1reooolll

[1reooolll]

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🌬️ “In the House on the Hill Where Time Forgot” — A Sunday x Reader Fluff AU

Setting: A gentle AU where Sunday is no longer involved in interstellar politics. Instead, he’s a quiet antique bookshop owner in a quaint, sleepy town where the world moves slower, and time seems to bend around the warmth of shared tea and half-whispered affections.

You arrived in town on a Wednesday.

It wasn’t raining, but it wasn’t sunny either—one of those in-between days where the sky is a pale blue-grey and the air is filled with the scent of stories waiting to be told. You came on the morning train with nothing but your suitcase and the address scribbled on a slip of parchment paper: “Sunday’s Attic — Bookshop & Curios.”

You were meant to be there temporarily. Just a season, just a sabbatical, just enough time to escape the noise and find yourself again.

You hadn’t expected him.

The shop was nestled at the end of a cobblestone lane, half-sunken in ivy, with hand-painted window signs and a bell that chimed like a cathedral when you pushed the door open. The scent hit you immediately—old paper, polished wood, a hint of bergamot, and something soft like lavender. It smelled like memory.

And behind the counter, Sunday.

He didn’t look up at first. Long, delicate fingers trailed across the spine of a cloth-bound book, his lips moving silently—reading, reciting, remembering. You noticed the silver cuff at his ear first, then the sweep of his lavender-pink hair, and finally, the eyes—warm and endless, like someone who had seen too much and still chose kindness anyway.

“Welcome,” he said, without needing to look. “You’re right on time.”

You started working at the shop the next day.

It was a quiet rhythm. Sunday never asked questions he already knew the answers to, and he seemed to already know everything about you—your favorite tea (white rose), the way you alphabetized books (first by author, then by title), the way you paused at the foot of the spiral staircase that led to the attic above.

“Most people don’t notice it,” he said one morning, as you stared again at the oddly glimmering banister. “The staircase. Only those who are meant to.”

Meant to what? You didn’t ask. He always gave you the space to discover things on your own.

The attic, when you finally braved it, wasn’t dusty at all. It was filled with warm afternoon light, cozy quilts, constellations hand-drawn on the ceiling in silver paint, and a telescope that hummed gently when you touched it.

That was where you learned Sunday didn’t sleep much. Or perhaps he didn’t need to.

You’d find him there some nights, wrapped in his robe with a teacup balanced on one knee, scribbling poetry into an old journal, humming lullabies in languages long forgotten. He always looked up when you came in. And he always saved you the sun-warmed chair beside him.

You fell in love slowly, like the way ink bleeds into paper.

It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t loud. It was in the way he remembered your favorite bookmark, always placing it between the pages of a new arrival before you even asked.

It was in the way he touched your shoulder lightly whenever you passed behind him, grounding you, as if to say: I know you’re here.

It was in the way he called you by name like it was something rare, something fragile he was honored to hold.

“Time works differently here,” he said one night, when you were curled beside him on the attic floor, stargazing in silence. “We’re outside of the usual flow. This town, this house—us—we’re caught in a soft pocket. A lull. A breath.”

You nodded, not needing to understand the magic of it. Just needing him.

“Do you want to stay?” he asked, voice so soft it almost didn’t reach you.

You looked at him—really looked. At the delicate rings on his fingers, the way he held the porcelain teacup like it was an extension of himself, the way his lashes kissed his cheek when he blinked.

You didn’t answer in words.

You just took his hand.

And that was the first night he let you braid his hair.

Spring came like a slow symphony.

The town thawed. Flowers bloomed. And Sunday began teaching you things he’d never shown anyone else—how to recognize books that hummed with forgotten spells, how to read the stories hidden in teacup stains, how to trace the shape of someone’s soul by the way they dog-eared their pages.

He read you poetry. Not in grand recitations, but quietly, almost absentmindedly, while you shelved books together or made soup in the backroom kitchen.

And on your hundredth day, he kissed you.

It was after a thunderstorm, the two of you standing in the greenhouse behind the shop, barefoot, surrounded by blooming lavender and wet stone.

“I don’t know what I was before you,” he said, touching your cheek with a reverence usually reserved for sacred things. “But I know I’m something more now.”

You never left.

Not really. Time passed, but it passed gently. You grew older, but so did Sunday—gracefully, beautifully, like a willow tree beside an eternal stream.

The shop thrived. The staircase still only appeared to those who needed it. And on quiet mornings, you and Sunday still sat in the attic, drinking rose tea and writing in your matching journals, fingers brushing sometimes, eyes meeting always.

Because Sunday, in the end, wasn’t just a day of the week.

He was the lull between storms.

The stillness between heartbeats.

The warmth of memory made flesh.

And you were the one who stayed.