotionally reckless with a deep need to be adored?”

You arch a brow. “Sounds familiar.”

He grins. “She and I have the same birthday.”

You blink. “You’re joking.”

“I would never lie about astrology.”

You glance sideways at him, trying not to notice how moonlight makes his jaw look like it belongs in a perfume ad. “You used to lie about everything. Especially anything sentimental.”

“I’ve changed.”

“You say that like I’m supposed to just believe you.”

He’s quiet a beat too long.

And then: “I didn’t come here to make you believe anything.”

You slow a little.

Miso darts into the waves, barking like she’s confronting a personal betrayal. You stop just at the tide line, arms folding reflexively as the ocean brushes near your feet.

Gojo stops beside you.

The breeze lifts his hair. He doesn’t speak again until the waves hush low enough for you to hear the real quiet between you.

“I came because I didn’t know where else to go,” he adds softly.

You don’t look at him. But you hear it. That flicker of real. The chink in the Gojo armor.

“I didn’t want Tokyo,” he continues. “Didn’t want the board. Didn’t want the goddamn apartment that looks like an Apple Store. Didn’t want the calendar reminders for when to sleep.”

You laugh, dry and quiet. “So naturally, you picked the one place I couldn’t avoid you.”

“I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“Bullshit.”

“No, seriously.” His voice shifts, lighter, but earnest. “Your mom told me the place would be empty. I ran into her at some ridiculous charity function. She was wearing a scarf made entirely of orchids and told me to ‘come breathe for a while.’ I think she thought I was having a nervous breakdown.”

“…Were you?”

He hesitates. “Not officially.”

You finally glance at him.

He’s not smiling anymore.

You both stand there, ankles damp, the horizon curling into shadow like a secret neither of you wants to name.

And in the moonlight, he’s not the CEO.

He’s not the boy who ghosted you. Not even the idiot who brought a beer as an apology for breaking your heart with silence.

He’s just Satoru.

Hands in his pockets.

Hair blowing in the wind like it’s been waiting to fall apart.

And, god help you, you feel your chest crack open like a badly patched window.

“You could’ve called,” you say, and it’s quieter than you meant it to be.

He nods. “I wanted to. So many times.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

He takes a breath. Then another.

“I didn’t think I’d know how to talk to you without wanting more.”

That hangs between you. Ugly. Beautiful. Honest.

You swallow.

The ocean presses against your feet, then pulls away again, like it, too, doesn’t know how to stay.

Miso flops dramatically into the sand beside you both, exhausted from her own emotional subplots. You reach down and scratch behind her ears, giving yourself something—anything—to do that isn’t fall apart under his eyes.

“So what now?” you murmur.

Gojo steps closer. Just slightly.

“I don’t know.”

You turn to face him fully now. The distance is measured in inches. Heartbeats.

He looks down at you like he wants to memorize something. Not your face, exactly. Something under it.

“I don’t expect anything,” he tells you. “I just— I wanted to be near the version of me who used to be okay. And he only ever showed up around you.”

It hits harder than you want it to. Because you remember that version of him.

You remember the jokes, the pranks, the late nights, the shared earbuds, the way he looked at you like you were something he’d found and couldn’t believe he was allowed to keep.

You remember wanting to believe it.

You remember what it felt like when he left.

“I’m not your sanctuary, Satoru.”

“I know.”

“And I’m not here to fix you.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“Good.” You exhale, stepping away from him just enough to steady yourself. “Because I don’t trust you.”

He nods, accepting it. No flinch. No charm.

But then: “Do you miss me?”

You laugh. Bitter, brittle. “You’re impossible.”

“I know,” he says again.

And then, softer: “But I missed you. And I’m not leaving yet.”

You watch him.

The breeze shifts again. Your arms are cold.

He shrugs out of his linen button-down, wordless, and drapes it around your shoulders like it’s nothing. Like he’s done it a hundred times before.

He hasn’t.

You don’t give it back.

And you don’t say thank you.

You just start walking again.

And this time, he walks beside you, silent, respectful, annoyingly golden in the moonlight.

Like maybe he understands that some forgiveness isn’t verbal.

It’s just staying. Quietly.

Even when you have every reason to leave.

It's way past your usual sleep time, but you’re back in bed. The heat won’t let you sleep. Even with all the windows thrown open wide, even with the ceiling fan slicing the thick, sticky air into lazy ribbons that barely move, even with one leg kicked out from under the sheet like some sacrificial limb, it’s still too damn hot.

Your skin feels like it’s remembering a sun you never even laid under today, the dampness at your roots clinging to your scalp, and your tank top—useless, threadbare—is doing nothing to keep you cool.

And of course, Satoru Gojo is next door. Not helping. Not even a little. Because it’s not just the weather’s heat making you restless.

It’s the heat of his laugh, that impossible smile, the way his sun-stupid white hair catches the moonlight just right, and that voice—yeah, that same voice that used to make your spine go weak in lecture halls and back stairwells and on that one couch in the library basement you were definitely not supposed to be making out on.

You roll over. The pillow’s no cooler on this side, and the room smells like old salt and clean linen. Your brain, though? Total bitch. It drags you back to that one certain night.

College, sophomore year, late October, when the campus was painted in yellow leaves and the cold bit into your lungs with every breath. You’d just bombed a midterm you were sure you aced—or at least almost aced—and there you were, crying quietly in the hallway outside the economics building. Not the kind of sobs that draw attention, but the kind that shrinks you down so small you feel like you might disappear.

You couldn’t even explain it to your friends without sounding like a total drama queen, so you kept it to yourself.

Then, like a storm you never saw coming, Gojo showed up. White hair slicked back messily with a headband, black hoodie half-zipped, iced coffee in hand as if the cold outside didn’t matter one bit.

And that smile, the one that made girls trip over their own boots.

“You look like you’re about to commit tax fraud,” he greeted you, cocking his head like he was part devil and part angel. “Need an alibi?”

You hadn’t even looked at him. “I need you to go away.”

“Rude,” he huffed, sitting down beside you on the cold stone steps like he owned your emotional meltdown. Your knee brushed his, and suddenly that little physical connection felt like a lifeline.

“You failed something, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t fail it,” you snapped. “I just didn’t ace it, which apparently means I’m now a disappointment to my entire bloodline.”

He handed you his iced coffee without a word, and you took it, trying not to scowl as you sipped the weird lavender oat milk concoction that tasted like dirt and perfume.

“Disgusting,” you muttered.

He grinned. “Right? I get it every week just to remember what regret tastes like.”

You wanted to stay mad, really you did, but he started talking, about his own test, about filling in Scantron bubbles in a pattern that spelled “BOOBS” just to make the TA laugh, about how grades didn’t mean much when you were already the heir to Gojo Holdings and everyone expected you to be brilliant even if you flunked out, about how he hated the pressure to be exceptional.

Maybe it was the softness in his voice.

Maybe it was that he didn’t touch you or try to fix you, didn’t offer some magic solution—he just sat there, warm and solid and obnoxiously kind.

And somehow, you leaned your head onto his shoulder. Just for a minute. Just until your hands stopped shaking.

He shifted slightly so you could rest more comfortably. His hoodie smelled like citrus and laundry detergent, like safety. Like almost.

And then he said it. Quiet. Almost too quiet to register.

“I think I like you too much.”

Your heart stuttered. Because that was the first time he’d said anything real—not a joke, not a flirt, not some outrageous one-liner designed to get a rise. Just honest.

You lifted your head, looked at him, and his eyes were bluer than they had any right to be in that kind of dusk. For one reckless second, you thought maybe, just maybe, you’d kiss him. Maybe you’d let yourself believe in whatever this was between you, even if it came without a label and came with all the complications in the world.

But you didn’t kiss him. You stood up. Told him you had to go. And when you looked back—just once, from across the quad—he was still sitting there, holding your coffee, looking like he’d just lost something he didn’t even know he was trying to keep.

The house creaks softly around you, familiar and steady, and the waves keep folding over themselves outside, slow and patient.

Somewhere next door, Gojo is probably sleeping soundly, that ridiculous dog curled at his feet. You turn over again. This time, the pillow’s cooler—but your heart isn’t.

And that memory pulls you somewhere else.

You remember another afternoon, sticky and overwhelming, the kind of early spring day when the campus feels like a sauna and your brain is too fried to care.

You’d slipped away from back-to-back lectures you barely survived, ducking behind the student union to the vending machine nobody ever used, desperate for a cold, sweet Diet Coke, the one small act of rebellion against the stress and noise.

You stood there fumbling with your wallet, savoring the brief quiet, when Satoru appeared again, like some magnetic force you could never escape. He was leaning casually against the wall, his silver hair catching the light like a challenge. He didn’t say anything at first, just watched you with that maddening grin, like he knew a secret you hadn’t figured out yet. You tried to keep your cool, telling yourself he was just being irritating as usual, but before you could move, he reached out and caught your wrist, his fingers warm and steady.

“I don’t do casual,” he said, voice low and serious, flipping your stomach like a rollercoaster. “Not with you.”

And then, without waiting for a reply, he leaned in and kissed you, soft, urgent, like he was trying to make up for lost time or prove something neither of you had the words for. It wasn’t rushed or careless. It was the kind of kiss that pulled the ground out from under you, left you dizzy and breathless in the quiet space behind that vending machine, surrounded by the hum of campus chatter and the faded smell of old books from the nearby library. His hand tightened on your wrist just enough to hold you there, grounded in a moment that felt impossibly fragile and fiercely real.

When he finally pulled away, his eyes locked on yours with a seriousness that made your chest ache, and all you could do was stand there, heart racing, wondering if you’d crossed some invisible line. Or if maybe this was the beginning of something you never dared hope for.

Still lying in the quiet dark of your mother’s beach house bedroom, the faint hum of cicadas outside mixing with the restless rhythm of the waves, the memory curls inside you like a bittersweet ache.

It wasn’t just the kiss itself, but everything it meant and everything you weren’t ready to admit: the way he saw you, like you mattered more than you’d ever allowed yourself to believe, and the way it shook the careful walls you’d built around your heart.

And maybe you thought that would be it. A moment, a lapse, a crack in the surface of whatever strange thing had always simmered between you. But it wasn’t.

Because it kept happening.

You didn’t mean to let it. Or maybe you did, and you just told yourself you didn’t, because wanting something too badly had always felt like weakness.

But after that kiss behind the vending machine, something shifted. Not loud, not obvious, just a subtle reorientation of gravity.

Suddenly, he was always near.

Always looking at you like he knew your next breath before you did. He’d brush your hand when you passed each other in the library stacks. He’d find you in crowded hallways and murmur something stupid and sharp against your ear, and your whole body would hum like you were standing too close to an open flame. He’d catch your gaze across lecture halls like the two of you were sharing a joke no one else could hear, and you’d roll your eyes, but your cheeks would burn and you’d know he saw it.

And then, more kisses. Behind closed doors, in shadowed corners, in places no one should ever have seen but never did—like the universe was conspiring to keep your secret safe.

Once, in the quiet hallway behind the fine arts building, you kissed him with your back pressed to the peeling paint of an old classroom door, his hands cupping your jaw like he thought you might disappear if he let go.

Another time, it was on the rooftop of the science wing, right before a thunderstorm, with the sky crackling above you and the wind tangling your hair and his laugh caught in your throat when he pulled you in by the belt loops of your jeans and said, “This is probably a bad idea,” right before doing it anyway. You kissed until it started to rain, warm and sharp, and you didn’t care if anyone saw.

But no one ever did. Because that was the rule. Unspoken but ironclad.

It was always behind something. Beneath something. Never in daylight. Never in public. Never where it could mean anything more than stolen time and bruised lips and breathless laughter shared between ghosts of who you were supposed to be.

And you told yourself it was fine. That you were fine. That it didn’t hurt to keep him like this—half-kept, half-hidden, like a flame cupped in your hands just to keep it from going out.

But something in him had already begun to fray.

You saw it in the way his jokes came slower. In the way his silences stretched longer. In the way he looked at you, sometimes, like he was trying to memorize you... or forget you. You couldn’t tell which.

And then one day, he just… wasn’t there.

You’d texted him. Nothing. Called. No answer. You even went to that vending machine spot—waited there, like a fool, like a hopeful, desperate idiot with a Diet Coke sweating in her palm and a thousand things unsaid crammed between her ribs.

He didn’t show. Not that day. Not the next. Not any day after.

He was gone. Clean and total, like a knife had been taken to your memory of him and carved out the present tense.

Gojo disappeared like he’d never been real at all.

A year passed.

Twelve long months where every piece of him you’d carried, his voice, his grin, the way he said your name when no one else could hear, turned into something sour and unfinished inside you. You told yourself you were over it. That people leave. That people grow up. That whatever you had wasn’t real. Couldn’t have been. Because real things don’t vanish. Real people don’t ghost you like that.

But on nights like this, when the air clings to your skin like memory, and the ceiling fan’s doing nothing but reminding you how still everything is, and the sea keeps sighing outside like it knows exactly what you lost… you think of him. Not like a wound. Not even like a wish.

More like a fact. A truth. A secret still burning beneath everything you never said.

You shift again, eyes shut tight. You can’t tell if it’s the heat or your own heartbeat keeping you awake, but your chest feels tight with something that wants to rise. Not tears. Not even anger. Just the ache of a door that was never closed properly.

And outside, he is somewhere next door. Probably asleep.

Like nothing ever happened.

The morning arrives like it’s apologizing for the night.

Soft sunlight spills over the faded deck wood, pooling at your bare feet. It’s cooler than it was a few hours ago—still warm, still summer, but not the oppressive, feverish heat of midnight. The breeze off the ocean is lazy and salt-sweet, threading through your hair as you sit cross-legged in one of the old wicker chairs your mom refuses to throw out. The cushion underneath you is lumpy and a little sun-bleached, but you’ve staked it as your territory for the upcoming weeks. Yours. Sanctuary.

You take a slow bite of your avocado toast, which you’ve baked in the oven like a fancy little gremlin because no one told you not to be dramatic with breakfast. It’s got lemon zest, chili flakes, and a smattering of crumbled feta because apparently the ocean air has turned you into someone who garnishes things before noon. You even dusted a little paprika on top. Paprika. Like you’re on a cooking show. Like the past isn’t still hanging around your collar like a too-heavy necklace.

Your book is cracked open on your lap, a battered paperback you’ve already read twice but picked up again anyway, because it’s safe. Predictable. It doesn’t kiss you behind vending machines or vanish for a year. It doesn’t have blue eyes or a laugh that can gut you with a single syllable. It’s just paper. And ink. And peace.

You manage to read the same paragraph four times without absorbing any of it.

Because he’s still next door.

You haven’t seen him yet, but you know he’s there. The silence is suspicious. Too quiet for someone like Satoru Gojo, who’s made an entire personality out of being un-ignorable. He’s probably still asleep. Or maybe he’s gone for a run, like he used to do in college when his brain wouldn’t shut up.

You remember him showing up to your 8 a.m. stats class in running shorts and sunglasses, still sweating, bragging about beating his own time and then promptly falling asleep during a lecture on chi-squared distributions.

You hated how much you noticed him back then.

You hate that you still do.

You shake it off—mentally swat at the thought like it’s a mosquito—and turn your face toward the sun instead, letting it paint you in warmth. The sound of the waves is steady and hypnotic, that slow, hush-hush rhythm you grew up with. It’s supposed to calm you down. Ground you. Remind you that the ocean doesn’t care about boys who leave or memories that won’t stay quiet.

You tell yourself you’re going to swim soon. Really swim. Maybe float. Maybe dunk your whole head under until you come up clean. Like a baptism, but angrier.

You’ve already got your swimsuit on under your sleep shirt. The good one, the black one with the high waist and dramatic scoop back that makes you feel like you’re starring in a moody indie film called Girl, Unraveling. You plan on walking down the beach barefoot with your sunglasses on and not looking at the house next door even once.

You're fine. You are so fine it’s practically suspicious.

And maybe if you keep saying that, you’ll start to believe it.

Your phone buzzes next to your plate, lighting up once. Just a calendar reminder. You ignore it. There’s nowhere you have to be. No one expecting you to perform productivity or pretend you’re thriving. This whole week is supposed to be about rest. Real rest. Deep rest. Nervous system reset kind of rest.

But rest is hard when ghosts keep knocking on your ribs.

You close the book, give up on pretending you’re reading. Pull your knees to your chest and let the breeze kiss the backs of your legs.

The day is quiet.

The toast is perfect.

The waves keep whispering things you don’t want to name.

And somewhere, inevitably, Gojo is going to step out onto his porch.

And you’re going to have to figure out how to look him in the face without showing every single thing he used to make you feel.

The towel is scratchy. The kind you only find in a beach house linen closet that hasn’t been updated since the early 2000s—sun-bleached, vaguely sand-scented, and questionably clean. But you sling it over your shoulder anyway, because you’re already committed. You’ve made the internal announcement: I am going swimming now. And even if the water is freezing or the tide’s moody or Gojo decides to do something annoying like exist within visual range again, you’re going.

The house is quiet as you walk back through it barefoot. You pause in the kitchen long enough to rinse your coffee glass and leave it in the sink, pretending that a clean counter will give your brain the illusion of control. Then you push through the back screen door, towel in hand, sunglasses perched on your head.

The beach path is narrow, overgrown in that charmingly neglected way that makes every step feel like you’re entering a liminal zone between your overthinking and whatever the sea might offer instead. Sea oats sway on either side. The sand is already warm. And with each crunching footfall, the cottage and the porch and the phantom of Gojo drift a little further behind you.

The water is visible now—gray-blue and glinting, restless under the morning sun. A breeze kicks up, salt-sticky and wild, threading through your hair like it remembers you from years ago.

You step onto the sand proper, skin already prickling with heat, and drop your towel into the dune grass. The beach is empty. Perfectly, graciously empty. No joggers, no couples with floppy hats and matching towels, no loud teens blaring a Bluetooth speaker. Just you, the sound of the surf, and the soft hiss of the wind dragging across the shore.

You breathe.

You strip off your shorts and shirt. You walk straight into the water.

It’s cold. Shocking. Glorious.

You gasp when it hits your thighs, and again when it crests your hips, and by the time you dive under—clean, deep, all in—it’s like the heat has finally been silenced. Like your body has been reset, chilled into awareness.

You float for a while. Let the salt cradle you. Let the sun turn you into nothing more than a shape among the waves. For one blessed minute, there’s no memory, no heartbreak, no Gojo. Just ocean.

But of course, it doesn’t last.

You’re swimming back to shore, hair slicked, breath even, when you see movement. A tall figure, walking down the same beach path you just came from. Shirtless again. Of course. Towel slung around his neck. A pair of goddamn aviators catching the sun like a personal spotlight.

Gojo.

You nearly laugh. Of course he’d follow. Not intentionally, probably. But it’s like he has some cosmic radar for where you don’t want him to be.

You haul yourself out of the water and try not to look like a woman who’s just been ambushed by a memory in real time. You walk slowly, deliberately. Grab your towel and shake the sand off with practiced aggression. Pretend like this is all just a casual, regular morning, nothing strange to see here, no ghosts from college strolling barefoot into your peace.

But he sees you.

And waves again.

Closer this time.

“Water good?” he calls out, voice lazy and cheerful like he isn’t detonating your nervous system with every word.

You squint at him from behind your sunglasses. “Cold enough to shut my brain up. You should try it sometime.”

He grins. “Tempting.”

And just like that, he’s standing a few feet away, his eyes scanning the waves like he’s debating whether to join you. Or maybe like he already has, in some other memory you’re trying very hard not to revisit while mostly naked and dripping saltwater.

You raise an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those guys who needs someone else to go in first.”

“Nah,” he says, dropping his towel on the sand beside yours. “I’m more of a reckless dive kind of guy.”

And then he walks straight into the water.

You blink. Stand there, dumbfounded, while he dives in without a single flinch, resurfacing with a laugh and a shake of his head that sends water flying in every direction.

“Jesus Christ,” you mutter, wrapping your towel around your waist. “Of course he’s graceful when wet.”

You sit down in the sand, heart doing that annoying thing again. Watching him out there in the surf, hair slicked back, sun bouncing off his shoulders like a cinematic filter—it's hard not to feel the old ache. The old longing.

You wish you could pretend none of it mattered. That he’s just a neighbor. Just another idiot man with too much confidence and not enough sunscreen. But the truth is, he’s not. He’s Satoru. He’s your ghost. And now he’s right here, shaking the water from his eyes like he didn’t once disappear from your life for a year and ruined everything you two had with nothing but silence and shadows in his place.

He shakes the water from his hair like a dog—messy, gleaming, careless—and drops into the sand next to you with all the elegance of a man who has never once worried about being wanted. There’s salt crusting his lashes. Sunlight glinting off the long, lean length of him like a challenge.

And he’s too close.

Not touching you, but close enough that the hairs on your arm lift. Close enough that you can smell the ocean on his skin, bright and clean and sharp, like the memory of that night in the stairwell when everything changed and nothing was said outright.

You pull your towel tighter around your waist, like it’ll guard you from things that are already inside you. You don’t look at him. Not really.

“So?” he says, tilting his head, voice low and too amused. “You gonna just sit there wrapped like a little beach burrito, or are you coming back in?”

You shoot him a sideways glance. “Wow, compelling pitch. Truly irresistible.”

He grins. The full thing. Teeth and dimples and that damn light in his eyes like he already knows your answer.

“I’m serious,” he laughs. “Come back in.”

“Why?”

“Because you didn’t stay long enough,” he says, his voice softening, just slightly. “You always do that. Dip your toes in and run the minute it feels good.”

Your stomach flips.

“That’s rich, coming from you.”

His grin falters for a second. You watch it—how quickly the confidence cracks, then reassembles. How fast he recovers, like a reflex honed by years of not getting hurt unless he decides it’s time.

He stands, brushing sand from his palms, and offers you a hand.

“I’m not trying to win anything,” he says. “I just want you to come back in the water. It’s better with you there.”

You look at his hand.

You think about what it means, to take it. To step back into something you barely survived the first time. To pretend, even for a minute, that the past can be rewritten just by swimming next to someone you once loved more than your own good sense.

You swallow. The breeze picks up. The waves crash and pull like they know your name.

“Last time I followed you,” you add slowly, eyes on the horizon, “you vanished.”

He’s quiet for a beat too long.

“I know,” he says. “And I’m not asking you to forget that.”

Another pause.

“Just… come back in. You don’t have to stay. You don’t have to talk. Just—come float next to me like old times. Let the water shut everything up for a while.”

You’re not sure if it’s a request or an apology. Maybe it’s both. Maybe it’s nothing.

But his hand stays out.

Open.

Waiting.

And God help you, you miss the weightlessness.

So you take it.

The second your fingers brush his, there’s that jolt again—like static, like déjà vu, like every bad decision you’ve ever made wrapped in sea salt and nostalgia. His hand is warm, steady, too steady, and the way he curls his fingers around yours feels almost reverent, like he knows exactly how badly he’s fucked up but is still hoping you might let him try again anyway.

You let him pull you up.

Your towel drops to the sand. The sun’s higher now, hotter. Your swimsuit clings to your skin in places you don’t want to think too hard about. But he doesn’t ogle or smirk or make some cheeky comment that would let you brush this off like it’s nothing.

No, Satoru just walks beside you—silent, barefoot, careful—as you both head toward the water.

The shoreline glitters ahead, all shimmer and motion. Your feet sink into the warm, soft sand. The waves are small this morning, gentle. The tide is coming in slow and steady, like it’s trying to lull you into some false sense of security.

And maybe it’s working.

When the water reaches your ankles, you hesitate.

He doesn’t.

He walks a few steps farther in, glances back at you with that same maddening softness he always wore like armor whenever he let his guard down. “You okay?”

“No,” you say flatly. “I’m just trying to decide if this is an elaborate setup to drown me.”

He laughs. It’s short, real, and laced with something that almost sounds like regret.

“You’d see it coming,” he hums. “You always did.”

Still, he waits.

You take another step forward. The water slides up to your calves, cool and bracing. You inhale. Exhale. Tell yourself it’s just the ocean, just a swim, just a familiar body in a familiar place, nothing more. But the ache in your chest suggests otherwise.

You wade in until you’re waist-deep. He’s already further out, floating, arms stretched behind him like he has all the time in the world. Like this isn’t weird. Like you didn’t just spend half the night reliving how he disappeared on you and ruined the only thing you weren’t brave enough to name when it mattered.

You float too.

You don’t say anything.

For a long time, the only sounds are the rise and fall of the waves, the distant call of a gull overhead, and the occasional splash as one of you shifts just enough to stay buoyant.

You don’t look at him, but you feel him.

He’s always been like this. Loud in crowds, quiet in water. And somehow, it still makes you want to scream.

You drift closer without meaning to. The current does what it wants, and maybe you’re just tired of resisting it.

“Why are you really here?” you ask, finally, voice low and calm, like you’re not about to start something you might not be able to finish.

He hums.

“Because I’m tired,” he says after a while. “And Tokyo’s loud. And I couldn’t stop thinking about this place.”

“This place,” you echo.

He turns, just enough for his eyes to find yours. That blue is still dangerous. Still ridiculous. Still yours, somehow, in ways you don’t understand.

“And you,” he adds softly. “I kept thinking about you.”

You go still in the water.

The waves rock you both like the universe’s worst lullaby.

“You don’t get to just come back and say that.”

“I know,” he says. “But I’m saying it anyway.”

And there it is.

No excuses. No charm. Just the raw nerve of it. Like a cut that never healed right.

You look away. Let the sun blur your vision. Let the salt sting your throat.

And you float. Right there beside him. Not answering. Not leaving. Not ready to forgive, but too tired to fight the tide anymore.

Somewhere in the distance, a dog barks. Probably that fluffy little gremlin of his.

The water laps against your collarbones.

His presence hums next to you like an old radio station just barely out of tune.

And you think, maybe. Maybe there’s still something worth salvaging.

But not today.

Today, you just float.

It’s been a few days since the swim.

Gojo’s been hovering ever since. Like some glorified ghost with a tan and a terrible sense of timing. Not pushing exactly, just… lingering.

Appearing near your porch when you bring your coffee out. Asking if you want anything from the grocery store. Holding open the screen door when you’re bringing in the laundry like he’s the world’s most persistent Labrador retriever.

You ignore him, mostly.

Except for the times you don’t.

Because for all your muttering and biting sarcasm and arms-crossed body language, your walls are thinner than they used to be. Or maybe it’s the summer heat melting them down, drip by reluctant drip.

Maybe it’s the way he’s been quiet lately, gentler than you remember. No slick one-liners, no dramatic flourishes. Just him, trying. Like he’s got something to prove this time and he knows he doesn’t get another shot.

So when he ambles up the steps one morning, barefoot in cutoffs and a faded t-shirt that says I Heart Accounting (a lie if you’ve ever seen one), holding an iced tea in one hand and a flyer in the other, you already know you’re going to say yes before he even opens his mouth.

“There’s a festival down at the docks,” he smiles at you, brandishing the flyer like it’s an ancient scroll. “You love dumb seasonal crap. There’s a Ferris wheel.”

You narrow your eyes over the rim of your mug. “I don’t love dumb seasonal crap. I tolerate it.”

He tilts his head. “You tolerated that haunted hayride in college so hard you screamed directly into my ear.”

“That was a man with a chainsaw, Satoru.”

“It was a weed whacker.”

“It was still loud.”

He grins. But not in that way he used to, the look-at-me, heartbreaker grin. This one’s quieter. Tentative. Hopeful, maybe. Like he knows he doesn’t deserve this and is still asking anyway.

“Sooooo?” he asks. “One afternoon. We don’t have to stay long. You can mock everything. I’ll buy you cotton candy.”

You sigh.

The porch creaks beneath your bare feet. The heat’s already climbing. You can hear cicadas starting up in the trees like they’re daring you to stay inside all day.

And maybe you’re tired of being angry. Or maybe you’re just bored.

“Fine,” you mutter. “But I’m not sitting through a puppet show or anything weirdly nostalgic.”

He lights up like you’ve handed him a small sun. “Noted. No puppets. Just vibes.”

And before you can change your mind, he’s already skipping down the steps like a kid who just got asked to prom.

The docks are warm and bustling by late afternoon, the air thick with the smell of sea salt, fried dough, and sunscreen. Everything’s sticky and bright and full of motion. Colorful paper lanterns swaying in the breeze, little kids with dripping popsicles, old couples holding hands like they invented the concept.

And Gojo, next to you in sunglasses and flip-flops, is trying very hard not to look like a golden retriever who’s just been let off leash.

“You want one?” he asks, already halfway to a stand selling some kind of sparkling lemonade in pastel plastic cups.

You shrug. “Sure. Why not. I’m already sweating through my bra, might as well hydrate.”

He hands you a drink a few minutes later, plus a bag of sugar-dusted mochi for no reason other than the fact he remembered you used to like it. Then he gets himself a spiral-cut fried potato drenched in something horrifyingly orange and starts humming like this is the best day of his life.

You side-eye him. “You gonna eat every weird thing you see?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t you used to be lactose intolerant?”

“Still am.”

You stare.

He pops a cheesy slice into his mouth anyway. “Worth it.”

It’s absurd. It’s nostalgic. And it shouldn’t be this easy, falling into old rhythms, letting the breeze mess up your hair while he wipes powdered sugar off your cheek like it’s normal. But it is. And that’s the dangerous part.

Because the more he makes you laugh, the more he buys you sweets without thinking, the more he smiles like that—genuine, unguarded, like the boy you met before all the bullshit—the harder it is to keep the distance.

You try anyway. You shove your hands in your pockets and keep your comments sharp and your tone neutral. But you know he sees through it. You always knew.

When the sun starts its slow descent behind the water, he nudges you gently.

“Ferris wheel?”

You glance toward the towering old thing at the edge of the dock, half-lit and creaking in the wind like it’s got secrets to tell.

“I’m not sharing a car with you if you’re gonna start monologuing about life and fate and missed opportunities,” you threaten him half-jockingly..

“I would never,” he claims, looking scandalized. “I’ll be chill. I’ll be a man of few words.”

You give him a long, skeptical look.

“Fine,” he amends. “Fewer words.”

You sigh and start walking toward it anyway, because he’s already bought the tickets and you’re a sucker for a skyline view, and maybe, just maybe, you’re tired of pretending you’re still mad just to protect yourself.

You climb into the seat next to him.

The wheel lurches.

The wind picks up.

And as you rise above the docks—sugar-sticky, sun-flushed, and one stupid heartbeat away from forgiving him a little—you pretend you don’t notice the way his pinky bumps yours on the worn bench between you.

Just like you pretend not to want it to happen again.

The Ferris wheel creaks as it carries you both higher, the metal groaning in that charming, slightly-threatening way old carnival rides always do.

Below you, the festival shrinks: kids screaming gleefully near the ring toss, some teenager failing miserably at whack-a-mole, the cotton candy stand glowing pink like a beacon for sugar addicts.

Beside you, Gojo is suspiciously quiet.

Which… is not a good sign.

You side-eye him. He’s leaning back with his arms draped casually along the back of the seat, sunglasses perched on top of his hair, eyes fixed on the view like he’s contemplating the meaning of life. Or how to bring up something stupid in the most dramatic way possible.

“I swear to god,” you mutter, “if you pull out a metaphor about life being a Ferris wheel—”

“I wasn’t going to,” he says, mock-affronted. “But now that you mention it…”

You elbow him.

He laughs. The kind that starts soft and warm, from somewhere behind his ribs. It echoes in the space between you like a familiar melody, one you forgot you knew the words to.

The ride halts briefly at the top, and for a second, the world goes still. The sea stretches endlessly before you, sun bleeding gold into the waves, the air heavy with that warm, end-of-summer hush. Below, the lights of the festival blink into life one by one, as if the night itself is remembering how to glow.

Gojo exhales. “I used to dream about this, you know.”

You don’t answer. You just stare ahead, hands gripping the edge of the seat.

He shifts slightly, turning to face you more fully. “Not this ride, exactly. But this— us. Talking again. You letting me be near you. I thought about it a lot.”

Your stomach twists.

It’s not fair, how easily he can throw your heart back into the past with a single sentence. How part of you still aches with the silence he left behind. The year of unanswered messages. Of trying to forget the feeling of his lips on yours, the weight of his laugh in your bones.

“You shouldn’t have disappeared,” you whisper quietly.

His face falls. Not dramatically. Just a slight softening, a flicker of real guilt that makes him look more like the boy you used to love than the man who ghosted you.

“I know,” he starts. “I was— messed up. Scared, honestly. I thought I was doing the right thing. That staying away would… help you. Let you move on.”

You turn to him, eyes hard. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”

“I know,” he says again, softer. “I know. I thought I was being noble or whatever, but really I was just being a coward. I didn’t know how to face everything I ruined. I’m sorry.”

The Ferris wheel lurches downward again. You don’t speak, don’t move. Just sit there with your jaw clenched and your heart thudding like it doesn’t know what to believe.

“I think about you all the time,” he admits. “Not in a romantic movie kind of way—okay, sometimes in a romantic movie kind of way—but mostly just… everything reminds me of you. Still. After all this time.”

You look at him.

And there he is.

Not the memory of him. Not the ghost. Just Gojo—sun-kissed and flawed and trying.

And maybe you should say something scathing. Maybe you should tell him he doesn’t get to waltz back into your life with fried potatoes and Ferris wheels and expect forgiveness.

But instead, you say nothing.

Because the ride is almost at the bottom now. Because your heart is still processing. Because some part of you, however bruised and sarcastic and self-protective, never really stopped missing him.

The gondola bumps to a halt. The gate swings open.

He climbs out first, then turns and holds his hand out to you.

You hesitate.

Then—reluctantly—you take it.

His fingers wrap around yours like he never forgot the shape of your hand.

And for the rest of the evening, he doesn’t let go.

But it makes you remember the last time you saw him.

Not counting yesterday. Not counting the awkward, sea-slick moments at the beach or the way he stood a little too close by the goldfish scooping booth like he didn’t want to risk drifting away again.

No. really saw him.

It was two years ago, on that rooftop in Shinjuku, above the noise and neon, the kind of warm November night that tricked you into forgetting winter was coming.

Shoko had turned twenty-five and hosted the kind of party that felt curated for people who had their shit together, artfully messy hair, thrifted blazers, rolled cigarettes and half-finished PhDs. You hadn’t wanted to go, but she’d texted you six times, guilt-tripped you once, and eventually sent an Uber to your apartment with a bottle of wine in the backseat and a sticky note that said “Don’t make me regret inviting you.”

And you’d thought—fine. One drink. Smile politely. Leave before midnight.

But then he was there.

In a stupid linen shirt, half unbuttoned like he lived on some cursed Riviera, drink in one hand and that too-white hair falling into his eyes. Like he hadn’t disappeared. Like he hadn’t blown a hole through you and called it mercy.

You remember standing near the edge of the roof with a glass of flat champagne, talking to some guy who kept saying “conceptually” like it was punctuation, when you felt the shift in the air behind you. Like heat. Or gravity.

And you knew. Before you turned around, you knew.

He leaned against the railing next to you, too casual, like this wasn’t the first time you’d seen each other since everything had gone sideways.

“Hey, stranger,” he said.

You didn’t smile. Didn’t give him anything.

Just a flat, “You’re late.”

He grinned. “Traffic.”

You could smell the citrusy cologne he still wore, the same one from college. Could see the faint scar on his knuckle from that dumb night he’d tried to open a wine bottle with a screwdriver. Everything in you screamed to walk away. To spit venom. To not let him see he still lived in your bloodstream like a bad tattoo.

But instead, you drank your champagne.

He watched you for a long time. Then, without warning, he remarked, “If we were ever in the same place for more than five minutes, you’d fall for me.”

And you’d laughed. Not because it was funny, but because it wasn’t. Because of all the things he could’ve said—sorry, I fucked up, you didn’t deserve that—he chose a line that sounded like it came out of a half-written screenplay.

You hissed, “You don’t get to joke about that.”

And he said, too softly, “It wasn’t a joke.”

And that was worse.

Because there was no fight. No closure. No grand monologue. Just those quiet words, and the dull roar of traffic below, and the terrible weight of knowing he still thought he had a place in your life. That maybe part of you—traitorous, exhausted, aching—wasn’t sure he didn’t.

You left before midnight. Didn’t say goodbye.

And you hadn’t seen him again. Not until this summer.

Not until this stupid beach town, this stupid house, this stupid festival.

Now, as you walk beside him through the fairground crowd, his hand brushing yours every so often like it’s an accident, that memory keeps tugging at you.

Because maybe he was right.

Maybe five minutes was all it would ever take.

And maybe that’s what scares you most.

The night air is heavy with salt and the faint scent of fried festival sweets, the laughter from the dock still echoing somewhere behind you as you and Satoru walk the short path back toward the house. The moon is low, casting long shadows across the sand, and everything feels a little too quiet now. Like the world is holding its breath.

You stop at the front steps, key in hand, a polite smile tightening your mouth. “Thanks for tonight,” you say softly, eyes flicking toward the porch light, trying not to think about the hundred things fluttering under your skin. “It was… good.”

“Hey,” he calls, just as you’re about to climb the stairs. His hand finds yours—not forcefully, not even tightly, just enough to stop you. His palm is warm, grounding. “What’s wrong?”

You turn slowly, mouth already half-open with some deflection, some easy line to brush it off—but then you see his face.

And you freeze.

His eyes are softer than you’ve ever seen them, stripped of their usual brilliance, of the arrogant shine they wore like armor. There’s nothing clever in his expression. No mask. Just quiet concern and a kind of quiet ache you don’t trust, because you’ve seen him turn it off before. But now it’s looking at you like it wants the truth. Like it could handle it.

Something buckles in your chest.

You try to swallow it, to tuck it all back down, but it’s too late. It’s already happening.

The words burst out like a dam breaking.

“I can’t—” Your voice cracks. “You can’t just show up like this. You can’t take me to a stupid festival and buy me strawberry mochi and laugh like we didn’t—like nothing ever—”

Your hands shake. Your throat tightens. “You broke me, Satoru.”

He flinches.

You keep going, unable to stop now, unable to breathe around the weight that’s been sitting on your chest for years.

“You kissed me like I meant something. Over and over again. In stairwells, behind the vending machine, outside my dorm—like it was a secret we were both protecting. You said things. I said things. And then you just—left. No goodbye. No message. Nothing. You disappeared like none of it mattered.”

Tears are sliding down your cheeks now, hot and humiliating. You swipe at them angrily, but they just keep coming.

“I waited for you. I checked my phone for months. I told myself you’d call, that something must’ve happened, that maybe I just misunderstood what we were. But you didn’t. You just left.”

His eyes are wide, glassy. His breath caught in his throat. “I didn’t know,” he says hoarsely. “I didn’t know you—”

“Loved you?” you snap. “No, of course not. Because I didn’t even know it myself. Not until after. Not until it was too late.”

He reaches for you, eyes shining with something raw and unsteady, like he’s barely holding himself together.

“I never stopped loving you,” he whispers, voice trembling. “I tried to. God, I tried to. My parents—they wanted me to propose to someone else. Someone safe. Someone good for business. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t even put the ring on her hand because I knew—” He swallows hard, like the words are knives. “—because it should’ve been you.”

The porch light casts a soft glow over both of you now, and for a moment, all you can hear is your own breathing, your own grief trembling through every inch of you.

“It’s always been you,” he says.

And that’s what does it.

You break.

Your sobs come hard and fast, and you cover your face, but he’s already stepping forward, arms pulling you in like he’s afraid you’ll slip away again. You press your face into his chest, and he holds you—really holds you—for the first time in what feels like forever. His hand cradles the back of your head, fingers threading through your hair, while the other wraps around your waist, anchoring you.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, over and over, into your hair, into your skin. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

You shake your head, not ready to forgive, not ready to forget, but his arms are warm, and his voice is steady, and something inside you is melting, softening, despite the ache. Despite the history.

He pulls back slightly, just enough to see your face, his hand trembling at your cheek. His thumb brushes away a tear, and you look at him through your lashes, eyes red and rimmed, mouth parted.

Then he kisses you.

It’s not showy or sharp like you remember. It’s slow. Careful. Like he’s asking permission with every movement, like he’s afraid you’ll vanish if he pushes too far.

And for a second you let yourself kiss him back.

Your mouth finds his, familiar and foreign all at once, and the kiss deepens, his hand tightening at your waist as yours tangle in the collar of his shirt. You melt into him, breath catching, knees weak, heart aching.

It’s everything you remember and everything you forgot.

It’s almost enough to believe in again.

Almost.

His lips move against yours with a tenderness that both soothes and ignites every nerve ending. The world around you, the porch, the night, the distant hum of the festival, fades into nothing but the rhythm of his breath mingling with yours.

You cling to him, desperate to hold onto this fragile moment, even as the walls you built around your heart tremble beneath his touch. His hands trace the curve of your back, pulling you closer, as if to erase the years lost, the silence, the pain.

When he finally parts from your lips, his forehead rests against yours, breath uneven.

“I’ve missed you,” he admits softly, voice rough with emotion.

You close your eyes, swallowing the lump in your throat. “I’ve missed you too,” you whisper.

But even as you say it, a part of you fears what comes next. The questions left unasked, the promises broken, the scars neither of you have fully healed.

Gojo’s gaze searches yours, vulnerability flickering there like a flame.

“Let me make it right,” he pleads. “Not with words, but with time. With everything I have.”

Your heart wavers, torn between hope and caution.

Finally, you nod, a shaky but real start. “Okay.”

He smiles—bright, genuine, full of relief—and pulls you into another kiss, softer this time, full of unspoken apologies and tentative beginnings.

Tonight, beneath the stars and with the sea breeze wrapping around you both, there is a chance. A chance to rewrite the story that was left hanging for so long.

And maybe, just maybe, that chance will be enough.

goddd, i wrote this in one go after i watched a tiktok that reminded me so much of gojo :') it's bittersweet

✧･ﾟwritten by @prisvvner ⊹ dividers by @bernardsbendystraws ⛓️ do NOT repost, steal, translate, or claim as your own. 🖤 reblogs are love — theft is not.

#satoru gojo x reader #satoru gojo x you #gojo x reader #gojo x you #jujutsu kaisen #jjk #jjk x reader #satoru gojo #gojo #seasons of you - s.g.

903 notes · View notes

sunni-stuff · 7 months ago

Text

People are judgmental. Some think they aren't, others don't mean to be, and then there are those who do it on purpose and simply don't care.

Parents are guilty of this.

Parents who pay you to teach their kids do this.

But the worst offenders?

Wives.

Particularly those with too much free time—gossiping Gertrude's who'd rather nitpick and judge than deal with the boredom of daytime TV and their kids screaming in the background. You’ve dealt with a handful before—a crack in the system that always rippled right under your skin whenever one of those vultures threw out a backhanded compliment.

“You’re so patient with the kids. I could never do what you do—how do you even manage?”

“Must be nice having all that time off during the summer. A little vacation every year, huh?”

“Teaching must be so rewarding. Though I imagine it’s not really about the money, is it?”

Each one, a subtle dig disguised as flattery, like they couldn’t help but twist the knife just a little deeper.

If there was one thing you’d learned about this job, it was to always kill them with kindness. The rumor mill among parents was ruthless, and the wrong rumor could ripple out and jeopardize your career. So, you’d mastered the art of the polite smile, the well-timed thank you, and the effortless small talk. It was a strategy that had served you well, keeping any overly curious mothers at bay.

Still, these women were relentless. They circled like hawks, always looking for an opening to pry into your life or make veiled comments about your parenting. You’d never given them the satisfaction of slipping up—until the day you almost did.

The sun was setting, the air brisk and tinged with the promise of winter as parents gathered their children. Little voices chattered away as teachers handed over day charts, neatly summarizing each child’s activities. Standing at the cubbies, you were bundling up Adira. Her small frame was snug in her sweater, jacket zipped up to her chin, and scarf tucked securely around her neck. She fidgeted as you worked, barely able to stay still with how much excitement bubbled in her tiny frame.

Her voice was high-pitched and animated as she launched into a story, her words tumbling over each other in her eagerness to share. “Messy man said, we play trains when he comes back!” she chirped, her dark eyes wide with delight.

You paused, your fingers lingering on the last button of her jacket. A soft smile tugged at your lips as you straightened her scarf. “Oh, did he now?”

Adira nodded vigorously, her curls bouncing. “Yep! He said, “Adira, we make the best train track ever!” Her imitation of Simon’s deep voice was laughably exaggerated, and you couldn’t help but chuckle.” We gonna play with the biiig track!” She spread her arms wide for emphasis, nearly toppling over from the effort.

The mention of Simon was enough to draw some attention from the other parents nearby. You could feel their eyes darting your way, their curiosity almost palpable. Simon’s occasional appearances to pick up Adira hadn’t gone unnoticed, and the whispers had already started. Who was this tall, broad man with a thick accent? Was he Adira’s father? A boyfriend? The air was thick with silent speculation.

Ignoring the countless eyes and ears listening in on your harmless conversation, you assured Adira. “Well, if messy man promised, he’ll keep it,” Simon had made it clear that he intended to be a constant presence in Adira’s life, and so far, he’d stuck to his word.

As you stood and picked up her small bag, a sharp voice interrupted the moment.

"Well, aren’t you just the picture-perfect little family?”

Your polite smile returned instantly, masking the irritation that flared at the condescending tone. Turning, you saw one of the daycare moms—Linda, if you remembered correctly—standing there with her perfectly manicured nails wrapped around her designer purse. Her son trailed behind her, nose buried in a tablet.

“Evening, Linda,” you said evenly, keeping your tone light. “How’s Ethan doing?

She waved a dismissive hand, her eyes already scanning Adira with that overly curious gaze that made your skin crawl. “Oh, he’s fine. But I couldn’t help overhearing... this ‘Messy man’ your little one mentioned. Is he... new in your life?”

Ah, there it was—the opening she was fishing for.

Adira, oblivious to the undercurrents of adult conversation, grinned up at Linda uncharacteristically, the joy she felt for Simon completely expunging her normal glaring behavior. “Messy man makes pancakes! But they go splat!” She threw her hands out dramatically, mimicking the chaos Simon often caused in the kitchen.

Goddammit, poor Adira revealed too much to the wrong person, and you could already see the cogs turning in Linda's head. Forcing a chuckle, you reached for Adira’s hand. “Messy man is her nickname for Simon, her dad. He’s stationed overseas, so she gets pretty excited when he’s home.”

Linda’s perfectly arched eyebrow lifted slightly, clearly surprised. “Oh, I see. Military man, huh? I suppose that explains why we’ve never seen him around.”

You gave Linda your most neutral expression, taking notice of the other moms matching from behind her. “He’s been busy, but he’s doing his best to be here when he can.”

"Oh, I see. I simply would've never guessed you were married. You never wear a ring," Linda remarked, her tone dripping with subtle judgment.

You knew what she was doing. It was a carefully laid trap, baited to catch you in a corner. If you rebuffed her comment, if you made a scene, it would only give her more ammunition to spread rumors. These women didn’t care for nuances; they thrived on gossip, and the topic of marriage—or rather, the lack of a visible wedding ring—would be a field day for them. They’d ride that horse straight to hell, and you'd be left cleaning up the mess.

With the growing number of parents in earshot, you understood that this wasn’t just a comment; it was a test. You had to choose your words carefully. It wasn’t just about keeping things smooth in the moment—it was about protecting your future.

You gave a small, practiced smile, maintaining your composure as you slipped Adira’s bag onto your shoulder. “I don’t wear my ring because I work with children. It could get caught in their hair, or worse, I could lose it.” You met her gaze with a calm confidence that bordered on dismissive.

“That’s understandable, dear. We all have kids after all!” Lina laughed, her tone attempting to sound warm and genuine, but it was too polished, too forced. The laughter rang hollow, like a poorly executed attempt to mask her true intentions. “Does this mean we’ll finally get to meet him at the fundraiser this weekend? We’ve all been here for so long, and not a single glimpse of your beloved other half. Right, ladies?”

Her words floated in the air, sharp with insinuation. The smile she wore was one of practiced sweetness, but the glint in her eyes was anything but kind. She knew what she was doing—attempting to pull you further into her web, hoping to get a reaction that would either reveal more or, better yet, give her ammunition to fuel the rumors she clearly wanted to start.

A few of the other women murmured in agreement, their eyes flicking from you to each other, already whispering amongst themselves. They were all waiting for a response, and the pressure began to build in the pit of your stomach.

“Yes, he is.” The words slipped out of your mouth before you could even process them, your own response surprising you as much as it did the group of wives surrounding you. You felt a jolt in your chest, your heart picking up pace as the reality of what you had just said began to sink in. What the fuck did you just do?

The laughter from Linda faltered for a split second, her eyes narrowing slightly as she processed your words. The others exchanged glances, some of their faces lighting up with an almost predatory curiosity, while others masked their thoughts behind polite smiles. You could almost hear the gears turning in their heads—oh, this was going to be something they could use.

The tension in the air thickened, and you suddenly felt exposed, as if every secret you’d carefully kept tucked away was now dangling on the edge of a cliff. You’d just handed them the perfect piece of gossip, but what would it lead to? Would they use it against you, twist it into something worse? You hadn’t planned for any of this—hell, you hadn't even planned on saying anything at all—but now that it was out there, you had to somehow steer this conversation.

You had to control the narrative, or risk letting it spiral completely out of your hands.

Your mind races, trying to formulate a response, but everything seems so loud—your thoughts, the laughter, the eyes watching you. How could you backpedal without it seeming like a lie? How could you walk that fine line between the truth and keeping your personal life hidden?

"Yes, Simon’s coming," you added quickly, trying to steady your breath. "But, you know... he’s not really into the whole fundraiser thing. He’s more of a stay-at-home guy, a bit of a quiet one, really. I’ll be there though, and we’re looking forward to it." You tried to sound casual, but the flicker of doubt in your voice betrayed you.

The women around you didn’t miss a beat, though. The moment had been set, and now it was only a matter of what they would do with the information.

“Well, I look forward to seeing you.” Lina’s voice was dripping with a false sweetness, and you could feel the weight of her gaze as she gave you one last look. Her eyes lingered a bit longer than necessary, as if trying to peel back layers, searching for some crack to exploit. Then, with a nod, she steered Ethan away, her entourage of women following closely behind, their chatter rising in the air like a distant murmur. The click of their heels echoed as they disappeared down the hall, leaving you standing there, frozen in place.

"And so, that's what happened," you finished, your voice trailing off as you leaned against the kitchen counter, trying to gauge Simon's reaction.

Simon blinked up at you from where he was sitting on the floor, his focus still mostly on Adira, who was happily arranging her toy train with her blocks, making a makeshift kingdom. He didn’t seem phased, just a little confused. "You want me to pretend to be your husband?"

The question hung in the air for a moment before he let out a chuckle, shaking his head slightly, his eyes filled with that familiar warmth. "Out of all the things I've done in my life, this has to be the funniest, love.”

You blinked, momentarily thrown by the unexpected nickname. It felt oddly intimate, a shift in the dynamic between you and Simon that you hadn’t anticipated. Love. It wasn't what you'd expected to hear from him, not in this context, not when everything felt so messy and uncertain. But there it was, slipping out so naturally from him, like he'd always called you that, like he'd been in your life much longer than he really had.

Your heart skipped a beat, the sound of Adira’s laughter in the background making the moment feel surreal. It should have been funny—this whole situation, with you essentially asking Simon to pretend to be your husband for the sake of those gossiping women. But instead, you felt something else, something soft and unfamiliar tightening in your chest.

“Did you just call me that?” You couldn't help but ask, your voice a little quieter than you intended.

Simon paused, his playful smile faltering for a second as he caught the look on your face. “I—yeah, I guess I did,” he replied, his tone a touch more uncertain now. He glanced down at Adira, who was happily stacking blocks at his feet, then back to you. “It was just a slip of the tongue. Didn’t mean anything weird by it.”

“I’m not exactly husband material, you know,” he added lightly, his voice teasing. “I’m more of a... messy man.”

You chuckled at that, shaking your head. "A messy man, huh?"

He nodded, grinning. “Yeah, but I’m good at it. Just ask Adira.”

Adira, hearing her name, immediately let out a squeal of approval. “Messy man!” she giggled, throwing a block in Simon’s direction, her tiny hand pointing at him with delight.

"So, what's the plan here then?" That easy grin back on his face, his eyes still dancing with humor, but there was something underneath it—something you couldn’t quite place. “You want me to just walk into a room and act like we’re a picture-perfect couple?”

The way he said it made you laugh a little, though there was a slight edge of uncertainty to it. You found yourself shifting uncomfortably, knowing you had no real plan for what came next. It wasn’t like you had a relationship with Simon beyond the occasional dinner and time spent with Adira, and yet, here you were, asking him to play a role in your life, one that might end up blurring lines you didn’t fully understand.

“Well, you don’t have to pretend, exactly,” you said, running a hand through your hair, suddenly feeling all the weight of the day settling in. “I just... I just need you to be there. You know, to back me up, to—” You paused, glancing over at Simon again. “I guess I just don’t want them thinking I’m alone in all of this. It’s bad enough that has already started.”

Simon’s gaze softened as he leaned back in his seat, watching you with a quiet understanding. "You're not alone in this," he said, his voice steady. “And I’m here. You don’t need a ring or a title for that.”

The sincerity in his tone made your chest tighten again, but this time it was different. His words weren’t a joke or a half-hearted attempt to make you feel better—they were real. He was offering something more than just pretending for the sake of others. He was offering his presence, his support.

For a moment, you forgot about everything else. The plans, the expectations, the pressure. Instead, all that mattered was Simon sitting across from you, smiling at you like you weren't asking for something too much, like it wasn’t strange to think of him in your life like this.

“Thank you,” you murmured. "Really."

He gave a small nod, then grinned, shifting his attention back to Adira, who had managed to get half the blocks stacked to an impressive height. “It’s nothing. Besides, I think Adira’s got the best part of this deal anyway.”

You glanced over at your daughter, who was watching both of you with wide eyes, a smile tugging at her lips. Adira was your source of strength, a beacon that pushed you forward, her smile alone gave you determination. “Alright, let’s figure out what married people do.”

"I know just who to call." Simon reached for his phone, the battered thing covered in scratches, an old case and sporting a broken screen from a hazardous drop. Upon seeing it, the first thought running through your head was, how the fuck was it still usable?

Price’s living room radiated warmth and history, a perfect mix of domestic coziness and military precision. The centerpiece was a sturdy stone fireplace, its mantle adorned with framed photos of Price and his wife, Melanie. In some, they stood arm in arm at scenic locations; in others, Price was in uniform, the edges of his cap sharp against the backdrop of distant skies. Above the fireplace hung a shadow box displaying medals and insignias, each one polished to a shine, speaking volumes about his service.

Bookshelves lined the walls, filled with everything from military strategy texts to well-worn novels. On one shelf sat a small globe and a model of a Spitfire plane, a nod to his admiration for history. A comfortable, overstuffed armchair, complete with a folded tartan blanket, sat near the fire. The coffee table bore faint scratches, evidence of years of use, and atop it lay an open newspaper, a mug of tea, and a small dish of biscuits.

You sat stiffly on the plush sofa, feeling distinctly out of place amidst this blend of home and honor. The ticking of a grandfather clock in the corner filled the silence as you watched Simon talk to Price in the adjoining kitchen. Occasionally, their eyes flicked toward you, and you pretended not to notice, your gaze wandering instead to a black-and-white photo of a younger Price standing with a group of soldiers, all grinning ear to ear.

The awkwardness of the situation weighed on you like a heavy blanket. This wasn’t exactly how you envisioned your day—asking Price, of all people, to help stage your fake relationship. But you were in too deep now to back out.

In the kitchen, Price rubbed his hand over his mouth, barely concealing the grin that tugged at his lips. A low chuckle escaped as he grabbed a cup of coffee, shaking his head at Simon, who stood across from him, arms folded, his expression far more serious than the moment warranted.

“You want me and Mel to help you two seem like a couple? That right?” Price’s voice carried an unmistakable note of amusement, his words tinged with disbelief.

Simon shifted his weight, rolling his shoulders back, clearly trying to maintain some semblance of dignity. "Yes, that’s the gist of it."

Price’s laughter broke free, a warm, hearty sound that echoed off the kitchen tiles. “Bloody hell, Simon. You’ve seen action all over the world, but this—this is what’s got you nervous?” He clapped a hand on Simon’s shoulder, his grin wide enough to light the room. “You’re in for a treat, mate. Melanie’s going to love this.”

From your seat, you caught Price’s amused glance, and you couldn’t help the way your face heated. This was going to be a long evening.

Price, still chuckling, crossed the room to the wide bay window, pushing it open with ease. The crisp evening air drifted in, carrying with it the scent of freshly cut grass and the faint hum of distant crickets. He leaned out slightly, cupping his hands around his mouth.

“Mel! Come on inside, love. You’ve got to hear this one,” he called, his voice carrying easily over the quiet of their backyard.

From where you sat, you caught a glimpse of Melanie in the garden. She was tending to a neat row of vibrant flowers, her hands gloved and a straw hat perched on her head. At the sound of Price’s voice, she straightened up, brushing dirt off her knees with a curious look on her face.

“Be right there!” she replied, her voice warm and lilting. She removed her gloves, tucking them into her apron pocket as she began making her way toward the house.

Price turned back to Simon, shaking his head in mock disbelief. “You better hope Mel doesn’t laugh you out of the house, mate.”

Simon groaned softly, rubbing his temples. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Price.”

Moments later, Melanie stepped into the living room, a radiant smile lighting up her face. She was the epitome of grace, her presence immediately softening the room’s atmosphere. Her gaze shifted between you, Simon, and her husband, her curiosity evident.

“What’s all this about, then?” she asked, removing her hat and setting it on a nearby chair. “You’ve got that mischievous look again, John.”

Price grinned, gesturing toward you and Simon. “These two need a favor, Mel. A big one.”

Melanie’s brows lifted as she looked between the two of you. “Oh? Do tell.”

Simon, looking equal parts determined and mortified, cleared his throat. “We... need help convincing a group of nosy parents that we’re married. Long story.”

Melanie’s smile widened as her eyes twinkled with amusement. “Oh, this sounds rich. Go on, I’m listening.”

You shifted in your seat, feeling the warmth of Melanie’s gaze settle on you. Her smile was kind but tinged with unmistakable amusement, and it was clear she was holding back a laugh as she took in your flustered state.

“Well,” you began hesitantly, clasping your hands together in your lap. “It’s a bit of a mess, really. One of the moms at the daycare cornered me, started asking questions about Simon, and… I might’ve let it slip that we’re married. Which we’re not. Obviously.” Your words tumbled out in a rush, and you glanced at Simon for backup. He was rubbing the back of his neck, caught between exasperation and amusement.

Melanie let out a soft laugh and gracefully sat down beside you on the couch. “Ah, I see. And now you need to sell the story before it falls apart. Oh, love, I’ve been in a similar pickle—not quite like this, but close enough.”

“See?” Price chimed in from his armchair, leaning back with an amused grin. “Told you Mel would get a kick out of this.”

Simon shot him a flat look. “Not exactly the reaction I was hoping for, mate.”

Melanie waved a dismissive hand at Price before patting your knee in a reassuring gesture. “Don’t mind him. Now, let’s think this through. If you’re going to convince anyone, you need to act the part. People pick up on the smallest details—how you talk to each other, how comfortable you seem together. If you’re too stiff, they’ll see right through it.”

Simon leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees as he nodded. “Alright, so what do we need to do? We’ve got about a week before the fundraiser, so I’m open to ideas.”

Melanie’s eyes lit up with a mix of mischief and determination. “Perfect. We’ll start with body language—how you interact without saying a word. And then we’ll move on to the conversational stuff. You’ll need to know each other’s habits, quirks, and all those little details married couples just know.”

Price clapped his hands together with mock enthusiasm, a cheeky grin plastered across his face. “Right, then. Let the awkward training sessions begin. This’ll be one for the books.”

You groaned inwardly, glancing between Simon and Melanie. This bizarre charade was only just beginning, and while you couldn’t imagine where it would lead, one thing was clear—you were in for a wild ride.

Happy new years friends! The holidays were a riot and I spent most of it spending time with family instead of writing as I felt kind of burnt out from writing in November, sorry about that but I hope this makes up for it.

@midnight-blue-moon-princess @pipedream411 @frogofrg @loonagabs @ghostlythots @vixenshiftsvrs @devoetee @shorty-tolentino @aethelwyneleigh27 @ayesha-eroticax3 @emilia527 @danielle143 @maniacalbooper @awildewit @gifted-aurora @teenagellamaangel @julesjunimos @tacticalgirlboss @midnights-song @suzuki-18 @t3a-bag @latencygirl @krispymagazinepizza-blog @harperdoodle @odettecigno @sockertop @arrozyfrijoles23 @lovelystarfish @my-little-evil-blog @imastorytelleritsondvd @l1lpip @cringeycookies @identity2212 @balletbiscuit @mulletmcghee @maciswack @littleracco0n @oliver-1270 @weemansoap @cryingpages @connorsui @beebeechaos @gluttonybiscuits @strawberrygato @sozainturpal @echo9821 @blinca @illusionistlover @blubearxy @superficialfeelings @new-author3 @xanvasy @oniiloma @bankaixx @evie-199 @notsochillnerd @thatpersonnamedrook @hon3y-cloud @jaguarthecat @reinekoya @apixasflora @a-lovers-card @gloriousloveduck @aetherthetrashpanda @princess-vibes25 @vickykazuya @enfppuff @liliannamae @m0chac0ffee @flamehero-phoenix @bean-cream @realizemandi97 @almostdecadentstarfish @lunamoonbby

#simon ghost riley #simon ghost riley x reader #simon ghost riley x you #simon ghost x reader #ghost x you #simon riley x reader #simon riley #we meet again

2K notes · View notes

flvvffy · 2 months ago

Text

. ۫ ꣑ৎ . 𝐁𝐈𝐊𝐄𝐑 𝐒𝐔𝐊𝐔𝐍𝐀

wc: 531. proofread

biker!sukuna who loves to take you out on late night drives around the city whenever he can. just the quiet of the night and the feeling of your arms around his waist calm him down after such a stressful day. and the sound of you laughing as the wind blows in your hair, he never wants the night to end.

biker!sukuna who bought an extra helmet for you when you started going out together. yours being your exact size and a cute pink bow on it just because. your heart melted the first time he picked you up and helped you put the helmet on, the close proximity making your cheeks warm as he concentrated to make sure it was on securely.

biker!sukuna who dresses in full black everytime you see him. in the winter, he has on a black jacket, black cargo pants, black scarf, black boots and even black ear muffs. in the summer he has in a simple black tank top, black sweats and even black sandals, completely contrast from his pink hair.

biker!sukuna who loves his motorcycle more than ever and takes such good care of it as well as spending a lot of money on it. always making sure that it's spotless, not making any funny noises and always checking on it at least once every two weeks. absolutely no one is allowed to touch her, except you of course.

biker!sukuna who has multiple tattoos on his body and talks about them whenever you ask. he has an upper back tattoo, a sleeve tattoo on his right arm as well as a chest tattoo and your initials on the space just below his left ear. "this one was a dare back in highschool. i was so stupid", he points to a rose tattoo on his left pec with a smirk on his face reminiscing the good ol' days. he could honestly go on and on about them, if you let him. he's proud of the artwork on his body.

biker!sukuna who makes you wrap your arms around his waist whenever you get on the bike. you have to. it's not an option, unless you want to fly off with how fast he rides. he really does care for your safety, but he just likes the feeling of you clinging onto to him, your front pressed to his back. he's so glad you can't see how pink his cheeks and ears are getting.

biker!sukuna who always has his motorcycle in his pictures, usually the ones that he sends to you. one of his on the road with his helmet on, his compression shirt effortlessly showing his muscles looking absolutely scrumptious without trying. you always complement him, sending him various comments and he just smiles at his phone. "what a silly girl..."

biker!sukuna who bores you everytime he tells you about how and why he chose the bike that he has today. "there i was, lookin' around and them i saw her...she was so beautiful... callin' out to me...". he sees the eye rolls every two seconds but since you're not leaving, he might as well go on, no?

. ۫ ꣑ৎ . 𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒 𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐄𝐃 © 𝐅𝐋𝐕𝐕𝐅𝐅𝐘

841 notes · View notes

nebinarnagovnara · 3 months ago

Text

(1/2) Edgeworth meets Wright for the first time (Narumitsu Story Contest AU)

Part 2!

Intro (???) post

I was lazy to draw so the most detailed painting in the comic is actually "Summer" by Jacopo Tintoretto. Here is the unedited painting:

[Transcript]

The descriptions how the characters look are in the Intro post.

The comic is mostly monochrome in black and white, with slight color variation due to a filter.

Page 1:

Edgeworth stands in the middle of a path, surrounded by stalls and vendors, with a few people around. He's sweating, nervous, thinking: "It is so over. I am finished." He is lacking his red sweater.

He is sweating even more. "The previous person gave me such a look, I felt as if I insulted their family honor to death," he thinks, embarrassed.

"No matter who I asked, they all refused. Quite rudely as well!" he thinks as he rubs his hand, which is also sweaty, over his face as he grows more and more embarrassed.

He drags his palm to his chin, pulling his exasperated face down, thinking "I've embarrassed myself to no end and all that is left for me is to crawl into a pit and-" his thoughts get cut off.

Page 2:

He is startled by another art stall. It is highlighted in his vision. "Another..." he thinks as he observes it.

He grips a piece of paper that is slightly crumpled with his left hand.

With a determined but still nervous expression, he starts heading towards the stall. "One more time! One more time and that's it..!"

He leans down to a board with artworks to take a look. His right hand holds his chin in thought as his other goes behind his back. As he observes, he notes: "Hmm... Not exactly what I am looking for, but they are very skilled."

A shadowy figure with big round eyes is sneaking next to him, while he is thinking, "Not that I can afford finding a perfect candidate at this point-" His thoughts get interrupted.

A young girl, Trucy Wright, appears from his right, startling him. His eyes widen in shock. "See something you like, mister?" she asks cheerfully, smiling widely as she leans in with her hands behind her back. Instead of her wearing her jacket, it is tied around her hips.

Page 3:

She shines brightly in front of the board as she excitedly asks Edgeworth, "Well? Well?" but he pulls back in surprise with a "Nghoooooh!" while thinking, "This child... She cannot be...!"

Trucy seems to pull a sketch of a street out of nowhere, surrounded by sparkles, exclaiming "Beautiful sketches!"

"Compelling illustrations!" she keeps going, keeps sparkling, now showing a drawing of a phoenix flying.

"Some small and practical!" now she has two framed drawing in her hand, the one in front, being of a furry animal, hiding the one behind it.

"But the best," she now holds her one viewer in suspension as she speaks, holding a huge framed artwork barely fitting in her arms yet unrevealed, "of all..."

Page 4:

She reveals the artwork, all sparkly again, with its title: "A Perfectly Done Assignment Where the Professor still Took 15 Points off for No Reason." The painting is of a woman laying down, covering her head with her right arm and with the other gripping a cloth underneath her.

Edgeworth is amazed, gazing at her in surprise, as he thinks, "Remarkable...! A child with such skill..."

And then his thoughts continue, his mood back to being exasperated, "But I cannot pick a little girl as a work partner! I'm not sure that minors can even be considered as contestants... Ngh... I am done for..."

A voice Edgeworth does not recognize speaks, "Hey, that's not the title, you know! ... True, though."

Page 5:

A zoom-in of Edgeworth's eye, wide in surprise and shining as he notices the speaker.

The mysterious speaker reveals himself, being Phoenix Wright, winking and smiling, holding a plastic bag with two wrapped burgers in it. His top is unzipped revealing a shirt that's underneath, he has no scarf and his sleeves are slightly pulled up. One hand is on his hip, standing confidently, saying "Go easy on the customers, Truce. They'll say if they want something!" He is surrounded by shoujo manga style sparkles around him.

[End transcript]

If you've read the transcript and feel like it is unfulfilling and lacking in some way, please point it out to me. English is my second language and I realize I'm lacking in that manner, and I greatly appreciate corrections!

#please ignore that i forgot wright's pockets #i noticed way too late and could not bother #ace attorney #gyakuten saiban #phoenix wright #naruhodo ryuichi #miles edgeworth #mitsurugi reiji #trucy wright #naruhodo minuki #narumitsu #wrightworth #narumitsu story contest au

443 notes · View notes

brownsugarcoffy · 3 months ago

Text

The Vine Between Us

Summary

Annie left the Mississippi Delta with a broken heart and a full-ride scholarship, determined never to look back. Now a celebrated professor in Chicago, she’s called home to care for her mother—and the last thing she expects is to run straight into him.

Elijah "Smoke". Her first love. Her first everything.

He disappeared the summer after graduation, leaving only unanswered calls and a goodbye she never got. Now he's back in town, running a moody, magnetic blues lounge with his twin brother, playing late into the humid Southern nights like he’s pouring his soul out just for her.

Annie wants to hate him. She wants to forget the way he made her feel. But one look from those stormy eyes, and she’s seventeen again. Burning, aching, and lost in the man he’s become.

He left without a word. But now? He wants to finish the story they never got to end.

Characters: Annie x Elijah " Smoke" Moore (Modern AU)

Themes: Angst, Fluff, Mention of Abuse, Vulgar Language, Sexual content & more...

Chapters: PART (2) , PART (3), PART (4), PART (5)

Annie guided the rental car slowly down the winding gravel road, watching as the wild, familiar landscape unfolded around her like an old love letter—creased at the corners, worn with time, but still humming with truth. After years of Chicago’s sharp wind and steel-gray skies, Mississippi felt like a fever dream she’d been trying to forget.

She rolled the window down. The air was thick with magnolia, turned soil, and the faintest burn of distant woodsmoke. Summer here always carried the weight of something sacred and forgotten. Cicadas buzzed a low lullaby through the trees, and Spanish moss hung like secrets from the branches.

The past was stitched into everything. The way the breeze moved through the fields, the angle of the sunlight as it dipped behind the old church steeple in the distance. This place didn’t change. It waited.

Her mother’s house stood stubbornly on the edge of the fields. Its porch sagging, paint peeling, the garden unruly and overgrown. Honeysuckle and jasmine curled up the columns like offerings, scenting the air with wild sweetness.

And just beyond the clothesline and the crooked birdbath sat the old greenhouse—her grandmother’s pride, her mother’s joy, and Annie’s first taste of magic. Once, it had been a wonderland of heirloom tomatoes, hot peppers, and lemon verbena, the windows fogged with life and labor. Now, it was a glass skeleton swallowed by ivy and time. One panel was cracked, another missing, and vines crept through the seams like nature reclaiming what was hers.

Even in its ruin, it stood like a memory refusing to be forgotten.

She hadn’t been home in nearly nine years.

Annie stepped out of the car, adjusting her wrap blouse and brushing the travel from her thighs. She was tall, solid, striking—a woman who took up space with quiet grace. Her brown skin glistened in the heat, and her dark curls, loosened by the humidity, tumbled freely around her shoulders.

The screen door creaked open.

“Annie?”

Her mother’s voice carried out like a memory. She stood in the doorway, frail but radiant in her own way—wrapped in a floral housecoat and a pink scarf tied neatly at her nape.

Annie swallowed the sudden emotion rising in her chest. “Hey, Mama.”

They held each other on the porch for a long moment, their bodies pressed together in the kind of embrace that says everything words can’t. Her mother smelled like lavender, cooking oil, and love.

“You smell like city,” her mother murmured, pulling back with a soft smile. “But your heart still beats Delta.”

Annie laughed, eyes misty. “Something like that.”

Inside, the house hadn’t changed. The wood floors creaked the same way, the photos on the walls—sun-faded and reverent—watched her pass like quiet witnesses. A fan turned lazily in the corner, and gospel music played faintly from the old radio.

Her mother moved slower now. “I’m fixin’ your favorite tonight,” she said, reaching into the fridge with a frown. “But I forgot the buttermilk. You mind runnin’ into town?”

“Of course not Mama.”

Her mother smiled. “I want this meal to welcome you proper. Cornbread and catfish, greens and all.”

She lingered, her eyes drifting through the kitchen window toward the back of the property. Beyond the tangle of overgrown grass and wilting wildflowers stood the greenhouse—leaning slightly now, but still there. Stubborn. Waiting.

She stepped out onto the porch, the boards groaning under her weight. Heat shimmered across the yard. And with it came the pull of memory.

She remembered the way the crickets hushed as they crept through the backyard, their bodies close, movements careful, the house behind them dark and still. Her parents were fast asleep, the old box fan in their window humming loud enough to cover the sound of the creaking porch.

“Elijah,” she had whispered, pausing in the dew-kissed grass.

“You sure they won’t wake up?” he whispered back.

Annie turned, grinning, barefoot. “Not unless you knock over Mama’s canning jars again.”

“I was thirteen,” he muttered, mock offended.

“You were clumsy.”

“You were bossy.”

She rolled her eyes, and he followed her like he always did.

The greenhouse door had groaned on its hinges when she pulled it open. Inside, the air turned warm and wet, filled with the sharp green scent of tomato vines and damp soil. Moonlight spilled through the foggy panels, casting a ghostly glow across the rows of plants. The place was overgrown, wild with summer—grapevines tangled overhead, basil thick at their ankles.

“Feels like a jungle,” he murmured.

“It is,” she’d said, tugging him deeper inside. “A jungle we built.”

They had spent whole summers in that greenhouse, helping her grandmother weed and plant, falling asleep on burlap sacks, eating strawberries straight from the vine. It had been their hideout. Their secret. Their sanctuary.

Annie had sat down on an overturned crate, the hem of her nightgown catching on a nail. Elijah sat beside her, knees touching. Close—too close. His scent mingled with the smell of night: soap, soil, and something citrus just beneath it.

“I still think about that day,” he’d said, voice low. “When you kissed me in here.”

Her breath caught. She had been fifteen. He, just a few months older. It was midsummer, sticky, and loud with cicadas. She had leaned in, sunburned and barefoot, pressing her mouth to his before either of them really knew how to do it. He tasted like watermelon and nerves.

They had laughed. And kissed again.

“I remember,” she whispered now, alone in the yard.

The greenhouse stood still, a skeleton of memory wrapped in ivy. Annie swallowed thickly, fingers brushing the wooden frame. She didn’t open the door. Some things were too sacred—or too dangerous—to disturb just yet.

With one last look, she turned back toward the car. The keys jingled in her hand. She had buttermilk to buy. And no idea that Bo Chow’s Market held more than groceries. It held the beginning of everything she thought she’d left behind.

Bo Chow’s smelled like hot grease, bleach, and forgotten secrets. The kind of scent that clung to linoleum floors and lived in the cracks of old ceiling tiles. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting a yellowish tint over jars of pickled okra, canned peaches, and family-sized boxes of instant grits. The air was cool, but not fresh—more like recycled and reheated across decades.

Annie pushed open the front door, greeted by the metallic chime of a bell that rang like an old church warning. She stepped inside and was instantly swallowed by the hush of small-town routine. A red plastic basket swung from her arm as she walked, heels clicking softly across tile floors worn smooth by generations of tired feet.

She moved quickly, head down, aiming for the dairy case.

Milk. Eggs. Out.

She didn’t want to linger. Not here. Not now.

But then she heard it.

That voice.

Low. Warm. Smooth like molasses poured over whiskey.“Bo, you barely can handle this place since Grace went to visit her people. She only been gone three days.”

Annie stopped mid-step. The chill from the freezer case crawled up her spine and wrapped around her neck like cold hands.

Every muscle in her body tensed.

Elijah.

Smoke.

Time folded in on itself. Her fingers gripped the basket like it was an anchor. Her breath caught in her throat—shallow, sharp, and instinctive.

She didn’t need to see him to know it was him.

The way he dragged out vowels like he had all the time in the world. That same sleepy southern rhythm that used to whisper down her skin at midnight.

She ducked into the cereal aisle, heart hammering. A box of Honey Smacks nearly toppled from the shelf as she backed up too fast.

And slammed into someone.

“Damn! Girl, you always been clumsy.”

Annie spun around. “Pearline?”

Pearline stood there with one hand on her hip and the other gripping a can of green beans, her face a perfect mix of amusement and mild judgment. “I knew I was gon’ run into somebody today, but I ain’t think it’d be you.”

“I—I'm sorry, I just—”

Pearline leaned in, eyes narrowing playfully. “Don’t even bother lyin’. You heard him, didn’t you?”

Annie nodded, barely breathing. “Yeah.”

“Well, sugar, you too late now. Look.”

Pearline tilted her chin toward the counter.

Annie followed her gaze—and the breath left her lungs.

Elijah stood at the register, framed by the buzz of the lights above and the dusty glass doors behind him. He looked older. Sharper. Not the boy who used to sneak through her bedroom window smelling like night rain and bourbon. No, this was a man now. Solid. Weathered. Still dangerous.

He wore a black tee that clung to his chest and forearms like a second skin. Faded jeans hung low on his hips, and his boots were scuffed and worn, like they’d seen too many miles of regret. His dark brown skin caught the fluorescent glare, highlighting the strength in his jawline, the fullness of his beard. That mustache he used to trim with a razor’s edge was thicker now—more defiant.

But it was the eyes that undid her.

Still deep. Still unreadable. Still pulling at something under her ribs.

Her skin flushed under the weight of his stare. The blouse she wore suddenly felt too thin, her denim skirt too snug. She was exposed. Unraveled. Every part of her remembered him. And she could feel it—he remembered too.

She whispered, “Elijah.”

Her voice cracked like old wood.

His eyes softened for a breath. “Annie.”

Her name sounded different in his mouth. Like something sacred. Or maybe something buried.

She didn’t move toward him. Didn’t dare. The floor between them was heavy with everything they never said.

Then the front door blew open with a gust of hot Delta wind.

“There he is!” Stack burst in like a Sunday sermon—loud, smiling, and just a little too proud. “Come on, man, liquor drop comin’ in hot!”

He stopped dead when he saw her. His grin widened.

“Well hot damn. Look what the Delta blew in.”

Annie was bracing herself when his arms swept her up into a quick hug. “Stack,” she murmured, a half-laugh catching in her throat. The kind that masked the shake in her hands.

“You look like a cool drink on a hard day,” Stack said, eyes twinkling. “Where you been hidin’ that smile?”

“Trying to stay outta trouble.”

“Well, you came to the wrong place for that, baby girl.”

Her eyes flicked past him, to Elijah. Still watching. Still quiet.

Still burning.

“You oughta come by the lounge tonight,” Stack said, still holding her hand. “Me and Smoke got The Cypress lookin’ right. New lights, cold drinks, and our cousin Sammie singin’ like he just got kissed by God himself.”

“Lil Sammie sings now?”

“Sure do. Boy done grew outta his onesie and into a voice that’ll make your knees buckle.”

Pearline laughed behind her. “He ain’t lyin’. That boy good.”

“You should come see,” Stack said, brushing a thumb gently across Annie’s wrist. “Come for the music. Or the hush puppies. Or… you know—unfinished business.”

Annie stiffened. Her gaze flicked to Elijah. He didn’t look away.

“I promised my mama dinner tonight,” she said finally, her voice cool again. Measured. “Can’t break a promise.”

The air between her and Elijah changed.

Thickened.

His jaw ticked once. Hands slid into his pockets like he was holding himself back.

“Then we’ll let you be,” Stacks said, throwing a look at his brother. “We don’t want Mama Jean mad at us.”

Elijah nodded slowly. “Good to see you, Annie.”But the way he said it wasn’t polite. It was personal. Intimate. Like he meant it all the way down.

She held his gaze. “You too.”

And then they were gone.The bell over the door jingled once, then nothing.

Silence wrapped around her again, pressing heavy on her chest.

Pearline stepped close, resting a hand on her elbow. “You okay?”

“Hell no.”

Annie’s eyes lingered on the door like it might open again. Maybe it wasn’t too late for all the things they never said, but was Annie ready to unpack her resentment.

TAGLIST:

@nahimjustfeelingit-writes @uzumaki-rebellion @brattyfics @chaneajoyyy

#sinners fanfiction #smoke x annie #Smoke Elijah Moore #blackwriters #sinners #modern au #michael b jordan x reader #wunmi mosaku #michael b jordan #elijah smoke moore

424 notes · View notes

vunblr · 5 months ago

Text

Tangled (#1)

Pairing: Cecaelia! Bucky Barnes x Female Reader

Warnings: 18+ only. Slight Angst. Fluff. Slow Burn. I don't know if there will be eventual teratophilia.

Summary: Between fear and fascination, a solitary creature struggles to protect his hidden world -and himself- after an unexpected encounter with a curious human woman makes him question everything he thought he knew about trust, danger, and boundaries.

Word Count: About 7.1k.

note: The Cecaelia is a mythical creature that's half-man, half-octopus, and that was the winning result of the poll about what kind of creature would be merman!Bucky. So yeah.

Masterlist

The cottage looked even smaller in person. Nestled at the cliff's edge, with wild grass growing tall around it and the sea stretching endlessly beyond, it felt like it had been left there by the wind itself, forgotten when the summer tourists had packed up and gone.

She stepped out of the car, and the sharp tang of salt air rushed into her lungs when she took a deep breath. The doctor’s words echoed in her head, as they had for weeks now. "Sea air will do wanders with you. Get away from the city, and spend time outside. Let your lungs remember how to work without fighting for every breath."

It hadn’t been a hard decision, not really. When she’d called her cousin asking if the cottage was free, he’d been surprised but quick to offer it. “No one rents off-season,” he had said. “But if you don’t mind the quiet, it’s yours for as long as you want. Just keep an eye on the place. Cheap rent if you can manage that.”

She could. And she wanted the quiet.

The cottage itself was weathered, with paint peeling from the shutters, but it held a kind of charm. She smiled to herself, already imagining mornings spent with tea in hand, sitting on the porch, watching the sea.

In the back of her car, her yarn and crochet hooks were packed in baskets, along with pieces she could finish and post to her shop, small comforts for strangers who would never know how much she needed this place as much as they might need her work.

The door creaked as it opened, and she stepped inside, greeted by the scent of wood and sea salt that had seeped into the walls. It wasn’t perfect -there would be work to do to make it feel like home- but for now, it was enough.

She left her bag by the door, moving to open the back window that faced the cliffs. The wind rushed in immediately, lifting the thin curtains and filling the small room with the sounds of the ocean.

Leaning on the windowsill, she breathed in deep again, closing her eyes for a moment.

----

She left the unpacking for later. The sunlight, pale and golden as it dipped lower in the sky, felt too precious to waste. After days of grey city skies, it was strange and wonderful to see light glinting off the water like scattered glass.

Pulling on a scarf against the wind, she made her way down the narrow path that led from the cottage to the shore, boots crunching against damp stones. The beach was more rock than sand, dark stones slick with seawater, and the waves hissing between them in restless motion. She took her time, picking her way carefully over the uneven ground, pausing here and there to admire small tide pools that shimmered like glass bowls filled with fragments of sky.

Further down, the cliffs rose higher, jagged and dark against the softening sky. Tucked into the rock face was a cave, half-hidden in shadow. She felt a pull toward it, something about the way the waves crashed near its mouth, and the water slid back in swirling foam made her want to go closer. But the tide was too high, waves rushing to the edge of the mouth and spilling out in bursts of white spray.

She sighed, a little disappointed, and found a flat rock to sit on, far enough from the water’s reach but close enough to feel the mist on her cheeks. Pulling her knees up, she wrapped her arms around them and watched the horizon where the sky met the sea, silver and darkening.

She didn’t notice the way the water stirred beyond the rocks.

From the shadows of the cave, he watched.

Blue eyes, sharp and narrowed, fixed on the figure that had dared to step onto his shore. A female human, wrapped in thick clothes, clearly not afraid of being so close to the water. His gaze followed her movements, the careful way she sat, her eyes distant as if searching for something in the waves.

The sea shifted around him, dark tentacles stirring the foam as he rose slightly from the depths, blending with the shadows. The skin below his waist was marked in deep stormy colors: blues that bled into blacks, silvers that caught the light when he moved, like flashes of lightning underwater. His long dark hair clung wet to his shoulders, the strands caught in the shifting current.

His left arm was marked in heavy black ink, curling patterns that wound around the muscles like chains and waves, telling stories in lines and symbols only the ocean would ever understand.

He was used to people coming close in the summer, loud and careless, splashing in the water, never looking beyond what they wanted to see. But this one was different. She was quiet. Still.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t dangerous.

With a slow, deliberate motion, he slid closer to the rocks, letting the water conceal most of his form, moving his lower half with smooth, effortless strength beneath the waves. The great, coiled limbs of his true body remained hidden for now, shifting like shadows below.

His gaze darkened as he watched her. What was she doing there? Why now, when the cold months were setting in and no other humans dared to linger?

His jaw clenched as he sank a little deeper into the water, watching her as the sun dipped lower and painted the sky in bruised purples and oranges. He would wait. Watch. And if she meant harm to his waters, to his shore, he would know. But still, he couldn't help the way his eyes lingered when the wind caught her hair, or the way her small smile seemed soft and tired, as if she carried some invisible weight.

She came back.

The next day and the one after.

By the third sunrise, Bucky had already realized, with a sinking weight in his chest, that the human woman wasn’t just passing through. No, she returned, making her way down the narrow path from the cliffs, wrapped in her layers of soft clothes and her hair tousled by the wind. She walked the shore like she belonged there, like it wasn’t his.

It bothered him.

From the shadows of the rocks, half-submerged in the dark water, he watched her settle on the same stone each day, legs folded neatly beneath her as she sat with her back to the wind. Like clockwork, she always carried a bundle under her arm -sometimes a basket, sometimes a cloth bag- and inside were her strange tools.

At first, he'd tense every time she pulled them out. Metal glinting in the light, sharp and delicate. His eyes would narrow, watching the quick, precise movements of her fingers as she worked the thread -or was it wire?- into something he couldn't quite understand.

Was she weaving traps? Humans were clever like that, dressing danger in the shape of something pretty. His teeth would clench as he lingered close enough to see but far enough that the sea still wrapped him in its shield. Some days, he’d hover beneath the surface, letting the swell of the waves rise and fall over him, tentacles coiled and ready, just watching. Other days, when curiosity won out over caution, he'd pull himself closer to the rocks, blending with the dark stone, his body hidden in the foam, only sharp blue eyes peering from the shadowed cracks.

He couldn't understand her.

The tools -those thin, pointed things that glinted in the sun- moved quickly in her hands, pulling and twisting strands of colored thread into shapes. He watched her lips move sometimes, as if she were speaking to herself or singing under her breath, her voice too soft to carry over the waves.

What are you doing, human?

Some days, she worked with blues and greys that matched the ocean. Other days, softer colors: pale pinks, sandy creams, as if she were plucking the colors from the sunset and tying them into her thread.

His mind turned over the possibilities, dark and sharp as broken shells.

Offerings, maybe. Humans used to throw things into the sea, begging the water for favors. Had she come to his shore to offer something? And if so, to whom?

What was it like, to sit under the open sky, making something delicate with hands that didn’t know the weight of chains?

What did a human like her have to craft for?

He knew humans were dangerous. They made weapons and poison. They took and broke and never gave back to the sea. But watching her, with her small, careful motions and calm presence, Bucky couldn’t make her fit into the same mold.

Still, he kept his distance.

And watched.

She was a mystery, and Bucky had always known better than to trust a pretty mystery.

----

The sky was heavy that day, thick with clouds that churned low over the sea like a living thing, pressing the wind harder against the cliffs. The waves crashed louder, salt spray carried far beyond the rocks, and even the birds had gone quiet, hunkering down somewhere safer than the open air.

Still, she came.

Bucky saw her before she even reached the stones, her figure bent slightly against the wind, with a scarf whipped loose around her shoulders as she picked her way carefully across the slick path. He stayed hidden in the cave’s shadows, narrowing his eyes as he watched her approach, bracing himself as another gust sent the water lashing high against the rocks.

Foolish human. She had no business being here in this weather.

And yet, there she was, basket under her arm, as though her stubbornness could make the storm back down.

She didn’t stay long; that, at least, he could appreciate. The wind tugged mercilessly at her hair, whipping strands across her face, and even from his distance, he could see her frown as she tried to focus on her work. The little metal tools caught flashes of dull light, as she wrestled with thread that kept trying to fly away.

More than once, she nearly dropped the whole thing, muttering curses under her breath that the wind carried just out of his hearing.

Should’ve stayed home, Bucky thought darkly, though part of him -a part he didn’t want to examine too closely- felt a flicker of something like amusement at her stubbornness.

Eventually, even she had to admit defeat.

With a sharp breath, she shoved the tangled project and tools back into her basket, fighting to keep everything from slipping out as the wind ripped around her. Bucky watched as she stood, holding the basket close with one hand and pulling her scarf tighter with the other.

She turned to leave, but the basket’s lid wasn’t secure.

He caught the movement first, a small square of soft color, pale blue and cream, clinging to the edge until a sharp gust of wind tore it free.

The little piece of her work tumbled up into the air like a bird struggling against the gale, flipping and twisting wildly. She didn’t notice, too focused on her path back up to the cliffs, already moving away.

Bucky’s sharp gaze tracked the square as it flew, carried higher for a moment before the wind turned and dropped it like a wounded thing onto the rocks.

He slid closer, and the sea hissed against the shore as his dark form rose from the waves, blending with the churning water. His tentacles shifted beneath, curling and uncoiling lazily as he moved through the foam toward where the thing had landed.

For a moment, he didn’t touch it, only looked, tilting his head slightly as he studied the object. It was soft and tiny, patterned carefully in shifting stitches, with the center shaped like a seashell.

A seashell.

His brows drew together, a flicker of confusion sliding through his chest.

Was it… for him? An offering? A message?

His tattooed arm reached out, brushing the yarn with his wet fingers as if it might dissolve under his touch. He picked it up, holding it between his fingers, and turning it over. The colors were soft, like the sea on a calm morning, so unlike the stormy waters around them now.

He stared after her retreating figure, now nearly lost to the rising mist that curled along the cliffs. His fingers closed around the little square, and his chest twisted with something sharp and unfamiliar. Without thinking, he slipped back into the water, keeping the square safe in his palm as he sank below the waves, carrying it into the deep.

----

The cave had been his refuge for years now.

A place carved by time and water, jagged and vast beneath the cliffs, a labyrinth of dark stone and shifting pools. The ocean lived and breathed in its chambers, rushing in with the tides to flood the lower passages, pulling back to leave slick rock and pools deep enough for him to slide through.

Most humans never saw more than the yawning mouth of the cave, and even then, they gave it a wide berth, spooked by the way the waves churned and roared in its depths. But Bucky had made it home.

It wasn’t much. Dark. Cold. Safe.

Except now, it wasn’t just his.

He surfaced silently in one of the upper chambers, where the water only reached his hips before sloping into the damp rock. High above, a narrow shaft split the stone, letting pale daylight pour down like a spotlight. Even on cloudy days, it was enough to see by.

Holding the little square carefully between tattooed fingers, he studied it again as if it might reveal something new, some hidden meaning in its soft, woven loops.

It shouldn’t be here.

Nothing soft ever survived this place.

The sea that pounded the rocks outside was as ruthless as the men who’d once dragged him from it. His world was made of sharp edges and dark water. Things that survived here were hard, broken, and dangerous.

Not like this.

His lip curled slightly, though he wasn’t sure if it was at himself or the thing he couldn’t quite let go of.

He moved to the far side of the chamber where a heavy rock shelf jutted from the wall, slick with salt but high enough to stay dry when the tide rolled in. Above it, close to the light from the chimney, an old, rusted hook still hung from a crack in the rock, a leftover from some shipwrecked fishing gear he'd dragged in long ago.

He didn’t think much before reaching for a coil of fishing line he scavenged from the sea, along with other things lost by sailors who would never know what had become of them.

With careful fingers, he tied the little square to the line, knotting it securely, and hung it from the hook so it swayed gently in the faint breeze that slipped down through the shaft.

It turned slowly, spinning on the line, and its pale threads caught what little light filtered in, soft and fragile in a world of darkness.

Bucky leaned back in the water, resting his arms on the rocks behind him, watching it move. Something about how it danced, as if defying the cold stone and salt-heavy air, set his teeth on edge.

Why did she make things like that?

Was she offering pieces of herself to the sea? To him?

His gaze darkened as he thought of her again, sitting on his rock, unaware of the way she was watched, studied like a puzzle that didn’t fit. His eyes flicked to the square once more, to the soft seashell design at its center.

It didn’t make sense, but he didn’t take it down.

Instead, he stayed there for a long time, watching it turn and twist in the pale shaft of light.

----

The next morning, she sat on the couch, sorting through her project basket with a small frown tugging at her lips. The afghan was coming together beautifully, a tapestry of ocean blues, soft foamy whites, and sandy golds, all made of tiny, careful stitches. But something was off. She counted again, lips moving silently as her finger trailed over each square laid out in neat rows.

Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five…

She paused.

No, it wasn’t right.

She was sure she’d finished all the seashell tiles. It had been the last thing she worked on by the shore before the stormy weather rolled in. But now… she was one short.

Her brow furrowed deeper. Had she miscounted?

She rubbed her forehead, letting out a soft breath. Maybe she’d dropped one and didn’t notice. The wind had been fierce that day, tugging at everything: her hair, her scarf, her work, like impatient fingers.

Glancing out the window, where the sea glinted pale in the afternoon sun, she chewed her lip. She didn’t have enough yarn to do another. So, with a resigned sigh, she grabbed her bag and slipped on her jacket.

Maybe the little shop uptown still had that particular shade of blue left.

----

The bell over the shop door chimed as she stepped inside, bringing with her a breath of sea air. The shop was small, crammed with yarns of every color, stacked high on wooden shelves that smelled faintly of cedar and wool.

Behind the counter, an older woman -probably in her seventies, but with sharp eyes and quick hands- looked up from where she was rolling skeins into neat cakes.

“Well, well,” the woman said with a curious smile. “Don’t get many young folks around this time of year. Let me guess, lost a mitten?”

She laughed softly, shaking her head. “No, nothing like that. I just… moved to the cottage down by the cliffs. I need some blue yarn.”

The woman’s brows rose. “The cottage? Arthur’s place?”

She nodded. “He’s my cousin. Said I could stay off-season. I needed… a change of air, for my lungs.”

The woman’s gaze softened a little at that, but there was something else too, a flicker of something sharper in her eyes.

“Been walking the shore, have you?”

She smiled faintly. “Almost every day. It’s good for my health. And it’s… peaceful out there.”

The old woman’s fingers stilled on the yarn, and her gaze grew more serious. “You stay away from that cave, girl.”

The sudden shift in tone made her blink. “Oh? Is it dangerous? Flooding or… rocks falling?” She had wondered, more than once, about exploring inside; its dark mouth always tugged at her attention from afar.

But the old woman just shook her head slowly, pressing her lips on a thin line. “No. It’s not the rocks you should worry about.”

Her stomach gave a small flip, though she wasn’t sure why. “What then?” she asked, her voice lighter than she felt. “Ghost stories?”

The woman didn’t smile.

“Some folks say there’s something in there. Something that don’t take kindly to strangers.”

There was a long pause between them, filled only by the soft creak of the shop’s wooden floor as the wind rattled outside.

She gave a small laugh. “Well… I’ll be careful. No caves. Just sitting by the rocks, I promise.”

The woman watched her a moment longer, then reached to pluck a skein from the shelf, soft blue with the faintest shimmer of white, like sea foam.

“Here. This the color you’re needing?”

Relieved for the change of subject, she smiled. “Perfect, thank you.” Still, as she paid and stepped back out into the gray afternoon, the woman’s words clung to her mind like salt spray on her skin.

Something in there.

Superstitions. Nothing more.

----

She came earlier this time.

The sun was still high, cutting thin shafts of light across the rocky shore. The sea was calm for once, lapping lazily at the stones, though she could already see the tide creeping in, filling the gaps between the rocks like liquid glass.

Her backpack -her new companion for carrying everything- hung from one shoulder as she picked her way down the worn path, scanning the ground with a slight wrinkle of concentration between her brows. She wasn’t sure what she expected to find.

Maybe -if she let herself hope- the missing square would be there, caught between some stones or tangled in a patch of seaweed. It wasn’t likely. The wind had been fierce that day. More than likely, it was long gone, carried off to sea.

She wandered close to the cliffside, scanning the rocks and little pools left behind by the waves. Empty. Just rocks, water, and shells.

Eventually, her path curved nearer to the cave.

She paused when she reached it, its dark mouth yawning wide before her eyes. The tide had already crept in enough to flood the entrance, and the seawater glimmered like oil in the shadows, rising and falling with a deep, constant rhythm.

She stood there for a moment, resting her weight on one leg, with her arms crossed loosely over her chest as she gazed into the darkness.

The woman’s words floated back to her, “Something in there.”

A soft huff of laughter escaped her lips. "Right. Some kind of sea monster," she murmured to herself, glancing at the waves as they lapped at the rocks. Townfolk and their stories. She guessed every place had its own Nessie to keep tourists from wandering too far. Still, her eyes lingered on the shadows inside the cave.

Not that she believed in monsters.

She found a smooth rock nearby, flatter and more comfortable than her usual perch, and sat down slowly. For a while, she didn’t even reach for her yarn.

She just sat there, watching the sea. Noting how the light broke on the water, how the wind stirred small ripples that chased each other toward shore. It was peaceful, quiet.

Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t alone.

Maybe it was how the waves broke oddly sometimes, like something moved beneath them. Or how the shadows seemed deeper at the cave’s edge.

Out of the corner of her eye, something shifted, a ripple where there shouldn’t have been one, a shape half-blurred by the surf.

Her head snapped around.

Nothing. Just rocks and waves, sunlight flashing silver on the water. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and rubbed her arms, shaking her head at herself. “Get a grip,” she muttered. “You’re gonna start seeing ghosts next.”

She wasn’t afraid; it felt more like a prickle at the back of her neck, like the feeling of being watched. She shivered despite herself and finally dug in her backpack, pulling out her yarn and hook.

Hands busy and occupied mind, maybe that would help.

And as her fingers worked the stitches, her eyes kept flicking now and then to the cave’s dark mouth, half expecting to see something -or someone- looking back at her.

----

Bucky stilled. He’d been resting half-submerged, lulled by the steady rise and fall of the tide against the rocks, when her footsteps crunched over the shore. The sound pulled him from the quiet calm of the water.

His eyes narrowed when he saw her wandering closer than usual, with a backpack slung over her shoulder, scanning the rocks like she was searching for something.

Closer.

Too close.

He stayed motionless as she approached the mouth of the cave, tilting her head slightly as he observed her, cool and calculating. So, she wasn’t content to sit on the same sun-warmed rock as always. No, now she was pressing into his territory, almost stepping at his doorstep.

Something in him bristled at that.

One thing was for her to perch at a distance, near enough to watch but far enough to ignore if he wanted. But here? Where he lived, where he slept? His jaw clenched, and his arms flexed subtly in the water. His blue gaze followed every move she made. What was she thinking, wandering so close to something she didn’t understand?

He chewed on the inside of his cheek.

She didn’t look dangerous, sitting there on the rock, folding herself into a soft curve against the sharp lines of the shore. But he knew better than to trust first glances. They never looked dangerous until it was too late.

Still, she didn’t carry herself like a hunter.

His gaze slid over her form, watching as she sat and stared out to sea, with her hands resting idle, for once. Something about the way she observed the water made his chest twist with something strange and tight, curiosity, maybe.

And then, her head turned.

He stiffened as her eyes swept toward the cave, sharp and searching.

Instinct surged up fast and cold.

No.

Before her gaze could settle, he shifted, and his skin rippled as the pigments in his body flared and blended, dark blues and stormy grays swirling into a perfect mimicry of the wet stone and shadows around him.

Camouflaged, he watched as her stare paused a second longer -too long- before she finally looked away, sighing softly.

Bucky exhaled, though the movement barely stirred the water around him. He kept his skin blended to the rocks. What was he supposed to do with her?

She didn’t seem dangerous. But danger didn’t always wear a sharp smile and bloodstained hands, sometimes, it came wrapped in soft eyes and gentle fingers. They had taught him long ago that humans, even the fragile-looking ones, could destroy a life without a second thought.

Still, she hadn’t tried to harm anything. Not yet.

His eyes flicked toward her bag as if he could see through it to the soft squares she wove. His fingers twitched faintly in the water.

He didn’t like her so close to the cave, but he wasn’t ready to drive her away either. So, for now, he would watch -hidden and silent- and wait.

Wait to see if she would prove herself a threat.

Or something else.

----

It was nearly sunset the next day when she came back. The wind had picked up again, sharp and salty, tugging at her hair as she made her way down to the rocks -his rocks- like she belonged there.

He should have grown used to her by now.

But today, she wasn’t carrying her usual stuff. No soft blues or pale greens in her arms, no ocean-colored threads to match the shore.

Instead, she carried something bright.

She sat down with a small sigh, tucking her legs beneath her, and pulled out a tangled mess of reds and oranges that caught the dying sunlight and burned in her hands.

His eyes narrowed. It wasn’t like her other work.

The colors were sharp, like warning signals in nature, like the poison coral and venomous anemones lurking under rocks.

He crept a little closer, careful not to disturb the water’s surface, watching as her fingers worked the thread, pulling and twisting, weaving patterns that made no sense to him.

A net?

The thought came unbidden, and he bristled at it. Was she making something to trap fish? Or… something larger, like him?

But even as his suspicion spiraled, he looked again, and his sharp gaze caught the way the fibers slipped through her hands, soft, pliable, delicate.

No.

No one would use something that fine and fragile to catch fish. His eyes lingered on the trailing end of the project, long, thin, and useless for holding anything.

Not a net, then.

But that didn’t ease his mind. If not for catching, then for binding? Some kind of restraint?

The thought set his muscles on edge. His arms tensed, and the tips of his dark tendrils stirred faintly beneath the surface.

And then she started humming.

Low, soft, like a tune half-forgotten, not loud enough to be a song, but enough for his sharp ears to catch.

He froze.

Was it… a spell?

His gaze darkened, trying to focus on the way her lips moved, though she didn’t speak any words. Just the soft melody, drifting on the wind, as her fingers worked and pulled the red and orange threads. Humans were strange creatures, and he knew enough to fear the things they could do with words and symbols.

Maybe she was weaving magic into that thread, binding spells, summoning songs. He had seen it before, felt it before.

Still, she didn’t look like a witch.

His eyes traced her face, calm and focused, with her brows slightly furrowed as she worked. There didn’t seem to be malice there, no sharp glances cast toward the water. But appearances were deceiving.

His gaze dropped again to the burning colors slipping through her fingers, and something in him twisted.

The questions tangled tighter in his chest, and he found himself slightly leaning forward, drawn to the movement of her hands and tools, to the colors, to her voice.

His eyes stayed locked on her until the sun slipped fully behind the waves, and she finally stood to leave, carefully folding the half-finished piece and tucking it away.

As she walked back up the path, she glanced over her shoulder, scanning the shore one last time, and for a breathless moment, Bucky wondered if she could feel him there, watching.

----

The rain had finally stopped.

Three days of relentless downpour had left the shore wild and restless, and the waves were breaking hard against the rocks, spraying foam high into the air. The sky still hung heavy with clouds, but at least the water no longer poured from it.

Bucky had spent those days deep inside the flooded parts of the cave, watching the storm churn from the shadows. Alone.

Not that he minded.

Or so he told himself.

But as the days dragged on, he became restless. Irritable. He kept glancing toward the cave entrance, expecting -hoping- to see her figure appear between the rocks.

But she never came.

And he hated how that bothered him.

So when the skies cleared and, late in the afternoon, she finally made her way down to the shore again, he felt something loosen in his chest, though he wouldn't name it.

From his usual hiding spot, half in the water, half behind a jut of rock, he watched her settle down, pulling her yarn and hook from her bag with the kind of familiar movements that made him… oddly content.

Maybe he'd gotten too used to her presence. To the soft sound of her humming and the rhythm of her hands working threads into strange patterns.

Maybe that’s why he wasn’t as careful today.

Maybe that’s why, when he leaned a little too far forward in the water just to get a better look at what colors she brought this time, the sunlight caught him at a wrong angle.

Whatever the reason, he was sloppy.

Her eyes snapped toward him. And he froze.

She furrowed her brows, tilting her head as she stared directly at him. Not the vague searching glances of before. No, this time she saw him.

His heart hammered in his chest, and his pulse was loud in his ears.

She seemed confused, narrowing her eyes slightly as they traveled over his form, and Bucky realized with a jolt that to her, he probably looked like… well, like a man.

A man swimming in the cold autumn sea.

Without a suit.

Without reason.

Her gaze flicked over the rocks, then back to him, as if wondering where the hell he had come from because there was no easy way down from town, and she'd have seen anyone arriving from the path.

Still, instead of looking frightened, she just blinked at him, hesitated for a breath, and then lifted her hand in a casual wave.

A simple, almost amused gesture.

Hi, weird stranger.

He had faced hunters, poachers, and worse. Humans who would sooner try to catch him than greet him. But here she was, waving at him like he was just another odd townie swimming where he shouldn’t.

For a heartbeat, he didn’t move, staring at her with narrowed eyes.

And then, as if realizing he’d already messed up by letting her see him, he dipped slightly lower into the water, letting only his head remain above the surface, but didn't turn away.

She watched him for a moment longer, waiting maybe for a response, before shrugging to herself and returning to her work, pulling out a soft teal yarn this time.

Still, Bucky didn’t stop watching. His mind twisted over and over on what had just happened.

She had seen him.

Seen him.

And instead of running, instead of panicking, she'd waved.

What kind of human sat on the edge of danger and smiled into it?

He sank a little deeper into the water, his blue eyes never leaving her, as she began to hum again, soft and low.

Something about her was wrong.

----

She tried to focus on her work, crocheting the teal yarn on autopilot, but her eyes kept darting -against her will- to the corner of her vision, where he was.

Still there.

Still watching.

At first, she’d thought he was just some local oddball, and God knew, every small town had at least a handful of those, but the longer she sat, the more her nervousness grew.

Who just stared at someone like that?

She shot another glance his way, careful not to turn her head fully.

Yup. Still there.

Still looking like he had nothing better to do than burn holes on her with his eyes.

Her fingers slowed. Okay. So maybe the old woman at the shop hadn’t been warning her about some spooky town legend. Maybe she’d been trying to warn her about him. Some town creep who liked to lurk around the cave and watch women from the water.

She frowned, looping the yarn tighter than necessary.

But if that were the case, wouldn’t the clerk have just said so? Something like “oh, by the way, steer clear of the guy who haunts the shore like a creep”?

Instead, she’d talked about danger in vague, almost superstitious terms. Like people did when they talked about ghosts or monsters.

Not flesh-and-blood men.

Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling crawling up her spine. Her fingers worked faster now, as if the act of crocheting could anchor her, steady her nerves. But her mind wouldn’t stop racing.

He didn’t look like some frail old hermit squatting in a cave.

No, he looked… fit. Broad-shouldered, all sharp angles and lean muscle, with dark hair slicked back by the sea water and something almost wild in the way he watched her. And handsome. Very handsome.

Wasn’t he cold?

It wasn’t summer out here. Even under the pale sun, the wind still bit, carrying the ocean’s chill. And there he was, bare, like it was nothing. She swallowed, slowing her fingers slightly as her thoughts tangled worse than her yarn.

Maybe he’s training? she tried to reason. Some kind of triathlete or swimmer. That would explain…

But her gaze flicked to him again, and this time, she caught the way his eyes followed the motion of her hands. Focused. Intense. Like a predator watching something small and unaware.

The back of her neck prickled.

Yeah, if this was training, it was training for something she didn’t want to be part of.

Still, she forced herself to stay put. She wasn’t going to let some weirdo scare her off from her favorite spot. But if tomorrow he was there, she might have to think about going somewhere else.

Or maybe ask around -casually- if anyone knew who the hell this guy was. Her hook slipped on a stitch, and she cursed under her breath. With a sharp sigh, she set the half-finished square in her lap and stared at the waves, refusing to let herself look at him again.

----

After a while observing her, he noticed she wasn’t as relaxed as moments ago, wasn’t humming under her breath or pausing now and then to watch the waves.

No, she kept glancing toward him. Not directly, but in those small, sharp ways people do when they know they're being watched.

Damn it.

He should’ve known better.

Should’ve realized when she saw him, when she waved at him like some clueless land dweller, that he should’ve backed off, and stayed out of sight for a while.

But no.

Instead, some part of him -the part that had gotten used to her presence, to the strange comfort of hearing her voice carried over the wind- had watched perhaps too much.

And now she was nervous.

He saw it in the way her shoulders tensed every time she shifted. In the way her fingers fumbled slightly, like her mind wasn’t really on what she was doing.

And worse, she was pretending he wasn’t there.

Why?

That worried him as he sank lower in the water, frustration twisting in his chest.

Why pretend? Why act like he wasn’t there when she clearly knew?

Was it some human game? Was she trying to ignore him to bait him into coming closer, or was she just scared and trying not to show it?

He scowled, flexing his claws against the rock. He didn’t want her to be afraid.

Or did he?

Wouldn’t that be better? If she feared him, maybe she’d stop coming here. His gaze drifted to the backpack at her side, the threads spilling out like a tangle of seaweed, as her hands worked almost feverishly.

What was she thinking?

Was she wondering if he was dangerous or if he would attack her?

Good.

She should wonder.

Because he wasn’t safe. Not by a long shot.

Still…

He ducked lower when she shifted, watching from behind a curtain of sea foam, blending his skin into the dark rock, but the damage was done. She knew.

And now that he’d seen that flicker of unease in her eyes, something ugly and cold twisted in his gut.

Why do you care? he snarled at himself. She was just another human. Just another threat.

But no matter how much he repeated it, his eyes stayed locked on her soft and tense form and the way her hands moved faster as if to drown out her thoughts.

Bucky let out a low hiss under his breath, more at himself than anything else.

He should leave.

He should let her be.

But he didn’t move.

Couldn’t.

And when she finally stood to leave, gathering her things and casting one last glance over her shoulder -wary, searching- he sank deeper into the waves, watching her go with a storm churning in his chest.

----

The first thing she did when she came home was head straight for the shower. The warm water rolled down her back, washing away the salt clinging to her skin and the tension from the strange encounter by the shore. She stayed under the spray longer than necessary, trying to shake the image of that man watching her with those sharp, unreadable eyes.

Once she was dry and wrapped in her softest clothes, she settled into the small nook by the window, with her laptop perched on her knees, and opened her shop’s page. There were a few new notifications: a sold pattern, a message from a customer asking about shipping times, and an inquiry about custom work.

She starting to reply to the messages when her phone buzzed suddenly, making her jump.

Arthur.

She huffed out a breath and picked up.

“Hey,” she greeted, leaning back against the cushions.

“Hey, you!” her cousin’s familiar voice filled the line. “Just wanted to check in. How’s the place? Are you settling alright?”

She smiled a little. “Yeah, it’s perfect, Arthur. Exactly what I needed the air’s doing wonders already.”

“That’s good to hear.” He paused, and she could almost picture him leaning on something, probably a counter or desk at his job. “You’re not getting too lonely, right? I know it’s kinda dead out of season.”

“I’m fine,” she assured him, glancing out the window at the gray sky, a reminder of the past days of rain. “Besides, I needed the quiet.”

There was a pause. She bit her lip, debating with herself, before blurting out, “Hey, listen… you wouldn’t happen to know if anyone in town trains for water sports, do you?”

Arthur blinked; she could hear it in the silence that followed her words. “What?”

She shifted, tucking one leg under herself. “I mean, like… open water swimming, or diving, or whatever. I saw someone today. Down by the rocks near the cave.”

Another pause. Longer this time.

“You sure? Maybe it was just a seal or something? You said the weather was rough.”

She sighed with irritation. “Arthur, I believe I still know how to differentiate between a grown-ass man and a fucking seal, thank you very much.”

“Alright, alright,” he said quickly, but she could hear the edge of worry in his voice now. “It’s just… no one goes swimming there this time of year, or at any season, really. Is not exactly a place for casual swimmers.”

“Well, this guy didn’t seem to care,” she muttered.

Arthur was quiet again. Then, more serious, he added, “Look, just… don’t go back to that area, okay? Stick closer to the cottage. There’s plenty of shore to walk on the other side, yeah?”

She hesitated, flicking her gaze toward her backpack near the door, still full from today.

“Yeah,” she finally said, though the word tasted like a lie. “Probably won’t go back.”

Arthur sighed, clearly relieved. “Good. You know how towns are. You don’t wanna get mixed up with some weirdo. Just… be careful.”

“I will,” she promised, softer this time.

But as soon as the call ended and she set her phone down, she leaned back and stared out the window again.

Probably won’t go back, she had said.

Yeah, right.

She hated walking near the parts of the beach where people gathered. The ones who stayed all year round, the teens with their loud music and bonfires.

She liked her quiet spot.

And if that strange man -or whatever he was- showed up again…

Well.

She’d figure it out.

Maybe.

Probably.

She reached for her yarn backpack with a sigh, pulling out another project to keep her hands busy. But her mind stayed restless, wandering back to the man with sharp blue eyes and the way the sea seemed to ripple around him.

Next chapter

Dividers by @/strangergraphics

Taglist: @civilbucky

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fic #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes x curvy!reader #merman! Bucky #cecaelia! Bucky #cecaelia #bucky x curvy!reader

531 notes · View notes

aeth-eris · 6 months ago

Text

★ aries moon: burnt sienna feels like desert sands at dusk, rugged and warm, with a raw intensity that draws you in. it carries the energy of clay pots hardened in fire, bold and unbreakable, yet shaped by the hands that mold it. aries moons reflect this untamed aesthetic, their emotions erupting with the fierce vitality of something freshly forged. their love burns hot and immediate, like the glow of embers in the dark, and their anger is primal, quick to ignite but just as quick to cool. burnt sienna inspires action—a charge forward, unafraid of the scars that passion leaves.

★ taurus moon: rose gold is the quiet luxury of a soft-lit room, glowing with warmth and understated elegance. it’s the sheen of polished metal, the gentle curve of something crafted with care, timeless and grounding. taurus moons embody this aesthetic, their emotions wrapped in a soothing steadiness that feels like home. their love is rich and tangible, like velvet under fingertips or the scent of fresh roses. they crave beauty that endures, a life touched by comfort and stability. rose gold whispers of devotion that lingers, of love that doesn’t shout but instead holds you gently, unshaken by chaos.

★ gemini moon: periwinkle is the pastel buzz of ideas, soft and curious, flitting between lavender clouds and pale blue skies. it feels like delicate notebooks filled with sketches, like laughter drifting across a summer breeze. gemini moons embody this aesthetic, their emotions light and playful, shifting like watercolors blending on paper. their love is full of questions, their heart a kaleidoscope of wonder, always seeking new connections. periwinkle reminds us that emotions don’t need to be heavy to be meaningful—they can dance lightly, like petals falling from a tree, leaving beauty in their wake without needing to stay.

★ cancer moon: seafoam green feels like the pull of tides under a silver moon, gentle yet immense, quiet yet infinite. it’s the shimmer of waves against soft sand, the cool embrace of ocean foam lapping at your ankles. cancer moons carry this aesthetic in their hearts, their emotions vast and ever-shifting, like the sea in all its moods. their love is a haven, protective and nurturing, like driftwood washed ashore—a reminder of safety after the storm. seafoam green whispers of connection that runs deep, of feelings that ebb and flow but never truly leave, anchoring us in their rhythm.

★ leo moon: goldenrod is sunlight spilling through open windows, radiant and bold, filling every corner with life. it’s the brilliance of gilded frames and the warmth of golden hour, a color that exudes confidence and charm. leo moons wear this aesthetic in their emotions, their love bright and unapologetic, their joy contagious. they live for moments that shine, for affection that feels like applause, for connections that make their heart blaze like the sun. goldenrod is a reminder that love, when shared freely, becomes something luminous—a source of warmth and inspiration for everyone who stands in its light.

★ virgo moon: moss green is the quiet perfection of dew-laden leaves, soft and grounding, a color steeped in the serenity of nature. it’s the texture of moss between stones, the scent of earth after rain, unassuming but rich with life. virgo moons reflect this aesthetic in their emotions, careful and deliberate, tending to feelings like a gardener nurturing fragile blooms. their love is shown in small, thoughtful acts, steady as ivy climbing a wall. moss green teaches us that growth is often quiet, that strength can be soft, and that emotions, like the earth, are most powerful when rooted deeply.

★ libra moon: blush pink feels like the soft sweep of a silk scarf, delicate and refined, with a grace that lingers. it’s the glow of twilight skies fading into pastel hues, the gentle charm of petals falling from a flower. libra moons embody this aesthetic, their emotions flowing like brushstrokes on a canvas, always seeking balance and beauty. their love feels effortless, a harmony that soothes and inspires. blush pink reminds us of the power in subtlety—how emotions can be tender yet transformative, quiet yet deeply felt. it’s the elegance of connection, the warmth of a heart longing for peace.

★ scorpio moon: black cherry is velvet cloaked in shadow, a rich and moody red that whispers of mystery. it’s the sheen of dark wine in a glass, the depth of candlelight flickering against crimson curtains. scorpio moons carry this aesthetic in their emotions, raw and intense, like secrets waiting to be revealed. their love is transformative, a force that pulls you into their depths, where passion and vulnerability intertwine. black cherry reminds us that beauty often lies in darkness, that the most profound emotions are found in the shadows. it’s a color that captivates, much like the scorpio moon’s soul.

★ sagittarius moon: amber glows like resin catching the light, warm and golden, infused with ancient energy. it’s the warmth of lanterns strung in the night, the firelight reflected in curious eyes. sagittarius moons embody this aesthetic, their emotions burning with a restless optimism, always seeking the next horizon. their love is expansive, radiating joy and laughter, their heart untethered and alive. amber teaches us that emotions don’t need to be confined—they are meant to be explored, celebrated, and shared. it’s a color of hope, of adventure, a reminder that the journey is as important as the destination.

★ capricorn moon: slate gray is the polished elegance of stone, cool and timeless, a color that stands unshaken. it’s the stillness of mountain peaks cloaked in mist, the quiet resilience of marble weathered by time. capricorn moons wear this aesthetic in their hearts, their emotions steady and reserved, their love enduring and practical. they don’t express feelings with grandeur but through actions that speak louder than words. slate gray reminds us that strength is often quiet, that emotions can be profound without being loud. it’s the beauty of constancy, the comfort of knowing some things remain solid and true.

★ aquarius moon: electric teal hums with energy, vivid and magnetic, a color that feels like it’s always on the verge of transformation. it’s the glow of neon lights against a dark cityscape, the shimmer of holograms that feel just out of reach. aquarius moons carry this aesthetic in their emotions, their feelings charged with creativity and innovation. their love is unconventional, valuing freedom and individuality, their heart sparking with ideas that change the world around them. electric teal reminds us that emotions can be futuristic, that they don’t need to fit into traditional molds to be meaningful and powerful.

★ pisces moon: lavender mist drifts like a dream, soft and ethereal, a color that feels like moonlight wrapped in haze. it’s the shimmer of starlight on still waters, the quiet magic of dawn breaking through the clouds. pisces moons embody this aesthetic, their emotions boundless and fluid, like waves dissolving into the horizon. their love is empathetic and transcendent, weaving itself into the hearts of others like a whispered melody. lavender mist teaches us that emotions don’t need to be fully understood to be beautiful. it’s the quiet wonder of feeling deeply, of connecting with something greater than ourselves.

★ book a reading ★ ★ masterlist 1 ★ ★ masterlist 2 ★

#astrology #astrology observations #astrology aspects #astro observations #moon

585 notes · View notes

xcqmsr · 1 month ago

Text

you sunshine, you temptress

pairings harry styles x fem!reader

warnings arguing, crying, tiny angst, established relationship, harry calls reader his sunshine, kissing, having kids, english isn’t my first language!

wc 5.4k

Unbelievably quiet day in London. A silence that rarely graced the ever-humming city had fallen like a woolen blanket over the streets. Clouds hung low, heavy and gray, but the air was oddly still—just the occasional lazy breeze that wandered between buildings, shuffling leaves and nudging scarves. That same breeze played mischievously with Harry’s curls, tugging at them like a child seeking attention. He gave an irritated huff, trying to smooth the mess with one hand.

Failing, he pulled his dark blue beanie down over his ears, tucking away the disobedient locks. The beanie was old, the hem stretched and soft from use, but comforting—like armor against the day. His nose, red from the cold, sniffled once as he turned the corner and stepped into Rosie’s Blooms, the familiar bell above the door tinkling softly.

The warmth inside wrapped around him instantly. The sharp but pleasant scent of freshly cut stems, damp earth, and perfume greeted him like a memory. A small heater buzzed faintly from under the counter. Behind it stood Rosie, her face blooming like one of her roses the moment she saw him. Her silvery-white hair was swept into a loose bun, and she wore her usual floral apron covered in smudges of green and pink.

“Oh my sweet child!” she cried, stepping forward slightly, her voice a melodic blend of scolding and affection. “You’ll catch cold wandering out like that with half a scarf and that ridiculous hat. Come now—tea?”

“No, no tea today,” Harry mumbled, offering her a crooked smile. His green eyes, wide and warm even in his embarrassment, met hers for only a moment. “Just… the usual. Please.”

Rosie gave him a knowing look. Her hands were already moving, selecting stems with the grace of a violinist tuning her instrument.

“A fight. Again.”

The words came out barely above a whisper, as if saying them louder would give them more power than he could handle. He looked down at his hands, the cuticles chewed, the fingers still trembling slightly with leftover frustration.

“Mmm,” Rosie murmured, gently snipping a stem. “Same one as last time?”

“Yeah.”

Silence fell again, broken only by the snip of scissors, the soft rustle of petals.

“She thinks I don’t listen. That I disappear into my own head when she needs me present. And maybe she’s right.”

He let out a dry laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. “I just… I get overwhelmed, you know? She says something small and it echoes in my head, gets louder, warps into something else. Then I panic, shut down, say something stupid. Something I don’t mean.”

Rosie looked up from the bouquet and gave him a soft glance, eyes filled with more understanding than words could hold.

“Love’s not easy, Harry. It’s messy. It digs up the worst parts of us, the scared little bits we try to hide. But if it’s real, if it’s worth it—” she tucked a sprig of eucalyptus between the dahlias “—then we fight for it. Not just with flowers, mind you.

He nodded, taking her words like medicine. He remembered the fight in flashes..

Her voice cracking as she said she felt alone, even when he was right there. His silence, colder than any insult. Her walking out of the room, not slamming the door, just quietly closing it. Somehow that hurt more. He hadn’t followed. Not then. Just sat on the edge of the bed, head in his hands, cursing himself.

And now here he was. Again.

“She likes white tulips,” Harry said suddenly, watching Rosie adjust the arrangement.

“I remember,” Rosie replied with a gentle smile. “Means forgiveness. Good choice.”

He watched as she added three tall tulips, crisp and elegant, among the blooms. There were soft blush roses too—her absolute favorite—and the purple lisianthus she once said reminded her of childhood summers. Rosie’s fingers moved like a weaver, binding not just flowers, but hope.

“You always remember what she likes,” Harry said softly.

“Because you always come back for her.”

He looked at her then. Really looked. She wasn’t just a florist. Not to him. She had become something like a confessor, a constant, someone who understood that flowers weren’t just decoration—they were language, apology, offering.

She wrapped the bouquet in cream paper, tied with a thin lavender ribbon.

“You’ll tell her what’s in your heart this time?”

Harry hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. I think I’m ready to stop being afraid of being known.”

Rosie passed the bouquet over the counter. “Good. Because I think she’s ready to hear it.”

He left the shop, the cold air brushing his cheeks like a warning, or a push. The weight of the bouquet in his arms felt like carrying something fragile but essential. He decided to take a train. The drive to her flat wasn’t long, but he took his time. With every station, he rehearsed what he’d say—not a perfect speech, just the truth. That he was sorry. That he was trying. That he loved her. When he reached the door, he stood there for a moment. Breathing. The sound of distant traffic hummed behind him, but in his chest, it was quiet. He lifted his hand and knocked. The knock was soft. Too soft. Harry stood there for a second longer, then cleared his throat and raised his hand again, this time letting his knuckles land a little more firmly against the wood. The cold bit at his ears, even under the beanie, but his palms were sweating.

He could hear faint movement inside. A shifting floorboard. A pause. Then the sound of a lock turning. The door opened slowly, no more than a few inches at first. And then there she was.

She didn’t speak. Just stood there in her oversized cardigan—his cardigan, actually, the navy one he always left draped over the arm of the couch. Her hair was pulled back in a loose, tired knot. No makeup, no pretense. Just her.

His Sunshine.

Her gaze dropped to the bouquet in his hands, and something in her expression softened, though her mouth stayed in a line. She stepped back without a word, holding the door wider, a quiet invitation. Harry entered slowly. The hallway smelled like her. Like honey and vanilla and the old wooden floors she refused to replace because she said they had “personality.” He moved past the framed photos, all memories he was a part of: a blurry polaroid of them eating ice cream in winter, a beach trip where the wind had caught her hair just right. A snapshot of her hugging him from behind, his eyes squinting, mid-laugh.

She closed the door behind them. Didn’t speak.

“I brought your favorites,” he said quietly, holding out the bouquet like an offering. His voice cracked.

She took the flowers wordlessly, fingers brushing his for a fleeting second. That single touch nearly buckled his knees.

He followed her into the kitchen, where the kettle was already whistling on the stove. She poured them both a cup without asking—black for him, chamomile for her—and slid one mug across the counter.

Only then did she finally look at him properly.

“So.” Her voice was quiet, but not cold.

Harry blinked. His throat closed for a moment. “So,” he echoed, lamely.

She leaned against the counter, holding the mug close to her chest. “You walked out in the middle of me telling you how I felt.”

“I know,” he said quickly. “I know. I’m so sorry.”

“That’s not the first time, Harry.”

“I know.”

He put his mug down, untouched. “I panicked. I always panic. It’s not an excuse, I’m just—trying to explain. It’s like I get so scared of saying the wrong thing that I just say nothing. And then that becomes the wrong thing. And I know how it hurts you. I see it. I see your face, and I hate myself for it.”

Her eyes didn’t leave his. “You looked right through me. Like I wasn’t even there.”

His chest ached. “You are always there. You’re the only thing that’s always there. You’re the only thing I look for when everything else is noise.”

Silence.

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. Carefully, he unfolded it, revealing a messy scrawl of handwriting.

“I wrote this on the train back. I don’t… I’m not good at saying what I mean. But I thought, maybe, if I write it—”

She took the paper gently. Her fingers trembled slightly as she read. It wasn’t long. It didn’t need to be.

“Sunshine,

You deserve someone who doesn’t shut down every time it gets hard. You deserve someone who listens the first time, not after the third fight. I’m not always that person. But I want to be.

I love you. More than I know how to say. I’ll keep trying to be better. I promise I’ll keep trying.

Don’t give up on me yet.

Yours, H.”

When she finished reading, her wide eyes met his again. “I love you too, you idiot,” she said, her voice cracking for the first time. “That’s the problem. That’s why it hurts so much.”

Harry stepped forward. “Can I—?”

She nodded before he could finish the question. He wrapped his arms around her and held her like something precious. She melted into him, arms looping around his waist, face pressed into his chest. He buried his nose in her hair and breathed her in, like oxygen. “I’m scared,” he whispered. “So am I.”

“I’m going to mess up again.”

“I know,” she whispered. “But maybe you’ll mess up a little better next time.” They both laughed, just a little. She pulled back and looked up at him.

“Sit with me?”

“Always.”

They moved to the living room. She curled up on the couch, legs tucked under her, and he sat close enough that their knees touched. The bouquet sat in a vase nearby, already looking like it belonged. She toyed with the edge of her sleeve. “You used to call me your Sunshine all the time.” “I still do.” “You haven’t lately.”

He reached out and gently took her hand. “I stopped saying it out loud, but I didn’t stop thinking it. Not for a second.”

She didn’t respond right away. But her hand didn’t pull away either. She squeezed his fingers.

“Tell me why,” she said finally. “Tell me why you love me.”

He blinked, surprised. “You want me to—”

“Yes. Just… say it. Not in your head. Not on paper.”

So he did.

“I love the way you take your tea like it’s a ritual. The way you can’t pass a dog without greeting it like an old friend. I love that you cry during commercials. I love how you remember birthdays—not just mine, but Rosie’s, and my cousin’s, and that grumpy neighbor from three flats down.”

She was smiling now, eyes wide and wet.

“I love the way your hands shake when you’re angry. I love that you always pick the ugliest wrapping paper because you say ‘no one wants a gift to look intimidating.’ I love how your laugh sounds when you’re not trying to hide it.”

He leaned in. “I love that even when you’re mad at me—even when I deserve it—you still make me tea. You still wait for me to come home.”

Tears slipped down her cheeks, and he wiped one away with his thumb.

“You’re my Sunshine,” he whispered. “Even when I’m the storm.”

She didn’t say anything, not for a long time. She just looked at him like she was trying to memorize the moment.

Then she kissed him.

Soft. Long. Forgiving.

When they pulled apart, she rested her forehead against his.

“You’re not easy to love,” she said gently. “But neither am I. So maybe we make it work by not giving up on each other.”

Harry nodded. “Deal.”

She got up and fetched a blanket from the armchair, then returned to the couch and nestled into his side, pulling the blanket over them both. He wrapped his arms around her, and she rested her head against his shoulder. They sat there in the hush of their little flat, the city muffled outside, the bouquet fresh and full on the table. The tea cooled. The silence no longer felt like a punishment, but a peace.

Eventually, she spoke again. “You’re staying tonight.” It wasn’t a question. He kissed the top of her head. “I never wanted to leave.” She smiled, eyes closed. “Then don’t.”

It had been eleven months and thirteen days since Harry had knocked on her door with a bouquet in hand and fear in his chest. Since then, he had knocked in many other ways—small gestures, gentle questions, staying when it was easier to leave. And she had opened the door every time.

They had learned each other’s silences.

They had also learned that love didn’t mean never raising your voice. It meant raising it and still sitting down to dinner after. It meant apologizing—not just once, but every time it mattered.

Now, the quiet between them was safe. It didn’t carry weight. It allowed space.

On an early Sunday morning, with sunlight leaking across the bedroom floor like spilled honey, Harry woke before her. He always did, now. She liked to sleep in, curled around one of the throw pillows, her breathing deep and even. He had once told her she looked like a painting then—untouchable, timeless—and she had laughed, then kissed his forehead and said, “Stop being poetic and bring me coffee.”

Today, he didn’t bring coffee.

He just watched her. Her hair spread out on the pillow. That little line between her brows that always softened when she dreamed. Her wide eyes were closed, but he could still see every memory they held.

They had moved in together in April, after weeks of casually forgetting to leave each other’s flats. A plant here. A sweater there. Eventually, Harry had brought over his books and said, “So, should I just… stop pretending I live somewhere else?”

She’d only nodded and handed him a drawer.

———

Now, their flat was filled with mismatched mugs, framed movie posters, and soft blankets she insisted he didn’t need but secretly loved. The coffee table still had that dent from the time they tried to assemble a bookshelf while drinking wine. Neither of them had the heart to replace it.

He shifted slightly, brushing a loose strand of hair from her face. She stirred.

“Mm. What time is it?”

“Too early for real humans.”

“Mmmph,” she muttered, burrowing into the pillow. “You’re a menace.”

He smiled. “I know. Want coffee?”

“Only if you deliver it with a kiss.”

“I was planning to do that anyway.”

Later, after breakfast—eggs slightly overcooked, toast a bit burnt but enthusiastically buttered—they sat on the fire escape with their mugs. The city moved gently around them, like a cat stretching in sun. Pigeons waddled across the roof nearby. A child laughed somewhere down the block.

Harry nudged her foot with his.

“Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been thinking.”

“Dangerous,” she teased, sipping her coffee.

He grinned. “Yeah. Still. I’ve been thinking… we’re good, right?”

She looked at him, really looked. Not just at his face, but into it. His eyes still held the same green warmth, the same flicker of self-doubt. But there was something steadier now, too.

“We’re better than good,” she said softly.

“I still think about that night.”

She nodded. “Me too.”

“I think about how close I came to screwing it all up.”

“You did screw it up,” she said with a smile. “But you fixed it.”

“I’m going to mess up again. Eventually.”

“I know,” she said. “So will I.”

There was a pause, not awkward but sacred.

“I’m not scared like I used to be,” he added. “Of being known.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder. “That’s what love does. It drags you into the light.”

They stayed there a while, the city humming gently around them.

———

But of course, life isn’t just lazy Sundays and kisses over toast. Three months later, they fought again. It was stupid. It always was. A forgotten dinner plan. A careless joke. A tired comment. This time, it hit differently. He had been working late. She had been waiting. And when he came home, phone dead, her face was pale and furious.

“You said you’d be home by eight.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I lost track of time—”

“You always lose track of time, Harry. You lose track of me.”

That did it. Something flared inside him, old and defensive.

“That’s not fair.”

“What’s not fair is sitting at a table for an hour, checking my phone every five minutes like an idiot.”

Her voice broke at the end, and it felt like being stabbed with a spoon: dull but deep. He wanted to defend himself. To tell her she was overreacting. That he had work. That he was trying. But instead, he took a breath. A slow, painful breath.

“I should’ve called,” he said. “Even just a text. I’m sorry.”

She blinked. Surprised.

“I didn’t mean to make you feel like that,” he added. “You waited for me, and I didn’t show up. I get it. That sucks.” The anger in her face melted into hurt, then into something softer.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “For not making me feel crazy.”

“You’re not crazy,” he said. “You’re just in love with someone who sometimes disappears in his own head.” She walked over and wrapped her arms around him, forehead pressed to his chest.

“Don’t disappear,” she whispered.

“I won’t. Not again.” They held each other. No one said anything for a long time. Eventually, he pulled back and looked at her.

“I’ve got something,” he said, fumbling in his pocket. She raised an eyebrow. “If this is a snack, I forgive you forever.”

He laughed nervously.

It wasn’t a snack.

It was a small box.

Not velvet. Not perfect. But very, very Harry.

Her wide eyes locked onto his, and suddenly the air went still.

“I’m not asking now,” he said quickly. “I just… I wanted to show you. That I’m thinking about it. That I’m not going anywhere.” She stared at the box, then at him. Her mouth parted slightly, and her eyes shimmered.

“You’re serious?”

“I’ve never been more.”

She took the box, didn’t open it. Just held it close.

“Okay,” she said, voice shaking.

“Okay?”

She smiled. “Ask me when it’s raining. You know I love the rain.”

“Deal,” he whispered.

And just like that, they were them again.

———

It was raining on a Tuesday. Not the kind of soft drizzle that painted windows, but the full-hearted kind that danced on rooftops and overflowed gutters. Sunshine had always said it was her favorite weather—“the world washing itself clean,” she once called it. Harry stood under the awning of their corner café, holding a paper bag with two still-warm pastries and a takeaway coffee that was already beginning to cool in his hand. He watched the raindrops splatter against the sidewalk, his thumb running over the edge of the small box in his coat pocket. She was late. Not unusually so—she got distracted by bookstores, pigeons, buskers. Life itself. That’s what he loved about her. He didn’t plan to do it today. He had imagined candles or a violinist. Maybe even a beach trip. But now, watching the storm rage on and feeling that ache in his chest, he couldn’t wait anymore. She came into view through the blur of falling water. Hair drenched, cardigan clinging to her frame, cheeks flushed. She ran the last few feet and ducked under the awning with a breathless laugh.

“You’re soaked,” Harry said.

“So are you.”

“Not as beautifully.”

She rolled her eyes. “Stop flirting with me, I’m a taken woman.”

“Are you?”

She looked up. Confused, then curious.

Harry pulled the box from his pocket and got down on one knee—still under the awning, but the wetness of the rain found his knees anyway.

She gasped. Hands to her face. Tears already mixing with raindrops on her cheeks.

“I love you in every storm,” he said. “Every fight, every silence, every morning-after. I love you in the quiet. I love you in the thunder. And I want to love you for every tomorrow I’m lucky enough to get.”

He opened the box.

“So,” he whispered. “Will you be my forever Sunshine?”

She couldn’t speak at first. Just nodded. And then, “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

He slid the ring on her finger, and she tackled him in a hug so forceful they both ended up in the rain, soaked to the skin and laughing. He kissed her like they hadn’t already lived a hundred lifetimes together. And in that kiss, they wrote the first word of their forever.

___

Mornings in the house were loud before they were bright.

It usually started with Theo—now seven—thudding down the hall like a boy with very important missions. Today, it was “rescuing” his stuffed astronaut from under the couch, where it had fallen during a daring space mission the night before. Rowan, five and full of opinions, followed closely behind with a superhero cape and a suspiciously sticky face. He believed in dragons, didn’t trust cucumbers, and routinely tried to convince June to call him “Captain Danger. June, now two, was the chaos personified. A tiny hurricane in mismatched socks, she could destroy a bookshelf in 30 seconds and had the most angelic laugh doing it. Her vocabulary included “no,” “mine,” and “more toast,” with equal intensity. Harry stood in the kitchen, hair messy, making pancakes with one hand and pouring orange juice with the other. Sunshine leaned against the counter, sipping coffee, smiling at the controlled madness. The radio played quietly in the background, some old jazz tune that Harry swore they danced to once in Paris.

“Dad, Rowan said I can’t be on the moon crew!” Theo shouted from the living room.

“You ate the moon, Theo!” Rowan shouted back.

“I was hungry!”

His sunshine sighed into her mug. “You get Theo, I’ll get Rowan.”

“Deal.”

They moved through their morning choreography with a grace that only came from years of repetition and love. Breakfast, lost socks, forgotten library books. Kisses on foreheads. Hairbrushes wrestling with curls. Juice spills. Laughter. Screams. Apologies. Do-overs. Sometimes, Harry stood in the hallway and just watched it all—like a man seeing color for the first time. Later that day, while June napped and the boys built a fort out of blankets and ambition, Sunshine found Harry on the back steps, sketching in a notebook.

He looked up. “I drew the house again.”

“You always draw the house.”

“I like drawing what I never thought I’d have.”

She sat beside him, legs tucked under herself. “It’s messy.”

“It’s beautiful,” he said.

They didn’t speak for a while. The sun dipped low, and the shadows of the trees danced across the yard. Inside, the boys’ fort collapsed, followed by laughter. June stirred on the baby monitor, murmuring nonsense in her sleep.

Sunshine smiled. “We did okay, didn’t we?”

Harry looked at her. At the lines by her eyes that hadn’t been there ten years ago. At the strength in her. The grace.

“We did better than okay,” he said. “We made a universe.”

———

Years passed.

The boys grew taller. Their shoes got bigger. Theo became quiet and thoughtful, always with a book or sketchpad in hand. Rowan stayed bold and loud, but grew gentler in the way he held his little sister’s hand when she was scared. June grew up fast. Too fast. She wore her mother’s old cardigans, her father’s smile. She sang to herself in the garden and kept a diary full of little poems.

And then one day, the house was quiet again.

Theo left first—for university, then a gap year in Japan. Rowan went a year later, chasing music and something wild in his bones. June lingered, the last flicker of childhood in the halls, before she, too, packed a suitcase and kissed them both goodbye at the train station. Harry and Sunshine stood on the platform holding hands, watching their youngest daughter wave from the window. When the train disappeared around the bend, Sunshine whispered, “It’s quiet again.” Harry kissed her temple. “But not empty.”

———

They bought the cottage a year later.

Tucked in the countryside, it had ivy on the walls and windows that caught the golden light just right. The garden was overgrown when they moved in, but Sunshine loved the wildness of it. “It feels honest,” she said. Inside, it smelled of lavender and old wood. The fireplace crackled in the evenings, and the bookshelves groaned with their history. Every corner was filled with something from their life together—a framed drawing Theo made at ten, Rowan’s first guitar, one of June’s early poems scrawled in blue ink and pinned to the fridge. There was a bench out front, just under the tree that bloomed too early each spring. Harry sat there most mornings with his coffee, wrapped in a sweater Sunshine had knitted years ago. She would join him soon after, bringing a second mug and a knowing smile. One morning, he looked over at her as she read her book, feet tucked under her, glasses sliding down her nose.

“Do you remember the rainy day?”

She looked up. “Which one?”

“The one with the pastries. The one where I finally asked.”

She laughed softly. “You were so nervous.”

“I still am.”

She reached out and took his hand.

“You don’t need to ask anymore,” she whispered. “You already have everything you need.”

They sat in silence for a while. Birds chirped. A breeze rustled the leaves.

Eventually, she rested her head on his shoulder.

“You know,” she said sleepily, “one day the kids will bring their kids here. This house is going to hold so many more stories.”

Harry smiled, eyes wet.

“I hope they find the love in the walls.”

“They will,” she whispered. “It’s in everything.”

———

When the world slowed even more, when days passed with the rhythm of the wind and evenings melted into starlight, Harry and Sunshine stayed side by side—just as they always had. He never stopped calling her Sunshine. And even in the quietest moments, when no one else was around, he would still reach for her hand and whisper,

“You’re still my favorite forever.”

And she would answer, always,

“I was yours before you even asked.”

#harry styles #harry styles x reader #harry styles x you #angst #one direction #1d #1direction #harry 1d #fem!reader #fine line #harry styles fic #harry styles fanfiction

320 notes · View notes