#Ghost Kitchen Marketing

[foodivsystems]

Maximize the success of your ghost kitchen with strategic marketing tips that will help enhance the visibility and appeal of your ghost kitchen in the competitive online food delivery landscape.

[nickgerlich]

Dining Virtually

The way we purchase food from restaurants has changed considerably in recent years. The standard dine-in or takeaway, and sometimes a pizza delivered to your doorstep, have been rattled by the arrival of third-party delivery services like Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub, and more. DoorDash leads the roster with 66% market share.

But it is not just delivery that has changed the landscape, all fueled by mobile apps and digital marketing. Restaurants have added their own twist to the saga with virtual brands. These show up on apps as nearby restaurants, but you would be hard-pressed to find them in real life, because there are no signs announcing their presence.

No, they exist only online and in a kitchen known by a different name.

Many of the big chains are doing it, like Chili’s (Brinker), Hooters, Outback (Bloomin’ Brands), Applebee’s, and Wingstop. Even children’s party palace Chuck E. Cheese does it, with their Pasqually’s Pizza.Imagine learning the next day that the pizza you had delivered last night actually came from Chuck E. Cheese. Yuck.

Denny’s has also ventured into these waters with Banda Burrito, The Melt Down, and The Burger Den. And now it has inked a deal with third-party facilitator The Franklin Group to expand these concepts across 250 franchisees in the Denny’s system.

To be fair, there has been a small shakeout in the virtual brands sector of late, with Red Robin terminating its concepts and sticking solely to its main brand. But that is not unusual in any industry for weaker concepts to be shed, and new ones to replace them.

Virtual brands allow a restaurant chain to make better use of under-utilized facilities, especially during parts of the day in which customer traffic may sag. Having complementary products can help fill out those peaks and valleys.

They also allow restaurants to test new menu items or concepts, as well as serve different markets. But in many cases, the product is pretty much the same as if you went to Hooters or Chili’s. It’s just in a different package.

Some might consider it disingenuous, even misleading, for a restaurant to employ virtual brands. Essentially, it could be considered as smoke and mirrors, and perhaps problematic if different pricing strategies are used for identical products. Imagine if CPG (consumer packaged goods) companies did that. There would be riots.

The range of food items falling into the virtual brands category is somewhat narrow, typically limited to pizzas, burgers, and wings. These travel well with readily available packaging. While the courier services will attempt to deliver just about anything—including menu items that might seep, spill, or swish around en route—it just makes matters easier if there is some standardization.

Virtual brands are not to be confused with ghost kitchens, although there could be an overlap in some instances. Essentially, a ghost kitchen is a commercial-grade kitchen at which multiple brands are prepared on shared facilities. There are variations on this as well, such as the one in Atlanta owned by Inspire Brands, and featuring the brands under its corporate umbrella, including Arby’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Jimmy John’s, and Sonic Drive-In. DoorDash also owns ghost kitchens, which it typically leases to local mom-and-pop operators, and with whom it has exclusive delivery rights.

And if you are wondering, a food hall is kind of the same concept as a ghost kitchen, with shared food prep facilities among numerous small food service operators. It’s just that it is all visible to consumers.

Meanwhile, virtual brands continue to proliferate, much like craft breweries. They satisfy our urgings for something different. In the case of Denny’s and its burrito, burger, and patty melt brands, the food may be much the same as what you would order off the standard menu, but at least it sounds different.

You just didn’t know it. Until now.

Dr “Virtually Right” Gerlich

Audio Blog

[nmsc-market-pulse]

Virtual Restaurant & Ghost Kitchens Market: Revolutionizing the Future of Dining

According to the study by Next Move Strategy Consulting, the global Virtual Restaurant & Ghost Kitchens Market size is predicted to reach USD 155.54 billion with a CAGR of 13.20% by 2030. This staggering projection underscores the transformative potential of virtual dining concepts in reshaping the culinary landscape.

Request a FREE sample, here: https://www.nextmsc.com/virtual-restaurant-and-ghost-kitchens-market/request-sample

In an era marked by evolving consumer preferences and technological advancements, virtual restaurants and ghost kitchens have emerged as disruptive forces revolutionizing the way people experience dining.

The Evolution of Dining:

Traditional dining experiences are undergoing a paradigm shift, driven by factors such as urbanization, changing lifestyles, and the rise of digital technology. Consumers increasingly seek convenience, variety, and affordability in their dining choices, prompting the proliferation of virtual restaurant and ghost kitchen concepts. These innovative models leverage technology to streamline operations, optimize efficiency, and enhance the overall dining experience.

Understanding Virtual Restaurants and Ghost Kitchens:

Virtual restaurants, also known as cloud kitchens or virtual kitchens, operate exclusively through online platforms without physical storefronts. They focus on delivery and takeout services, catering to the growing demand for convenient dining options. Ghost kitchens, on the other hand, are centralized facilities designed for food production, serving multiple virtual restaurant brands. These kitchens eliminate the need for traditional brick-and-mortar locations, allowing for cost savings and greater flexibility in menu offerings.

The Impact on Culinary Entrepreneurship:

Virtual restaurant and ghost kitchen models have democratized entry into the food industry, enabling aspiring chefs and entrepreneurs to launch innovative culinary concepts with minimal investment. By eliminating the overhead costs associated with traditional restaurants, such as rent and utilities, virtual operators can allocate resources towards food quality, branding, and marketing efforts. This accessibility has fueled a surge in culinary creativity and entrepreneurship, leading to a diverse array of dining options for consumers.

Enhancing Customer Experience:

One of the key advantages of virtual dining concepts is their ability to personalize and optimize the customer experience. Through data analytics and digital platforms, operators can gather valuable insights into consumer preferences, ordering habits, and feedback. This information allows for targeted marketing campaigns, menu customization, and continuous improvement in service quality. Additionally, virtual restaurants and ghost kitchens offer convenience through quick and efficient delivery services, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Navigating Challenges and Opportunities:

While virtual restaurant and ghost kitchen models offer numerous benefits, they also present unique challenges. Operational efficiency, food safety regulations, and competition are among the factors that operators must navigate to succeed in this competitive landscape. However, with the right strategies and technologies in place, these challenges can be overcome, paving the way for sustainable growth and profitability. Moreover, the ongoing digitalization of the food industry presents exciting opportunities for innovation and expansion in virtual dining concepts.

Expanding on Operational Efficiency:

Operational efficiency is paramount in the success of virtual restaurants and ghost kitchens. These models rely heavily on streamlined processes and optimized workflows to meet the demands of a rapidly growing market. By leveraging technology solutions such as kitchen management software, inventory management systems, and route optimization algorithms, operators can minimize waste, reduce costs, and improve overall efficiency. Additionally, automation and robotics play a crucial role in enhancing production processes, ensuring consistency, and scalability in food preparation.

Inquire before buying, here: https://www.nextmsc.com/virtual-restaurant-and-ghost-kitchens-market/inquire-before-buying

Ensuring Food Safety and Compliance:

Maintaining food safety standards and regulatory compliance is essential for virtual restaurant and ghost kitchen operators. With the absence of direct customer interaction in traditional dining settings, ensuring the integrity and safety of food products during storage, preparation, and delivery becomes paramount. Operators must adhere to strict hygiene practices, temperature controls, and sanitation protocols to mitigate the risk of foodborne illnesses and ensure customer satisfaction. Moreover, compliance with local health regulations and licensing requirements is essential for operating legally and building trust with consumers.

Competing in a Crowded Market:

As the virtual restaurant and ghost kitchens market continues to expand, competition among operators intensifies. To stand out in a crowded marketplace, operators must differentiate their offerings through unique culinary concepts, high-quality ingredients, and exceptional customer service. Building a strong brand identity and establishing a loyal customer base are critical for long-term success. Moreover, embracing innovation and staying abreast of market trends enable operators to adapt to evolving consumer preferences and stay ahead of the competition.

Harnessing the Power of Data Analytics:

Data analytics plays a pivotal role in driving growth and innovation in the virtual restaurant and ghost kitchens market. By analyzing customer data, order patterns, and market trends, operators can gain valuable insights into consumer behavior and preferences. This information enables targeted marketing campaigns, menu optimization, and strategic decision-making. Additionally, predictive analytics and machine learning algorithms can help forecast demand, optimize inventory levels, and enhance operational efficiency. By harnessing the power of data, operators can unlock new opportunities for growth and profitability in the competitive landscape.

Embracing Sustainability and Social Responsibility:

In an era marked by growing environmental consciousness and social responsibility, sustainability is becoming increasingly important for virtual restaurant and ghost kitchen operators. By sourcing locally grown ingredients, reducing food waste, and implementing eco-friendly packaging solutions, operators can minimize their environmental footprint and appeal to socially conscious consumers. Moreover, initiatives such as food donation programs and community outreach efforts demonstrate a commitment to giving back and fostering positive change in the communities they serve. By embracing sustainability and social responsibility, operators can not only attract environmentally conscious consumers but also contribute to a more sustainable future.

Conclusion:

The Virtual Restaurant & Ghost Kitchens Market is poised to revolutionize the future of dining, offering unparalleled convenience, choice, and affordability to consumers worldwide. With continued technological advancements and evolving consumer preferences, virtual dining concepts will play an increasingly prominent role in the culinary landscape.

By embracing innovation, entrepreneurship, and customer-centric strategies, stakeholders can harness the full potential of this dynamic market, shaping the future of dining for years to come. As the industry continues to evolve, operators must remain agile, adaptable, and committed to delivering exceptional dining experiences that delight customers and drive long-term success in the ever-changing landscape of virtual dining.

[fairfieldmarketreports]

Ghost Kitchen Market Poised for Tremendous Growth as Online Food Ordering Soars

The global ghost kitchen market is experiencing rapid growth, driven by the increasing shift towards online food ordering. With hectic lifestyles and evolving consumer preferences, purchasing food via online channels has become increasingly important. Ghost kitchens, as a core component of the food delivery system, are poised to capitalize on this trend and unlock substantial growth opportunities. The market is projected to become a trillion-dollar opportunity by 2030, with notable consumer shifts towards the food delivery trend.

Access Full Report:https://www.fairfieldmarketresearch.com/report/ghost-kitchen-market

Ghost kitchens, also known as virtual kitchens, offer restaurateurs the flexibility and scalability to expand their delivery footprint with minimal upfront investments. These kitchens operate without the need for traditional brick-and-mortar establishments, making them more convenient and cost-effective. As the global ghost kitchen market continues to grow, key players are expected to collaborate and drive innovation to meet the evolving demands of consumers.

Burgers and sandwiches have emerged as the most popular food items in the ghost kitchen market, accounting for a significant share of approximately 40%-42% of market revenue in 2021. The robust uptake of burgers, particularly in North America, has been a driving force behind the growth of this segment. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports that Americans consume an average of 2.4 burgers per day, resulting in the consumption of 50 billion burgers annually in the region.

In terms of end-users, the food service segment holds a substantial share in the ghost kitchen market. The availability and accessibility of online food delivery apps have contributed to the growth of this segment. With the development of next-generation technologies, new apps are being introduced to facilitate intercity deliveries, enabling famous restaurants to deliver food across cities. The Asia Pacific region is expected to hold a significant share in the ghost kitchen market, driven by the growing consumer propensity to purchase food via online delivery apps in countries such as India and China.

Leading participants in the global ghost kitchen market include United Kitchen, Rebel Foods, ShoppinPal, Posist Technologies, Kitopi, Oracle, Ghost Kitchen Orlando, DoorDash Kitchens, and Uengage Services Pvt Ltd. These market players are investing in research and development activities to expand their portfolios and stay ahead of the competition. Strategic initiatives such as contractual agreements, increased investments, new product launches, mergers and acquisitions, and collaborations are key focus areas for these players.

Recent notable developments in the ghost kitchen market include Zuul's introduction of a new service that enables simultaneous delivery of orders to both business buildings and residential complexes, known as the virtual food hall channel. Ghost Kitchens India Pvt Ltd, an online restaurant technology platform, inaugurated its 100th fulfillment partner in Bharuch, Gujarat, marking its expansion in the Indian market.

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[f1byjessie]

SUGAR, SPICE, AND EVERYTHING NICE ━━ FA14.

being the wife to a formula one driver is hard, especially when they're far away.

( fernando alonso x wife!reader )

━━ one shot.

When you were ten, you baked with your grandmother for the first time and fell in love. With the flour up to your elbows, an apron two sizes too big looped twice around your waist, and your grandmother's sweet voice crooning along to Sergio Endrigo, she taught you the differences between a teaspoon and a tablespoon, that a pinch sometimes means two, and when it comes to cinnamon you can never have too much.

“My angioletto,” she called you, her little angel, “it doesn’t have to look pretty when it’s done. When I was younger, I made my husband, your nonno, the ugliest cookies you could imagine. But I put my love in it, and he loved me very much, and he ate every single one and for the rest of his years claimed they were the best cookies I ever made for him.”

She’d lifted you onto the stool at the counter, so you could peer down at the mangled mess of cinnamon rolls. “It may look odd on the outside, but it is just as delicious as the others, and you know what? It’s even more special because it was made by my granddaughter.”

She’d wrapped you up in her arms then, pressing a kiss to your forehead and laughing loudly and warmly when you tried to squirm out of her arms with a giggle of your own.

“One day, my angioletto, you will find someone who loves you with their entire heart, and it won’t matter how pretty your baking is, because they will eat it, and to them it will taste like heaven.” She’d pulled apart the cinnamon roll, looked you in the eye, and smiled— “Until that someone gets here, I will stand in.”

You ate the whole pan together, and neither of you cared that it ruined your appetite for supper or gave you a stomach ache a little while later.

She’d driven you home that night after the sun had set, and when you got to the little shop on the corner of the market square, a little storefront overgrown with ivy, she’d slowed to a cruise and pointed out where the old sign used to be— where there was just an off-color splotch where the walls around it had been bleached by the sun.

She had regaled you with another story of her time as a girl in the kitchen baking bread with the owner, as she did every morning before school in exchange for a few dollars a month, and then she told you, as she always did, that one day she’d buy it for herself and turn it back into the best bakery Italy had ever seen.

When you were twenty— a law school dropout, struggling to find your place in a world that didn’t seem to have any room for you— you bought the small shop on the corner of the market square, turned it into a bakery, and named it after your grandmother.

It was all on a whim, a result of what you're pretty sure was some quarter-life crisis brought on by feeling as lost as you were. Still, you were living out the lingering ghost of a pipe dream from your teenage years that your father's harsh words and mother's disapproval had shattered to pieces, and following in the footsteps of the woman who inspired your passion for creation.

You’re nearly thirty now, and you still don’t regret buying the bakery. It’s your home away from home now— your home when your heart is halfway around the world and waking up as you go to bed. You love what you do, and you feel grateful that you’ve lucked out in being able to spend your days doing something that makes you so genuinely happy.

But that doesn’t mean that every day is easy.

Today is one of those hard days. Valentine’s Day is just a week away which means orders are coming in like crazy, and on top of the hecticness it’s also the thirteenth anniversary of your grandmother’s passing. Even though you’ve made it these thirteen years without her, the reminder of her legacy— her dream, which you now live for her— is no easier to deal with now than it was all those years ago when you’d just lost her.

The smell of fresh bread from the kitchen and the deep lull of Sergio Endrigo over the bakery’s speakers do nothing but remind you of her and the afternoons you spent in her kitchen, kneading dough and icing cookies. You feel like a little girl again, laughing over old stories of your mother and flushing bright red when she’d bump her hip against yours and ask if there were any boys at school that had caught your eye.

You’d give anything to hear her talk about her days at the bakery one more time, have her guide you through another recipe, or listen to her sing along to old Italian classics.

“Are you okay, Y/N?” Beatrice asks. She’s a young American woman you met a few years back when she was studying abroad. She hadn’t known much Italian back then, and you were the first person she’d met who could speak English, so she’d asked you for directions to the nearest bus station and you had walked her there to make sure she wouldn’t get lost, which had led to you both talking, trading contact information, and eventually you offering her a job at the bakery when she announced to you months later after continued talking that she’d be staying for the foreseeable future.

You wipe your hands against your apron and offer her a smile. It doesn’t come as easily as it normally does, and you feel like it shows. “Just being a bit nostalgic today,” you admit, turning your gaze to the picture of your grandmother that hangs on the wall across from the display case.

There are other pictures hung up with her— you in front of the bakery on the day you bought it, the bakery back when your grandmother still worked there nearly sixty years ago, you and your husband the day you got married, and Beatrice with her three dogs to list a few, all things and places and people you love and want to remember.

“My grandmother, who I named this place after, have I ever told you about her?”

Beatrice hums, thinking back to the many conversations you have both shared you imagine. As she does so, she reaches for a cloth to start wiping down the front of the display case. “I don’t think so,” she finally answers, rounding the counter to the glass front. “I knew the bakery was named after her, and that she taught you to bake, but not much else. You don’t really talk about her much.”

You frown, “I guess I don’t.”

“But it’s okay,” Beatrice adds quickly. “I know family can be a touchy topic. If you’d rather not talk about her, I understand. I’m not very fond of talking about my brother, to be honest.”

The only time Beatrice does talk about her brother is when she’s drunk, which she usually tends to be when the two of you sit down over a bottle of wine and gossip about the happenings of your lives. You’ve heard plenty of stories about him, and thinking back to the most recent one in particular startles a laugh out of you.

Beatrice seems relieved when you glance back over to her with a soft smile.

“My grandmother was the greatest woman I ever knew,” you start. “Do you mind if I talk about her?”

Your employee— your friend— smiles gently at you and continues polishing away the smudges on the display case. “I would love it if you talked about her.

“She used to call me her little angel…”

INSTAGRAM.

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yourusername i’ll leave a piece just for you, nonna.

view all 813 comments

user that looks delicious!!

user it’s actually my dream to visit y/n’s bakery 😍

↳ user no cuz literally same, idk anyone else who makes smth as simple as bread look so amazing

↳ user it’s like how irl some foods don’t look that good but somehow in cartoons they make it look like it’s the most appetizing thing in the entire world i would actually cut off my own arm and leg just to get to try a single bite

user così carino!! ❤️❤️

user how is it possible to make food look heavenly 😳

user every time she posts food it makes me want to marry a husband that can bake bc there’s no way i could ever do this myself but i do in fact want to live a life like this so very badly

↳ user FELT THIS OMG

user what a beautiful way to remember someone 🫶

user she’s gorgeous aND SHE CAN BAKE???

↳ user she’s really the most wag of all wags 😩

↳ user fell down a rabbit hole of wag interactions throughout the years and y/n’s introduction into the group is so iconic bc she baked them all cookies and brought them when she first met them all

↳ user i read that in an interview that she knows all their favourites and tries to make them all throughout the season when she goes to races

↳ user she’s actually such a sweetheart irl too, i visited the bakery before i ever knew who she was or what f1 is and if i hadn’t already seen that ring on her finger i would’ve shot my shot no joke 😔😔

↳ user what’s alonso’s secret??? where can i find me a wifey like that???

user this is gorgeous

user using food to celebrate a loved one is one of the most loving things a person can do in my opinion. so much love goes into food, but especially baked goods which take time and patience and practice. this is a really touching and beautiful way to honor someone, and i hope she’s watching down on you and thinking the same thing ❤️

↳ user didn’t think i was gonna be crying today but here we are ig 😭

fernandoalo_oficial mi vida, she would be so proud of you 💛

↳ yourusername i hope so, i am who i am because of her 💛

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tagged: fernandoalo_oficial

yourusername arrivederci 💛

view all 1,397 comments

fernandoalo_oficial and may it be soon, mi vida 💛

user obsessed with the way fernando is obsessed with his wife

↳ user the fact that he calls her mi vida every time he addresses her has me walking into oncoming traffic 🙃

↳ user “my life” in spanish 😭😭 i literally fucking can’t when is it my turn to get a man that loves and cherishes me like this

↳ user honestly i think it’s just time to accept we’ll be alone forever cuz if he don’t treat me the way fernando treats his wife then i don’t want him

user for the ppl asking, arrivederci means until we meet again in italian, it’s a pretty common way to say goodbye in italy

↳ user AND FERNANDO SAID AND MAY IT BE SOON OH I AM ILL

user when will he return from the war…

↳ user it’s only february the season hasn’t even started yet so why isn’t he with her??

↳ user aston martin’s hq is in the uk and fernando has to be there for the car reveal, testing/sims, training, promo content, etc. it’s the logistical pr side of formula 1 that makes the season start a lot earlier than what ppl might think

↳ user AND OVER VALENTINE’S DAY TOO??? 😭😭😭😭

user mama y papa

user i want to grow old with someone and have pictures of our vacations to look back on and remember and i don’t think that’s too much to ask for

user she’s posting like he’s dead or smth 💀

↳ user i mean i would be too if my husband was missing valentines day bc of work tbf 🤷‍♀️

user i can’t believe fernando alonso bagged a baddie who ain’t even 30 yet

↳ user i can have you SEEN fernando alonso?? 👀👀👀

↳ user have you SEEN y/n?? 👀👀👀

↳ user two baddies bagged each other guys there’s not a lot to try and comprehend

Fernando being gone has never really mattered to you much. You miss him, of course. He’s your husband and ideally, you would be able to travel the world with him on a whim without needing to worry about who’s in charge of the bakery, but despite how perfect your life seems with Fernando by your side, there are a lot of things that don’t go according to plan and Fernando’s hectic work schedule is one of them.

The constant traveling across the season is exhausting for both of you, even though you’re not the one doing the majority of it. You attend his races when you can— usually when Beatrice forces you to, which is more and more recently as of late, with the logic that you should get the chance to see the world while you’re still young and while Fernando is still racing— but even when you’re home in Naples, the worry that you feel for Fernando as he flies around the world and races in a dangerous car takes its toll.

You wouldn’t even think of ever asking him to give it up, but not being by his side is hard and you cannot afford— for the sake of the bakery— to follow him wherever his sport takes him. So for now, you will always worry and stress about the toll it all takes on him as well.

You honestly hadn’t given much thought that he’d be missing Valentine’s Day this year, but it occurs to you now as you scroll through the comments on your post.

It’s by far the first time he’ll be gone for the holiday, but something about this year just feels different. Maybe it’s the stress of the extra workload you’ve taken on at the bakery to make up for the extra orders this year and the employees that have had to call out, or maybe the anniversary of your grandmother’s passing is hitting you harder this time than it has in the past, but whatever it is, the idea of Fernando not being here to celebrate with you has your eyes filling with tears as you sit curled up in bed.

Alone.

As you have been for the last few weeks now.

Fernando is in Silverstone, preparing for the launch of the new car and getting back into the swing of things before the new season starts, and this is part of the job you understand. You’ve been his wife for many years now. The racing may start in March, but the real season begins much sooner, and to a certain degree it never truly ends.

There’s always a push to be staying in shape, eating healthy, and staying up to date with all the up-and-coming news. Fernando has worked hard to try and find the middle ground, to enjoy his break while he has it, and take a step back from the Formula One world if only to de-stress from the sport’s particular brand of pressure.

And you’ve worked hard to accept that he will always be thinking like a race car driver.

Nonetheless, though you have enjoyed the interview clips and photographs of him being posted around on social media, and you love even more the pictures your husband’s teammate has been sending you and you alone, you can’t help but want to be selfish. You want to have him with you, in your home, cuddled up beside you instead of 1700 kilometers away in another country.

But that’s the way of things.

You’re about to turn off the lamp and, maybe, cry yourself to sleep while ignoring the very cold and very empty other half of a bed that’s too big for one— a bed you haven’t slept in the middle of since before you ever met Fernando, too used to occupying one side and finding another body on the other— when your phone lights up with an incoming call and his contact image flashes across your screen.

It’s late in Italy, nearing midnight now, and the UK isn’t too far behind. With the strictness of his daily schedule and the importance of a full night of rest, he should already be in bed by now. He should’ve already been in bed hours ago, if you remember correctly from past seasons.

“Fernando?”

“My love,” he greets, soft and sweet and sounding like just hearing you say his name has left him breathless. You can practically hear the smile in his voice. “I am sorry that it’s so late. I hope I did not wake you up, but I am calling because I simply could not bear to fall asleep without hearing you.”

You sniffle, wiping away at the tears in your eyes, but the quiet noise must’ve been enough for him to hear because he makes an inquisitive sound.

“Mi vida,” he calls to you, concern seeping into his words. “What is wrong? Are you okay?”

“Mhm,” you hum back to him, shifting around in bed to face the window and the scenic view that lies beyond. You can see the ocean from your home— the dark water pulling in and pushing out and glittering with the reflected light of the moon, and the boats docked at the marina, still, silent, asleep. The moon’s glow paints the cityscape in an ethereal haze, like something from a fairytale. “I’m okay. Just a bad few days. I miss you, Fernando.”

“I know, my love,” he coos. “But we will be together soon. Do you remember what I told you when I left?”

As if you could possibly forget. The morning he left, a fog had rolled in from the sea and you’d swathed yourself in a shawl to chase away the early, damp chill as you stood on the stoep to see him off.

Fernando had wrapped you up in his arms, an embrace so warm and safe that the feeling had lingered for hours afterward still, and he’d whispered in your ear that he would move mountain and sea to get back to you if you ever needed him.

“But I always need you,” you’d teased. He’d chuckled and pressed a gentle kiss to your lips, a promise, and then pulled you in even closer, tucking your head beneath his chin and letting his fingers run through your hair and comb through the remaining bedhead tangles.

You would similarly move earth and sky to be with him again now, just to feel his arms around you, or in the bed beside you.

“I meant what I said,” he says over the phone, drawing your attention back.

You hum again, “I know. But sweetheart, you have a job to do. It’s a very important job, too.” You curl the blankets around you tighter. “Pay no mind to my musings, okay? It’s just been a rocky start. The bakery has lots of orders to get through for Valentine’s Day, and I am short-staffed now.”

“What has happened?”

“What hasn’t?” You joke, heaving a sigh. “Rodrigo broke his hand in a biking accident this past Sunday, and the doctor says he’ll be out for a month at least. I can have him work the register and do minor cleaning chores, but we really need him in the kitchen because Andrea hasn’t yet been trained to use the equipment. I am trying to have Beatrice help with that, but it will take time we don’t have. On top of that, Samuel’s wife is having her baby so he has taken paternity leave, and Gemma has gone back to France for her mother’s birthday.”

Fernando makes a noise of understanding. “You are so stressed, mi vida. I wish there was more I could do. I am sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. You have no reason to. In fact, I should be thanking you because I’m feeling so much better just hearing your voice,” you answer. Feeling the tears dissipate as your husband’s joyous laughter trickles into your ear from the phone’s speaker.

“And I am better just hearing yours,” he says. “But I will leave you to sleep now. It’s too late for you to be awake. Te amo, mi esposa.”

“Ti amo, marito mio.”

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lance_stroll i’m really only here to take pictures for his wife

view all 4,964 comments

fernandoalo_oficial the heart is for her only

yourusername and i appreciate you very much for it lancino 🫶

↳ lance_stroll at least someone cares about the work i put in 😔

astonmartinf1 Breaking News: Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll challenges Aston Martin’s social media admin for their job

↳ lance_stroll thanks but i think i’ll stick to driving fast cars. it’s less stress.

user FERNANDO MAKING FINGER HEARTS FOR HIS WIFE 😭😭😭

user if you look closely you can actually see me about to jump off the roof in that last picture 🫠

↳ user real

user why is the first one so cute??

user lance is really just fernando and y/n’s kid at this point, he’s the disgruntled son who reluctantly takes pictures of his dad to send to his mom, and he complains about it, but he secretly loves doing it

↳ user i mean have you SEEN what y/n does for his birthday each year??

↳ user no????

↳ user she specifically learned how to make bannock and a bunch of other traditionally canadian desserts and baked goods for him

↳ user i bet lance’s trainer hates that lmao 😂😂

↳ user you all are talking about them like y/n isn’t just a few years older than lance himself is 💀

↳ user leave fernando and his controversially young wife alone

↳ user guys?? he’s literally only 42?? y/n is almost in her 30s, it could definitely be worse. at least they’re both well into adulthood

user nobody talk to me for the rest of the day this is all i can think about now

user HE MAKES LANCE TAKE PICTURES TO SEND TO HIS WIFE PLS OH MY DAYS

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fernandoalo_oficial throwback thursday, as they say, except it isn’t thursday and i just wanted a reason to post my beautiful wife. te amo 💛.

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yourusername i love you more mio carissimo 💛

↳ fernandoalo_oficial impossible, i love you the most

user adding “posts me just bc he can” to my list of standards for men

user SCREAMING CRYING SOBBING

user “just wanted a reason to post my beautiful wife” oh my god fernando alonso the man that you are… 😩😩

user guys he’s the blueprint

↳ user she’s so lucky

user WHEN IS IT MY TURN???? CAN I NOT BE HAPPY TOO????

user she’s actually so beautiful omg 😳😳😳

↳ user they’re such a power couple

↳ user super excited for y/n to be back in the paddock this year (fingers crossed it happens more) cuz she’s actually so stunning and her outfits are always very classy and fun to look at

↳ user is there a reason she doesn’t go to many races?? they don’t have kids iirc, so idk why she wouldn’t be able to attend more 🤔

↳ user she owns and runs a small bakery in italy, which means she can’t just travel for 9 months out of the year. she shows up when she’s able to, don’t get me wrong, but it’s definitely less frequently than some of the other wags

user gen imagine being fernando alonso’s wife

↳ user i think i would cease to exist

user cuando es mi turno 😭

Valentine’s Day arrives and with it comes the added stress of knowing you’ll be stuck in the bakery all day helping last-minute patrons sort through pastries and treats for their partners. This in and of itself is not a problem, you’ve always liked helping people and baking is your passion after all, but the idea of rising before the sun and being on your feet until long after it sets is not the most appealing, and even worse, your usual happiness is still overshadowed by the cloud of gloom that’s been following you since last week.

Ever since his first late-night call, Fernando has been good about making sure to ring you in the morning before he heads into the factory, and at night when he leaves. It’s helped, certainly, but nothing ever compares to the real thing and that thought makes you feel guiltier every day that you think it.

He has a job to do, a job that he loves. Neither of you should be forced to give up your passions, and that just means needing to make a few sacrifices every once in a while.

He doesn’t call you that morning, however, and though you hide it behind as much of a cheery grin as you can manage, it stings and you’re disappointed.

But throwing yourself into your work is always something you’ve been good at, so you focus instead on kneading dough, mixing pastry filling, and icing cupcakes.

Beatrice finds you back in the kitchen an hour before the bakery is scheduled to open, and the look on her face tells you she knew it’s where you would be.

“You shouldn’t be working today,” she says in lieu of a greeting.

You shrug, sliding a pan of bread from the oven. “We are too short-staffed for me to not be working today. Plus, what would I do anyway? Sit at home alone pretending that I’m not? At least in the bakery, I can put myself to use and be distracted.”

All she does is sigh.

The morning goes well. There’s a bit of a rush when you first open, the most notable of customers is a disgruntled older gentleman who you consider to be a monthly regular. He explains a long-winded story about his daughter’s boyfriend breaking up with her over text last night, and needing something to help cheer her up. He leaves with a box of cannoli, and an extra loaf of bread you threw in for him on the house.

Near the afternoon is when it starts to pick up, but in a lull between customers just after lunchtime, Beatrice corners you in the back. Her arms are crossed over her chest, her eyebrows are furrowed, and her mouth is set in a line.

“Go home,” she orders.

You huff. “Beatrice, I am the boss. Not you.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“I am not going home! The rush will get busier later this evening and we are short-staffed—”

“Rodrigo’s coming in to work register in—” she checks the watch on her wrist, “—fifteen minutes. I ran Andrea through kitchen duty the other day and I’ll be supervising her the entire time, and Marco and Silvia both said they could pick up a shift. I also have a text from Samuel’s wife saying if we need even more help she would gladly get her husband out of the house if it means he’ll stop hovering over her, and I’m prepared to take her up on that offer should the need arise.”

You blink at her. There’s a reason she’s the one you leave in charge when you travel, but whenever you’re reminded of just how good she is at managing the bakery you’re always left a little shocked. She orchestrated everything in the span of a morning and you didn’t even notice.

“Why do you want me to go home so badly?” You ask her, shoving your hands down into your apron’s pockets. “Nothing is waiting for me there anyway. Even if we weren’t short-handed, I would’ve still been here.”

“You sure about that?” Is all she says before turning on her heel and exiting back into the front of the bakery.

You don’t pretend to understand what she’s talking about as you hang your apron up and head for home. Beatrice shoots you a wink as you wave goodbye, and it feels like some sort of foreshadowing for whatever awaits you.

Nothing, however, looks any different than it had when you left. You park your car in the empty driveway, collect the newspaper from the stoep, and unlock the door.

Your keys and the newspaper are both tossed onto the counter just inside the kitchen as you toe off your shoes. You hang up your jacket on the dining room chair as you make your way into the living room, and then you pause.

There, resting on the couch is a stuffed toy bear and a bouquet of your favorite flowers. In the bear’s arms is a little sign, and the handwriting is already enough to have your eyes filling with tears.

“Fernando?” You call out to the silent house.

You check the ground floor and find no other sign of him, so you take to the stairs and begin the ascent up to the next, continuing to call out the many different pet names you have given to him throughout the years.

You peek into the bedroom, “Mia vita?”

Stood in the center of the room, a big grin on his face, is your husband. Fernando looks mighty proud of himself, a glint in his eyes that tells you he’s had this planned for a while and he’s smug that he’s managed to keep a secret from you. He opens his arms wide when you just continue to stand in the doorway, and like a flip has been switched, you rush into him when a sob of happiness.

He wraps himself around you, and the feeling of his arms holding you so firmly in his embrace is warm and comforting, and everything you had missed in the weeks he was gone. Your face is pressed into the crook of his neck, and the smell of his cologne has you sagging even further against him, sinking as far as you can into his hold.

He presses a kiss to your head and sways the both of you back and forth.

“Mi vida,” he murmurs. “I’m here, my love. I’m here.”

“I didn’t know you were coming home,” you cry against him, voice muffled from where your face is still pressed against him.

He runs a hand through your hair, scratching his nails against your scalp in the way that always calms you down, and hums. You feel it in the vibration of his chest more than you hear it. “I wanted to surprise you after you told me how stressed you were. I told you, no? I would move mountains and seas to be with you whenever you need me.”

“Ti amo,” you whisper against his skin.

“Te amo,” he whispers into your hair.

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yourusername to the luce dei miei occhi, i love you more than life itself 💛

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fernandoalo_oficial mi vida i'll love you in this life and the next, until the very end of time itself 💛

↳ yourusername ti amo mia vita

user LUCE DEI MIEI OCCHI = LIGHT OF MY EYES

↳ user oh my days 🫢

↳ user i’m actually ill that is too cute

user they ARE that couple and they have every right to be

user WAR IS OVER

user i need them to adopt me right tf now it’s not a want it’s a need

user GUYS HE WAS JUST IN SILVERSTONE LIKE A DAY AGO??? FOR THE CAR LAUNCH??? THAT MEANS HE FLEW ALL THE WAY TO ITALY LAST MINUTE JUST TO SEE HIS WIFE FOR VALENTINES DAY

↳ user fernando alonso once again proving why he’s the best husband on the grid

↳ user i’m obsessed with them a totally normal amount

lance_stroll every time i saw him he was talking to someone about how he had plans to surprise his wife, i’m so surprised he didn’t end up ruining the secret somehow

↳ fernandoalo_oficial have more faith in your padre

↳ lance_stroll well i’ve seen my “padre” make the most cartoon heart eyes at a picture of baked goods so i don’t think faith is really gonna cut it. you’re whipped man 🤷‍♂️

↳ yourusername lancino you must put up with so much from this old man

↳ lance_stroll you know what? i really do

━━ tags: @maih23 @urfavnoirette @casperlikej @pear-1206

━━ a/n: this is the longest fic i've ever written, coming in at a whopping 5.4k words! and it's also the first request i've written for! so, cheers to that. this is my little valentine's day story, because i'm actually a big sap and i really do love good fluffy romances, so writing this distracted me from the fact that i'm actually very alone at the present haha! anyways, hope you all enjoyed! i also wrote this in under 24 hours, and it's a lot, so if there's any editing mistakes please ignore them, i genuinely could not bring myself to re-read all of this looking for every single mistake.

[the-queen-of-hell-666]

Big Boy

Kinktober 2023 - Day 3

Pairing: Beefy!Bucky Barnes x Petite!Fem!Reader

Kink: Size Kink

Word Count: 1.9k

Summary: You meet Bucky in Romania and you show him a good time for the first time in 70 years.

Warnings: explicit language, explicit sexual content (unprotected sex, unprotected vaginal sex, vaginal sex, creampie, oral sex (f! receiving) , hickies, size kink, overstimulation, missionary), slight!inexperienced!Bucky, lots of fluff, smitten!Bucky

a/n: Hello everyone! Here is Day 3! I'm working on the days I missed but it might be a while! Hope you enjoy!

Banners by @vase-of-lilies

Bucky has been in Romania for almost a year and he liked his crappy apartment, taking odd jobs, but his favorite thing to do was come down to the fruit market outside of his apartment. His favorite stand was the plum and baked goods stand run by you. The most beautiful dame he’s ever seen and he loves talking to you because you listen and treat him normally, not like a freak which everyone else treats him like. They avoid him like the plague and don’t ever talk to him but you? You will stand and talk to him for hours no matter how many people avoid your booth but you couldn’t care less. He was so charming and yet with a shyness that you found it so adorable. You would talk his ear off which he found adorable and he did want to ask you out, he was terrified if his past caught up to him then you would get hurt in the crossfire. 

But then, you asked him out for a cup of coffee. He said yes. Then one date turned into two and now it was after your fourth date that he found himself in your small house outside of the city. It was small but neat, wall to wall bookshelves, somewhat modern kitchen with a cozy reading nook in the bay window and it was perfect. It smelled like you making him calm as your scent surrounds him. You walked over with two cups of tea and handed him one as you sat down beside him. 

“I know it’s not much but it’s home.” You said as you sip your tea. He smiled and shook his head, “It’s beautiful, doll. It represents you.” He said as he sipped his tea then set the cup down. 

You set your mug down and turned to face him, “I have a confession.” 

He suddenly became a little nervous but swallowed silently. “What’s going on?”

You took a deep breath and bit your lip before speaking, “I know this is only our fourth date and I don’t want to rush or anything but… I really want you, tonight.” You whispered as you peered up at his curious blue eyes. 

“O-oh, doll. I-I would love to, it’s just it’s been a while and I’m not sure how well I would… um… perform.” He said hesitantly and you nodded as you listened. 

“I totally understand that and we don’t have to do anything tonight. I just wanted to bring up the subject.” You whispered sheepishly but his super hearing caught it and he sighed but gave you a warm smile. 

“How about we start and you just show me what you like?” He offered with a genuine smile which made your heart warm. 

You nodded and bit your lip, “I would like that.” You smiled and you slowly leaned over to cup his cheek with one hand and your lips ghosted over his. 

You leaned up to press a soft and loving kiss to his lips. Bucky’s cheeks warmed as you went slow with him and his large hands grasped your waist gently and helped you straddle his lap as you two continued to kiss passionately and slowly. He smiled against your lips and he pulled back to kiss down your jaw and neck slowly remembering the few times he was with a girl and how they liked their neck kissed. You gasped softly as you felt his teeth gently graze against your skin, your hands moved up to his hair combing through it gently feeling the soft locks through your fingers. He had washed his hair for tonight because you two were going to a fancy restaurant so he decided to get cleaned up for you which he’s thankful he did. 

You pulled his head back up to kiss his lips passionately as you moved your hands down to start unbuttoning his shirt slowly, once undone you ran your hands up his chest softly. He froze under your touch as you got close to his metal arm and you felt him tense and you pulled away to look up at him. 

“What’s wrong?” You asked cupping his face gently.

“I… um… lost my arm in the war and it’s really messed up.” He said self-consciously as he laid his head back on the couch. 

You sighed and pulled his face down to look you in your eyes. “I don’t care about scars or missing limbs or anything like that. You are the sweetest man I’ve ever met and no matter what you look like, it doesn’t matter to me. I like you for you.” You whispered to him and he smiled softly as his chest warmed with your words and he leaned down and kissed you passionately. You smiled against his lips and pulled him closer and your hands moved back under his shirt and pushed it off his shoulders and you pulled away to look at his bare chest. “You’re so handsome.” You whispered as you caressed his chest and up to his shoulders. You leaned up to kiss his lips deeply and he smiled against your lips and his large hands squeezed your hips softly as he held you close to him. 

He looked down at your small body on his lap, he loved how small you were compared to him. It turned him on like he’s never been before, not before the war, not ever. He felt an overwhelming attraction to you, you were his diamond in the rough and he just wished that this wouldn’t be ruined, but he didn’t want to think of that, he just wanted to enjoy the moment with you. To feel your small body pressed against him having him get the skin to skin contact he craves. 

He unzipped your dress and let it pool around your hips revealing your dark blue lace bra and a peak at your matching panties making Bucky groan softly and he leaned down and pressed kisses to the tops of your breasts as his hands squeezed the meat of your thighs. “You’re so beautiful, doll. So soft and small.” He whispered against your breasts as his strong hands moved down to help you shimmy out of your dress. You reached behind you to unhook your bra and threw it somewhere in the room making Bucky groan at your newly revealed skin. “You’re going to kill me, doll.”

You giggled and wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled him down to kiss him passionately, your breasts pressed against his bare chest. “Take me to bed, Jamie.” You whispered against his lips making him smirk and scoop you up without any effort. You squealed softly as you wrapped yourself around his chest and he carried you to your bedroom down the hall before gently placing you on the bed. He pulled away and finished taking off his shirt then unbuckled his jeans and undoing them as you slid back against the pillows and let your knees fall open for him. 

He growled softly before he quickly kicked off his jeans before climbing onto the bed and laid in between your legs pulling them over his shoulders as his lips pressed soft kisses to your inner thighs making you gasp softly at the sensitivity. “You’re so soft and pretty, sweets. Can’t believe I have you to myself.” He mumbled against your skin, making you smile wider. 

“Sweet talker.” You smiled as you threaded your fingers through his hair tugging him closer to where you wanted him. 

His hands reached up to yank your panties down and off your body, revealing your soaked folds to him making him groan low in his throat and he pulled you closer by your thighs. His lips engulfed your clit sucking softly making your hips jolt up and his tongue moved down to lick through your folds. You cried out softly arching your back against his face as his tongue slid through your folds and up to your clit. The coil in your belly started to tighten as his lips sucked on your sensitive bud making your hips buck up and you pulled his face closer to your cunt by his hair. He doubled his efforts as he felt your cunt pulse against his tongue making your moans grow louder and you arched against him. The coil tightened as you were pushed over the edge cumming hard on his face making him groan as your taste flooded his senses. He helped you through your orgasm as your thighs shook around his head and he pulled away with your juices on his face and a smirk crossing his lips. 

“You taste so sweet, doll.” He purred as he climbed up your body to connect his lips with yours as his hands pulled your legs up around his waist. You helped him shuffle off his boxers as you two made out and he held you close to him. His large body covering you and pressing you against the mattress which helped ground you as you felt his thick cock press against your weeping hole. 

“You feel huge, baby.” You whispered as you pulled away from his lips to lock eyes with his blue ones. 

“It might be a tight fit.” He chuckled, making you smile and kiss him deeply and you reached down to help him line his cock up to your hole. He slowly started sliding the thick mushroom tip of his cock into you making you moan and your eyes water at the burn. “Deep breaths, baby doll.” He whispered as he wrapped his arms around your waist and gently pressed you against his chest. He slowly continued to slide into your tight cunt groaning at your walls squeezing him tightly and he leaned down to kiss you deeper. 

“A-ah, so big. H-hurts.” You whimpered quietly and he reached down to rub your clit softly helping turn your pain into pleasure. 

“I’m right here. I got you.” He whispered against your lips as he rested his forehead against yours. He finally slid all the way home making him groan and moan at your walls clenching and pulsing around his cock. You moaned his name and whimpered softly at the underlying pain but your pleasure overtook the pain and eventually the pain went away and you pleaded with him to start moving. 

Bucky linked your fingers through his and pinned them above your head and slowly started thrusting in and out of you. You moaned his name as you arched your back and squeezed his hands. He groaned as your walls sucked him in as he pulled out then thrusted back in. Your eyes locked and he pressed a warm kiss to your lips making you purr softly. He pulled back to look down at your lower belly as he thrusted in and out of you, you had a slight bulge to your belly as Bucky slid into you and out making you whimper at the stimulation to your g-spot. 

He slowly took you apart piece by piece making you moan and whimper and cum over and over again on his cock. He loved to hold you close as he made you cum and feel every twitch and shake of your body. He finally couldn’t hold his orgasm back and came deep inside of your overstimulated cunt and made sure that you took all of his cum and he held you close as you crashed from your highs together. He helped you to the bathroom to clean you two up then you two laid on the bed together. You laying on his chest as his large hands traced shapes on your bare back making you smile and snuggle closer to him, happy to stay with him forever no matter what tries to pull you two apart.

[illyrian-dreamer]

And Then There Were None – Part 1

Azriel/fem!reader

Synopsis: In the lead up to the war, Hybern releases a catastrophic spell that wipes out all humans, sparing just one.

Abandoned in the desolate human lands, you scavenge to survive long enough to find your family.

Reluctantly, you are found by the Shadowsinger as fate intervenes to guide you under his watchful eye.

Part 2>>>

Word count: 3.2k

Warnings: Death, blood, suggestions of miscarriage

Twigs snapped beneath your boots, your steps heavy with exhaustion as you stumbled through yet another town, as barren and deserted as the last one. 

Exhaustion and dehydration weighed heavy, wisps of dust caking your skirts, your boots the only thing to disturb the rubble in days. 

There was no concern for a carriage that might pull up behind, or a bossy merchant to yell at you to clear the path. While the ghosts of the life that once flourished echoed in closed shops and abandoned stalls, you stopped looking over your back days ago.

There were no plumes of smoke from chimneys, no distant chatter or laughter or cries. Safe from the occasional grunts or mews of abandoned cattle - there was not a single sign of life, and no human in sight for the past ten days.

A jarring cramp ripped from your abdomen, pulling you from delirium with urgency.

Water, food, bathe and sleep. That was why you were here.

You tried not to think about how quickly resources were depleting, even though you were sure you were the only one using them. Without people to treat water, the stagnant liquid became increasingly dangerous. And you couldn’t farm a vegetable to save your life, and had spent too long journeying to have tended to any crops.

You’d have to go further into the woods soon, find a fresh stream, perhaps hunt too. But you'd need strength for that, and you had just about run out.

At least it was spring, and at least the trees bloomed with fruit as you travelled from town to town, feet blistered and chapped. You cursed you parents for not teaching you formidable survival skills - fighting, hunting, even the ability to ride a gods damned horse would have been an incomparable luxury these past hellish days. 

A clang of guilt, and frustration quickly churned to longing. Gods, you hoped they were alive. You would do anything to have them here, to journey this devastating isolation together, the little ones too. You prayed to the Mother for the umpteenth time that day that they were safe and well. 

It was not a concern when you woke to an empty house almost a fortnight earlier. Your father was likely at the market, your mother hard at work at the tailor in town. Your siblings were hard to catch at this time of year, with school out of term and the warm spring air, they would spend each waking moment by the river if your parents let them. 

It wasn't until you spotted your fathers wheelbarrow through the speckled glass of your kitchen window, held by rotting wood. Empty and unmoved, his tools lay flat on the ground, untouched since the day before. You could have sworn he told you he’d be at the market by dawn. 

Scanning the room, your eyes flicked to the doorway where your mothers workbag lay untouched. Needles sat poked in balls of yarn as stray thread sprawled over leather - but an eery stillness sang to you at your parent’s tools. 

Names and calls went unanswered, and after a quick search of the home you ran outside, urgent to ask your neighbours where they had gone, your heart fastening with every step.

Too frantic to observe the lack of movement and noise from your own street, you rapped on the door, waiting only a few seconds to push the rattling screen and forcing your way in.

Names went unanswered again, and it was instinct that steered you straight for the nursery. You halted at the sight of new born's empty crib, blankets rippled as if the babe was taken straight from it’s sleep.

Your calls turned frantic as you scoured each room, an upsetting, looming sensation creeping over your skin.

Bursting from the home, you shielded your eyes from the bright sun as you scanned the street with urgency. Your only greeting was a quiet breeze and snort of a horse left abandoned by a cart - as if it had stopped it's journey halfway through.

In a panicked haze, you searched the next home, and the next, and the next. The dizziness found you then. 

Clearly there was an emergency of some kind. But you had been abandoned, left to sleep until midday amongst the quiet. The thought pained you.

More calls to anyone who might have stayed behind, yet still no answer. Your heart was a thunder in your ears. 

Had the war finally reached you? Had your family fled in the dead of the night? You shook the thought from your head – they would have woken you, would have needed your help to escape with the youngens.

And then you were running – yelling, sprinting through the dusty streets, voice breaking as you dashed from home to home, shop to shop, calling, crying, pleading.

You were utterly alone. You had been left there, alone. 

In a swarm of panic, you pressed a palm at your heart, willing yourself to calm. It was a dream, surely. You were not abandoned, only stuck in a nightmare, the kind that often found you as murmurs of Hybern’s army reaching human lands became louder. 

In that dizzying thought, you willed yourself awake, forcing your eyes open to the walls of your dark and cramped room, to the noises as your siblings shouting and playing from downstairs, to the whistle of the kettle and the creak of the wood as your father came to wake you.

But the light was blinding, the sun as true as the your abandonment.

Beads of sweat that ran down your neck, a gnawing anxiousness building in your stomach as it heaved and cramped, nausea and panic churning to one. 

Something truly terrible had happened.

And in that moment of utter disbelief, a stabbing pain ripped from your stomach, so great it forced a whimper from your throat. 

As silent trickles of blood ran from your thighs to your knees, tracing your calves beneath the fabric of your skirt, you found a numbing sort of courage. Pushing your legs forward, you mindlessly heeded the road out of your home town, and on to the next. 

People. You needed to find people.

————

Ten days, and still not a single sole in sight. Each home, each tavern, each market and farm left eerily untouched. 

The silence was enough to drive you mad, if not besides the aide you so desperately sought. This was not your cycle - although the pains were familiar. You had known what you were, what this was.

Almost a fortnight, yet the blood still came. Slower now, spotting instead of trickles. You had stolen clothing from abandoned shops, food and water too. But you were distraught, moments away from folding into utter madness. And you were weak – very, very weak.

Water, food, a bath and rest. A list you repeated to yourself, your body begging to prioritise sleep with every step as you approached a farm at the town’s edge.

With a weak hand, you pushed past the gate to the yard, large rusty barrels sat open where a cow and her calf now drank. The water was murky with a distinct smell, but it would have to do. Tomorrow, you’d find fresh water tomorrow.

The trembling hand that dipped to the cool water hardly looked like your own. Dirt lay thick under your nails, your skin littered with cuts from the countless times you had shattered windows of stores and traders homes, scouring the stock for preserved goods and weapons. 

Bringing the cool liquid to your lips, you ignored the taste of iron as you willed it to soothe your throat - hoarse from the endless calls that went unanswered.

Ears pricking at sudden growl behind you, you jerked at the site of a pack of dogs who approached on stealthy paws. Their eyes were hungry - flicking between you and the calf. Once loyal farming dogs you were sure, now abandoned by owners and left to fend for themselves. They had formed packs - clever things. While you were sure they couldn't kill you, you didn't have the strength to fight an infection if they got close enough to sink their teeth. 

From your side, you unsheathed the hunting knife you had looted from a previous town. Swinging it with unpracticed skill, you shouted at the pack, your heart thundering as you waited for them to recline on hindered paws and leap. 

They pack seemed to weigh you up, deciding the calf was an easier target. You fled inside the house before you could see it meet it’s end. 

The home was neat, and you almost cried at the sight of a loaf of bread sitting atop the kitchen counters. Mould had attacked it’s edges, but you tore at it, fisting mouthfuls of the centre, dry crumbs coating your throat it was an effort not to choke.

Your stomach lurched, unhappy with the quality of the food and water, but you didn't care. You were on step closer to rest.

Another jarring cramp from your stomach, and you faltered, gripping at the wooden table as you trembled to keep yourself upright. This ailment, how much longer would you last? Sleep begged at you, your body moments from giving out. You’d have to forgo the bath, and prayed to the mother you’d find the strength for it in the morning.

Forcing yourself to the bedroom, swaying with each stumbled step, consciousness was already slipping as you collapsed on the bed, clothes and boots in tact. 

————

It was a feverish sleep, your body doused in sweat as you stirred often, jolting awake in panics, phantom calls of your family mixed with the flap of wings, and the crunch of stone and rock under heavy boots.

Then a voice, voices – ones you were sure they were part of your slumber. 

But as those footsteps got closer, you woke in a startle, your heart fastened as you blinked furiously. 

Voices. Humans. People. Alive, well enough to talk. 

You leapt from the bed, ignoring the spin of your head as you clambered to the window, peering behind sheer drapes to the street in front.

Your stomach sank. Lurched. Then sank again. 

A large, demonic figure stalked for the home. Wings arched behind it’s head, it’s figure blackened by the leathers it bore, sword and knives strapped around. 

And, wisps of some kind. Deadly, reaping magic.

Fae.

Fae had come. 

Knees buckling, you stumbled back a few steps. 

The world around you reeled as adrenaline coursed through. You would have just moments to prepare if you wanted a chance to survive. 

Knife. Your hunting knife. Still strewn at your hip.

Grasping it’s hilt tightly with a trembling hand, you scanned the room for the best place to hide. 

The cupboard was too obvious, and there was room under the bed - but there’d be not enough to swing your knife, only enough for them to drag you by the ankle… 

The gentle click of the front door opening, and it took all you had not to whimper in panic.

Scrambling for the door as quietly as possible, you pressed your palm to your mouth, begging yourself not to cry as you pressed yourself behind the wood.

From what you could hear over the thunder of your heart, the steps of the fae were quiet despite it’s size. 

“Anything in there?” a deep voice boomed from the street. You jolted at the volume. More than one, then.

There was no reply from the creature in the home, only the creak of the wood as it made it’s way through. 

“Really, Azriel? Are we to check every home?” Female this time, impatience and ignorance laced in the somehow ancient voice.

No response again, instead a footstep, right by the door.

Something tickled your ankles then, and it was beyond you to stifle your compulsive scream. 

Black furling wisps coated your boots.

And then the door opened.

The creature made it one step inside before you had aimed your knife for it’s heart. 

A prepared, cool hand caught your wrist inches from it’s chest. Your bones crushing in it’s grasp, and you let out a yelp of pain. 

It’s face - his face - was one of shock. “S-sorry,” he stuttered, dropping his grip all together. 

You blinked back in shock, ignoring at the throb of your wrist as you snatched it back. 

For a dumb moment, you stared at each other with equally wide eyes. The male didn't seem to know what to do. 

“You’re human? How are you here, where-?"

The males sentence was clipped short as you drove the knife towards his chest again. 

Quick as an asp, he caught you by the forearm this time, more gently too. 

Hazel eyes scanned you, his features schooling as he called over his shoulder. “I’ve found someone.”

You were sure you looked mad, grunting with the effort to pull your arm from him, breaths ragged, eyes and hair wild. The male studied you as he might a rabid animal. 

Behind him appeared an even taller male, his form more terrifying than the one that gripped you. 

“Mother above,” the new one whispered, scanning you in the way the first one had. 

“L-let go of me,” you rasped, pulling your arm back, tears stinging at the pain of you surely broken wrist began to swell. 

It was a odd detail to note, the scars and ripples of the fae’s hand as he gently unfurled your fingers, prying the hunting knife from you before releasing his grip. 

“Let me see,” the female’s voice piped from behind, the males struggling to fold their wings further, cramming into the room to let her through. 

You faltered back on instinct, legs hitting the edge of the bed. 

As the female broke through the males, harsh silver eyes scanned you up and down. She was half their height, a little shorter than you actually, but the depth of her gaze kept your hands by your side.

“Seems the Mother has spared one after all,” she muttered, nose crumpling at your scent. 

Your answered with a scowl. 

“What is your name?” it demanded. 

“Amren,” the taller male warned, his eyes flicking back to you with softness. 

You refused to answer. Couldn’t if you wanted to. 

Amren sighed, casting her head sideways to the one with rippled hands. “She bleeds.”

“I know,” he answered, hazel eyes not breaking from you. You blushed, furious and humiliated. 

He stepped around her then, the movement graceful and soft despite his size. 

“You need aide.”

You gulped, unable to process his words. “L-leave me be,” you demanded, voice hoarse as you tried to create more distance between you and it. 

He crouched in front of you then, leathers stretching against ripples of muscle. You noticed them then, jewels, saphires, humming from his body as if they were alive.

He followed your eyes curiously, before answering you with a soft smile. 

“These are siphons,” he said plainly, giving one a friendly tap. 

You snapped your eyes back to him, disgust forming your features. “You are here on behalf of Hybern?”

The female snorted from behind, earning a shove from the larger male beside her, his siphons glowing red.

The one in front of you studied you. “No, absolutely not.” 

You scowled, not inclined to believe them. 

“We come one behalf of our High Lord Rhysand, and High Lady Feyre. Rulers of the Night Court. Do you know of them?”

Feyre - the human women who had freed the fae from the grasp of their enemy. You knew the story, the heroic tale of a human women who gave her life for the male she loved. Had heard of her triumphs Under the Mountain, that she had been made into fae herself in exchange for her sacrifice. 

“The-the curse breaker?”

A small smile cocked on both of the males faces. 

“That’s right,” the one crouched in front answered. “She sent us to retrieve you.”

A panic surged within you. “Me?” you spat. Oh the ignorance of the fae, as if you were some pawn to pluck and place elsewhere. 

Azriel frowned, eyes dancing as he realised the mistake in his words. “To help you, of course. There has been-"

"No-n-no. My family, they will seek for me-"

Azriel's brow pulled with softness, his tone falling flat. "We will search for them. Meanwhile, you must see a-"

“Where are the others?” Your voice was louder now, eyes dancing in panic, chest rising with fastening breaths. Had they taken them too? “The people, they've left, I don't know-"

“We are searching for others. You are… the first we have found.”

Your mind reeled. How could that be? You had searched by foot - but with those wings, and the strength and power of fae…

“WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE OTHER HUMANS?” the volume of your voice shocked even yourself, that strength, that demand from deep within your chest. 

Azriel gave you a pained look, before standing to turn to his counterparts. “Amren, can you heal-?”

“I’m spent,” she cut off the male with a flick of her fingers. “Those canines out back were hardly enough to keep me going until sundown, so forget about healing. Unless you suggest I drink her blood, though I doubt she’d survive.”

Mother above.

You were too hazed to see the glare both of the males cut her.

“Then she will need to see a healer before we can continue.”

“She might refuse,” the larger one countered. 

“If she’s smart, she won’t. She won't survive out here on her own,” Amren muttered, cleaning her nails as she leaned one on leg, checking her cat-like claws for flecks of blood. 

They continued their mutter without once turning to you.

“There is no option here. I’ll take her to Velaris, and return once she’s safe.”

A shaking, blubbering anger grew within you, the creatures in front of you as ignorant and obnoxious as you had always been told fae are – to discuss your own fate as if you weren't in the room.

A killer instinct flared in you then, and you remembered the second knife you bore, hidden within your corsette. A pocket knife, a tool from your father to help pit and peel the fruit from his farm. 

The oak handle was cool in your left hand, the right throbbing and limp. With the last remains of energy,  you pushed up from the bed, swinging with all your strength - aiming for the blue-siphoned back. 

In a graceful turn, the male caught your arm for the third time. You had to blink at the speed with which he stopped you. 

Bracing for cruel, unforgiving anger, you were instead met with sympathetic eyes. 

Loathing coiled within you. 

“Release me,” you spat.

“I’m sorry to do this,” was all he said, and then pads of those rippled fingers were grasping your jaw, pressing to the pressure points of your neck with precision. 

Grunting to fight his grasp, you didn’t struggle long before a ringing in your ear grew to defeating silence and the world tipped to black. 

Part 2 >>> AN: HELLLOOO! And welcome to ATTWN - massive shout out to @kindasleepywriter for finding the perfect name for this series! I so so hoped you liked part 1. I edited it like a million times, still not 100% happy with it, but I think I just needed to get it out. Fair warning - this fic won't be light hearted, our reader is going to go through some really heavy stuff. I'll of course put my warnings ahead of each part, but please know I plan to explore some darker themes surrounding mental health etc. If you'd like to join the tag list for this fic, let me know in the comments! Always love hearing your feedback, and thank you so much for reading! <3 Nic

[soapsbaby]

Goodbyes

Summary: How you and your CoD partner would spend the last day and night before they have to go off on a mission.

Characters: Simon “Ghost” Riley, Johnny “Soap” MacTavish, König, Kyle “Gaz” Garrick, Alejandro Vargas, Rodolfo “Rudy” Parra, John Price, Valeria Garza, all x gn!reader Rating: SFW Themes: Angst, sadness, softness, no warnings needed Word count: 1300ish

Ghost

He’ll try to push you away, as if that would make it easier for both of you.

Once he can tell that he just makes you upset, he apologizes and makes sure the two of you get to do whatever you want to, usually you prefer to just get takeout with him, stay in bed and cuddle.

To him it’d be easier to not do that, it makes him miss you even more, but he does it for your sake. He knows that if something bad happens to him that you’ll be the one who suffers most, so he makes sure your feelings are prioritized.

He makes sure to say goodbye to you at night so he doesn’t have to wake you up in the morning and make leaving even harder on his part. He tries to be stoic about it but he hates every second of it, especially if you fall asleep on top of him and he has to gently shove you off and then just leave you behind.

Soap

He will absolutely not leave your side at all, trying to make the most out of your last hours together. No matter where you go, he’ll have a hand around your waist, is constantly kissing you and showering you in affection.

He tries his very best to be as cheerful as possible even though it’s hard, but he hates seeing you worried or sad. 

Before he leaves in the morning he makes sure he has something prepared for you, he puts flowers in the kitchen for you to find, notes on the mirror. You’ll also almost always wake up to a voice message on your phone by him, telling you that he loves you and that he’ll be back as soon as possible and there’s always a suggestion on what you will do, whether he wants to take you to a fancy restaurant he heard about or some nice café.

König

He gets quiet. His anxiety almost always tells him that something terrible will happen to either you or him once he leaves and the thoughts slowly drive him insane until he leaves and his brain switches into work-mode.

Even though he doesn’t really talk to you about it, you can tell that it bothers him and so usually you are the one trying your best to cheer him up. It also helps when you plan things you will do after he comes back and not even let the possibility that he might get hurt become an option. Oh, it’ll be just a week until you’re back, I might as well book the cinema tickets right now, right? 

He has a hard time expressing it, but he is eternally grateful for how casual you are on the outside even though you are of course freaking out as well. His job is really, really dangerous and him not coming back is always unfortunately a possibility.

He'll cuddle you to sleep and kiss you in the mornings, softly telling you that he loves you.

Price

He always makes sure to treat you to a nice dinner before he leaves, to leave a good impression, as he puts it. This can mean that you go to a nice, upscale restaurant, but he also loves cooking at home for you. He loves providing for you in general but the days before missions are the ones where he goes all out, going to the market for the fanciest ingredients and making sure you have an appetizer, main course, dessert and whichever expensive wine fits the meal the most.

He’s usually in good spirits before missions and not too worried about his wellbeing which rubs off on you. He is confident that nothing will happen, so you are too. 

You get up with him so you can have an early breakfast and spend some time talking before he has to leave.

Gaz

It hits him so much harder than it hits you. Not even because he is afraid that something will happen to him when he’s gone, just because he hates being apart from you for so long. 

If he got his way you’d just spend all day in bed, his face buried against your chest and rubbing his back but you usually try to at least get him out of the house a little bit, go for a walk or grab a coffee somewhere.

He is always affectionate but those days you won’t be able to get rid of him, not that you want to. He just needs as much reassurance as you can give him.

He really struggles getting out of bed in the morning, usually he’ll roll over to you again and kiss you awake, telling you he doesn’t want to leave and how much rather he’d stay with you. It doesn’t matter whether he has to leave earlier than you, usually you`ll get ready with him, giving him as many hugs and kisses in the process and sending him off with a smile. He doesn't have to know that you break down once he has left.

Rudy

The day before is always reserved for a family party, a barbecue or some other get together. He goes away often so not his entire family will come over every time but there’ll always be someone there. His family is incredibly important to him and he also feels much more secure knowing that you have a good relationship with them so you are taken care of if something were to happen to him. 

Once it becomes evening, though, he will make sure that he can focus on you and you only. Usually you won’t do anything “special” but he makes sure to take his time to talk to you, to make sure you are alright and that there is nothing on your mind that you are not telling him. There is nothing more important to him than clear communication and making sure he is on good terms with all of the people he loves before leaving for a mission.

You’ll fall asleep in his arms and wake up the same way, he would never leave before saying goodbye to you. Usually you’re still sleepy and he’ll kiss you goodbye, tuck you back in and let you keep sleeping.

Alejandro

He tries his very best to be as casual before missions as he can, going through his regular schedule and not to make too big of a deal out of it, but you can tell that he is giving you more affection than usual, being a little more touchy and telling you how much he loves you even more than he does otherwise. 

He’ll make sure that everything is taken care of before he’s gone, taking you grocery shopping before and stocking up on everything that you might need. He also makes sure you pick up extra on some items to make the time easier for yourself, a good book, some snacks, maybe a bottle of wine. 

He is a true romantic at heart but he keeps the special dates and occasions away from your last days, it feels like bad karma otherwise.

He’ll make sure you are comfortable getting to sleep and that he has told you a million times that he adores you, that he’ll be back so soon and that you don’t have to worry one bit.

Valeria

She tries so, so very hard not to show it, but she is terrified every time she leaves that it will be the last time she gets to see you. Hell, she might not even get hurt but she might get caught and go to jail for the rest of her life.

She always makes sure that she has her affairs in order before she leaves, makes sure that you have access to everything you need so you can get away safely and not be punished for your connection to her. 

She’ll be extra affectionate, making sure that you know that she loves you and also making a point that she would never be mad at you for denying any connection you have to her if she gets into legal trouble. 

She treats every goodbye like it might be your last one, kissing you like she never gets to again and spending the entire night holding you. 

[nickgerlich]

Ghost In The Machine

Leave it to human ingenuity. Or perhaps I should say corporate genius. It seems that for every process, law, or method, there is a hack to work around it. Never mind that things were probably good enough the way they were. It’s just that, in our zeal to have an edge over others, we look for the loopholes.

Like all of the ghost kitchens and virtual brands we have discussed earlier this term. While I lauded them early—and correctly so—for leveraging their physical locations so they could test out new concepts and menu items on Uber Eats, DoorDash, and others, it has now become apparent that some of these players have simply duplicated their menus and slapped on a different brand name just so it could grab another line on the list of restaurants we see on our phones.

And now Uber Eats is fighting back, saying that in order to get those multiple listings, the virtual brand must have at least a 60% different menu. Who would have thought it would all come down to this?

But it is a good response from Uber Eats, because they have been taken advantage of in all this by those restaurants and ghost kitchens—which we define as an establishment with no indoor seating, and often located in an industrial park or even parking lot—who are trying to simply boost their odds of making online sales.

Whoa. That may very well qualify as the longest sentence I have written this semester. But I digress.

It is fair conclusion jumping to agree that the kitchens being accused of such chicanery are just being smart. They can try different price points, names, and a slew of other marketing variables, without having to actually create new products. And they are betting that most consumers will never notice. Just imagine, though, a Little Caesars—for example—also selling Bigga Pizza Pies, but they all come out of the same oven with the same crust, sauce, mozzarella, and toppings. Could you tell? And would you even care?


Uber Eats, et al., all want to make money, to be fair, but they do not want their service to be scammed like this. Getting two listings is little different form somehow managing to wrangle two display ads in a newspaper when you bought one, or any number of other of duplicative examples.

But wait, there’s more! Uber is also raising the bar on those it does list, requiring each establishment to have at least a 4.3 out of 5 rating on their app, have fewer than five-percent of orders canceled, and have fewer than five-percent delivery and order errors.

Thus far, Uber has removed more than 5000 entities it attests are simply clones of their parent, finding, in one instance, that a New York deli had 14 such clones under its umbrella. Can you imagine submitting 14 resumes for a job, each with a different name, but the person were the same? Shakespeare said a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but that doesn’t work so well in job hunting or restaurant listings.

Uber says, though, it counts 40,000 virtual listings. Its internal police department is going to have its hands full enforcing its latest policy decision.

I know. You’ve probably already started thinking of a new hack in the wake of Uber clamping down. Why not simply give different names and/or plating variations so that the items are still pretty much the same, but look different on your screen? That would likely be easy. Imagine a meal of the Monster Burger and French Fries also being listed under a different brand as the Hamburger Monstre and pomme frites. Pretty much the same thing, but one sounds so cosmopolitan and worldly.

I’m pretty sure the ghost kitchens are already preparing their workarounds, because that’s the way we all roll. The spoils go to those who can hack the best. Meanwhile, just be careful placing your food orders. You might just be a victim as well. I can see that international burger fetching a higher price tag if only because it uses French words.

And I can imagine you looking like a ghost when you find out you’ve been duped, too.

Dr “Or You Could Just Cook At Home“ Gerlich

Audio Blog

[savingcrxws]

eyes on fire | carmen berzatto headcanon

carmen berzatto x ex!reader (but not for long...)

warnings. language, mentions of suicide & death (mikey)

authors note. thinking of turning this into a fic but i just wanted to get these thoughts thrown onto a page for now | EDIT 7/7: ITS A FIC! HERES PART ONE

you hated carmen berzatto, to say the least

you had been each others first s/o and spent a lot of the end of your teenage years attached at the hip

every berzatto family function (no matter how messy they always ended), every school dance, every hell's kitchen rerun--you and carmy were together

mikey liked to call you guys soulmates, watching how you and carmy just seemed to click like that- a statement that never failed to make carmy go flush in the face (que richie faking barfing in the background)

you were one of the first people that carmen told about his wishes for the future-how he wanted to take up the restaurant with his brother and continue the berzatto tradition

you loved the way his eyes lit up when he talked about cooking with his family-the way he gave his all into his aspirations

"well you gotta make sure i'm the first one to eat those fancy sounding dishes when you start working at the beef, carm"

"absolutely, babe. i wouldn't have it any other way"

however, like everyone after high school, you and carmy hit a rough patch that sunk your relationship -- you were planning to go to college for business administration and carmy was leaving chicago to go to culinary school

you two definitely attempted everything in your power to stay together-late night skype calls, daily texts, hell you even offered to fly to new york to spend time together

but the more swamped you got with school and the more carmen got slammed with cooking (especially right before he went of to Noma), the more the truth begun to show itself

the breakup was messy, because it was less a breakup and more of ...

you: what are we doing right now? like, as a couple?

carmen: i think that i need to focus more on my career right now

you: oh, so..are we breaking up right now? (read 9:57PM)

you: carmen? (read 10:15)

you: ok, asshole, be that way (delivered)

that's right, that motherfucker ghosted you

despite the tumultuous ending of you and carmen's relationship, you were still close to sugar and mikey (and, unfortunately for you, richie)

sugar was adamant on flying over to copenhagen and have a "conversation" with her brother herself + mikey and richie were not too far behind on the cause

"it's fine guys. let's just all agree that carmen is a soft little bitch" you said, trying to lighten the mood even though you knew that you were still racking thru the pain being broken up with so suddenly

you deal with the breakup harshly at first, but you put a lot of that emotion towards your own growth

fast forward a couple years, you graduated college and are on the up-and-up in chicago as a successful business marketing manager

you get closer to the berzattos, strangely, as carmy gets more distant

you don't think of carmy much anymore but it grows harder as he wins awards and recognitions in his field that honestly make you..proud, in strange way

then, mikey dies...and a lot of things change for you

you help sugar and richie plan the funeral, and something sour sinks into your stomach when you don't see that familiar head of dirty blonde hair during the service

some months pass and you try to gather yourself and get back to normal after mikey's passing

richie invites you down to the beef one day to "catch up" randomly

you go, if not to just see tina and the rest of the crew but are met with great surprise when you see him

carmen motherfucking berzatto, in the flesh, standing behind the bar yelling to richie about something nonsensical

he stops yelling when he hears the door open and literally freezes in place when he sees you

you stare at him for a second, taking in the man who once had your heart, noting the new tattoos and the new way he styled his hair and he seems to be doing the same

then, richie breaks the silence--"oh my goodness, what are you doing here, sweetheart?"

you and carmy speak at the same time

"richie, you motherfucker"

"richie, you dick"

[velvetures]

Vulnerable pt.1?

A/N: A not-so-little thing I've had for a few weeks, and wanted to see if a part two was something anyone would be interested in reading. If so, please let me know. Summary: You try and get Ghost to relax after a harsh mission and find a bit of a quiet moment. T/W: not proofread :)

Bad intel led to you and your Lieutenant being nearly hunted down and killed by a not-so-small group of arms dealers who caught on quickly to the pair of foreigners lingering just a little bit too close to their sheltered storage garage right in the middle of a market district in the South East. The task force assumed sending in an entire squad would be overkill just for some simple recon information and decided that you and Ghost would be the perfect pair for the job. ‘In and Out…’ Price had said quite offhandedly, sliding the prepared information in two files across the table to you. Only Price’s sources hadn’t double-checked if the area was secure enough for them to enter without full backup on standby. Not necessarily a lethal kind of mistake when bringing you and the Lieutenant into the equation, but there were too many close calls and stray bullets that were clearly heard for either of you to feel super confident in getting away unscathed.

Your only savior was a small farmhouse that had been recently abandoned due to the illegal and dangerous activity that had been surrounding the small city. Modest in size with two bedrooms and running water. Perfect for a makeshift safe house to keep the trackers off your asses until an extraction could be arranged and put into motion. Contrary to belief, the 141 didn’t have the bottomless pit of resources everyone believed they had at their disposal. Which included access to evac and trained air-support teams. This wasn’t a big mission that had a lot of working parts and multiple organizations involved that had enough liquidated funds to through out for a helo and heavy gunners to rescue two operators from the middle of who-the-fuck-knows-where.

That means with busted equipment, inoperable comms, hardly enough ammunition to fight out of a wet paper bag, and zero way of knowing when and if you’d be rescued, there was nothing left to do but try and relax in one of the most difficult predicaments. It left you searching through cabinets for maybe some kind of food to keep the both of you while Ghost did one of his favorite things. Pacing the house from window to window looking for the slightest bit of movement. The trouble being, there wasn’t anything for at least two miles in any direction. The people who owned this place were farmers of some sort, and had placed their home right in the middle of crop fields that gave a very advantageous sightline. While that information gave you quite a bit of comfort, it was not effecting Ghost positively in the slightest.

Your relationship with the Lieutenant was complex, to say the least. When you were first introduced it was for a succession of short co-op missions that were nothing if not brief and very impersonal leaving you with more questions than answers about the man who stayed hidden under the mask. Through some talks that you hadn’t been privy to being in the room for, John Price decided that your skills would be more useful to Task Force 141 than for the U.S. Division of Clandestine Service and offered you a position that you couldn’t possibly decline.

By day-in and day-out contact with Ghost, you got a lot more comfortable with him and learned much of his little idiosyncratic behaviors. Maybe a little too well…. He didn’t particularly act much differently towards you in the grand scheme of things, but something in you felt like trust had been developed to where he could depend on you when the situation called for it.

“Go hit the rack, I’ll take first watch.” He called gruffly from the living room where he had moved a chair from the kitchen to sit facing the front door head on with his MP5 resting lazily on his chest.

You couldn’t help but notice just how damn tired he looked under all that gear and through the black smeared around his eyes. He couldn’t be carrying less than one hundred pounds on him right now; even sitting in that chair with it wasn’t a good enough solution. Let you take a moment or two for yourself, stripping out of your tac vest and heavily weighted gear to drop it on top of the kitchen counter with a little grunt. Two days ago you both got the luxury of sleeping, and since then it’s been nothing but being on the run.

This would be the safest place for you that wasn’t in the belly of an evac bird, and the thought of Ghost not taking the time to sleep sat in your mind like a lead sinker. Leaning against the doorway and watching him for a long moment, you start having thoughts. Dangerous thoughts. Ones that normally wouldn’t surface if you’d been able to separate working with Ghost from the more personal aspect of literally sharing almost every part of your life with him. Thoughts about how you could make him feel better… even if just for the night. That no one was around for miles and whatever happened could safely stay between the pair of you.

By utter carelessness of your position with the team or lack of fear about how the Lieutenant might respond, you walk into the living room and kneel down right in front of him with your fingers reaching out to unlace his dusty boots. Off instinct alone, you expected and watched as his foot flinched away from you. His whole body jumps and stiffens at the contact and sight of you kneeling on the floor. He quickly pauses and collects himself, taking several moments before his gravelly voice breaks the silence.

“What’re you doin’ Sergeant?” His eyes grew heavy and showed more expression than the rest of his massive body as they flashed with confusion and a little swell of anger. That aloofness didn’t hide that slight guardedness of something that made him uncomfortable in one way or another.

“I’m perfectly capable of takin’ care of my fuckin’ self.” He adds with zero discernible sign of either offense or gratitude. You can’t help but smile tiredly, feeling like you’re attempting to soothe a feral wolf into letting you pull it’s paw out of trap.

“I never said you couldn’t L.T.,” You reply gently, reaching back to start unhooking the laces from their claws on his left foot. “Just thought you couldn’t use some affection.” Smirking to yourself, you can’t help but think something this small being considered ‘affection’ didn’t fit anyone save for Ghost. He was just too hard to approach. Walls so thick and tall that it would take someone with patience beyond that of a human to break through and see what rested behind all of that brash posturing and icy disposition.

“You know affection is something I’m averse to,” he utters, watching yet making no effort to stop you. “What you’re doin’ is unnecessary.” A small sound close to a growl escapes from behind the mask when my hand reaches to the back of his leg to help aid my effort of pulling his boot off.

Chuckling softly and sitting the boot down at your side you respond, “I know you don’t like affection,” You’re already working on the other one, purposefully moving slowly as not to overwhelm or spook him. “That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it, L.T..” You can’t help but look up at him almost exhaustedly yet still trying to be reassuring.

“M’fine without it.” He spits out quickly, looking away from your face back down to your progress on the laces, his masked face otherwise unreadable. “Didn’t ask you for this shit, Sergeant.” Tinged with an undercurrent of irritation his deep voice sounds near the bridge of turning to anger.

“Mothering me isn’t in your best interest.” He growls low and threateningly in your face as he bends down to grab the boot sitting next to you and giving it a quick look of observation before sitting it back down closer to him. You just finish taking off his other boot and sit it down next to the other without much more of a verbal fight and put a hand on his thigh to steady your sore legs as you get back up to your feet.

“I’m younger than you Ghost, I can’t mother you.” You reply, holding out your hand for him.

He doesn’t make note or stop you from using him to help yourself up, however, Ghost follows your movements carefully… closely. He’s doing everything in his power to hide his emotions, but there’s still a faint twitch of his lips when he looks down at his boots sitting at his side. You’d done something very unusual, and he knew berating you was what he should’ve done. Yet a flinch of a smile was what really moved Ghost’s mouth. It’s gone before it even surfaces, pushed down by the sight. of you holding out your little hand in front of him. The sounds of his deep breathing fill the quiet house as you both sit there unflinching of each other. The Lieutenant shifts in his chair, readjusting his rifle on his chest.

“Go to bed. It’s late.” His repeated command felt softer now. Wavering a bit with you hand still held out and your fingers wiggling a little.

“Come on,” You hold steady and patient.

Reward comes in the form of feeling Ghost’s heavy and large hand falling into yours and gripping just hard enough to allow you the phantom sensation that you’re actually helping him up from the chair, hearing a short grunt as his back straightens up. Without explanation, you lead the Lieutenant through the small house back towards the only bedroom in the house with an actual bed left behind by the owners, pulling him to the center of the room and turning around to face him.

“Put your arms up for me.”

“Excuse me?” Ghost’s frown can be heard from behind the mask. Despite his apparent bewilderment, he hesitantly obeys, extending his arms above his head with an exhale of a tense breath, looking down at you with dark and questioning eyes. “What are you doing now?”

You just smile and hum to yourself softly, reaching out to begin unclipping and unzipping the sections of his tac vest holding it on his upper body and the multiple ammo belts. Carefully draping them over you shoulder as you release his body from them one by one. Seeing the way Ghost’s body sinks into itself with the weight being pulled off after days without rest. You feel his eyes scan over you, over your hands finding ways to take off his gear for the first time in your life, feeling your way through sunch an unusual yet careful act.

“Bein’ fuckin’ ridiculous…” He growls, covering up the feelings of not being so concealed by barking at you a little.

“Shhh.” Your hush does enough to stop his quiet and brooding complaints.

Long enough for you to kneel back down at his feet and work at the thigh straps over his pants and even remove the ankle holster you’d left alone while taking off his boots. He doesn’t resist this part, just watching you undress him bit by bit with half a mind questioning just what had happened for you to start acting so strangely. You’d always been sweet. Much nicer than your job allowed for. Yet even this was quite off the edge of the character Ghost had built for you over the years. This felt downright intimate for just two operators to be doing.

Then again your shared situation wasn’t exactly one of professionalism at this point. You’d been improvising for nearly a full day just trying to stay alive. Once back on your feet, you take hold of his hand again, this time with a little less caution since you’d already touched him there, and begin pulling at the fingertips to slide his sand and dirt-cakes gloves off. Even seeing his bare skin under his gloves be seen in the dim lamplight of the house, Ghost doesn’t do more than flex his fingers once you’ve rid him of the stiff material.

Purposefully avoiding his mask, you get Ghost down to nothing more than boxers and a t-shirt, even with his help at certain parts without him growling more or acting like you were irritating him. While he still gave off a feeling of all-around grumpiness and more than a little confused as hell, you paid it no mind as you led him towards the edge of the bed and pointed to it with a short yet polite command for him to ’sit’. Right away you noticed his hesitation and the way that his shoulders and arms tensed, his attention solely on you, flashing between your eyes and mouth like he was trying to reassure himself that he’d heard you correctly. But with one small tug on his hand, he turns around and sits on the bed with his feet resting on the floor and his arms braced on both sides of him a little stiffly.

“Now what?” His voice held a bit of rasp to it as he tracked your movement from his side, seeing you climb up into the bed and position yourself on your knees behind him. The close proximity didn’t go unnoticed by the Lieutenant as he cleared his throat, once again interrupting the calm silence in the house. His tension filled the small space between you, heating the gap of air, almost electrifying it.

“Just relax Ghost.” Easily touching his shoulders, you begin working your palms flat against the slopes of his muscled neck.

Purposefully but gently rubbing at the stiff cords of muscle and introducing the sensation to him as easily as possible in the case that it was a bit too overwhelming for him all at once. You knew you’d pushed the boundaries with him much further past anything you’d expected to achieve in one night. But now that he was sitting here in front of you, it was hard not to smile brightly that he was trusting you so much. Allowing your hands to be on him. Accepting that you had positioned the both of you in a very vulnerable position that could lead to a lot more violent options than affectionate ones. Torture and nightmares had given more than a fair share to Ghost, yet he was patiently staving off his own clear hesitation so that you could play out whatever this was turning out to be.

Your command went unacknowledged just like all of Ghost’s from earlier had; His breathing steadily slowing down into a deep and rich, relaxed sort of rhythm. Power of your hands and calming attitude worked faster than you anticipated, leaving the massive man sitting between your thighs begin to release. Tension falling out of his body not only under your hands but by sight of his jaw loosening. You’re even lucky enough to spot him trying to take glances at you from the corner of his eye, only to look back ahead since you were in quite the blindspot. Taking your thumbs in a sweeping motion from the edges of his shoulders inward, you apply pressure on the back of his neck and experimentally reach higher up under the hem of his mask. A dangerous game to play. Rumbling sounds of appreciation filling your ears are better than any sort of medal you could earn or bet you’d ever cash in. His head rolls back slightly with each small circle of your thumbs and fingers, pushing against you. Silently asking for more pressure.

“Feel good?” You ask at just a whisper, not wanting to disturb the warm sort of feeling the room has right now by speaking too loud.

Under the safety of his mask, Ghost’s mouth curves into a smile hearing you. He rolls his head back again, arching slightly to accommodate your small hands struggling to find good purchase to keep working at the intensity he’d been hinting at. A much less controllable sound escapes his mouth when you begin working at a very sore spot he didn’t even know was present right at the base of his skull.

“Keep going,” His sleepy-sounding mutter makes your chest ache.

Grinning at the feeling of his harsh accent and sudden domestication you work away diligently down his back carefully and methodically so as to not miss a single thing. And while it’s not necessarily going to help him much, you go ahead and use your fingernails to gently scratch up and down. It’s then a groan interrupts your focus and you see Ghost shift on the edge of the bed. Believing you’d found the end of your time, you leaned back on your heels and expected him to get up and leave you in the bedroom alone. Watching him tug at his t-shirt and pull it over his head to toss it somewhere across the room was how you were told that Ghost did indeed want more. Only his shirt was getting in the way of something he wasn’t getting.

Hearing him give a deep sigh when your fingertips returned to his now bared skin gave you a rush of adrenaline and nearly caused you to wiggle happily that you’d been able to share this with Ghost. He leans back into you a little more, letting your hands and arms take more of the weight as he groans out;

“You’ve done this before.”

“Yeah, but not for a long time.” You answer, eyes smoothing over the muscles rippling as your hands work at them.

“You’re good,” He grunts, closing his eyes and zeroing in on how to focus his attention between your small hands working so efficiently and the conversation he’d begun. “How’d you get so good at it?” His head turns a little, trying to get at least one good look at you. He keeps shifting now, allowing him to keep you just in the edge of his periphery.

“Had a good teacher for a few years,” You answer, working in tight circles over a large ball of muscle fibers all collected just at the edge of his shoulder blade, earning another growling sound from the Lieutenant.

“Teacher? When?” He asks, giving a slow release of a deep breath giving a short indication that the muscle you’d been working to release was getting a bit uncomfortable. Pulling back for a moment just to give him and your hands a break, you hear him make a noise then lean back a little further, pressing his back against you almost like a dog wanting to be pet more.

“Don’t stop.” He requests in a husky tone. You chuckle aloud, returning your hands and taking a less aggressive approach by smoothing your palms over him in less-than-planned patterns, just enjoying feeling his tattooed and scarred skin under your hands as you think about how to answer him.

“A woman in London taught me,” you start, using your nails again on his skin softly. “In the year or so between my U.S. military discharge and acceptance into the task force with you.” You see the effect of your touch on Ghost as it takes him longer to respond and the way he keeps leaning more and more weight back into you, unable to keep himself from subconsciously trying to get closer. Wanting more whether he’d ever admit it or not. There’s no mistaking it between either of you, he’s enjoying this.

“I assume she was special to you.”

It was your neighbor just across the hallway from you. An older woman named Sarah. Eccentric in modern times, you’d always believed she must’ve been a force to be reckoned with when she wasn’t hindered by an aging body and an even more ailing mind. A massage therapist by trade, and a pianist by heart there wasn’t much that Sarah could accomplish without someone helping her once she became limited in movement living on the eighth floor of the apartment building you shared. Back then you didn’t have much in the way of contacts after leaving the country, and it led to a friendship with the old woman living across from you. Sharing stories, eating dinner together, grocery shopping together when she felt like going out, and trading some skills between each other. After telling Ghost this much with your fingers tracing out letters and shapes over his back, you can sense he’s listening carefully. And Ghost is feeling a slight fuzzy sensation building in the back of his brain, spreading out in a warm wave down to his fingertips and toes.

“She taught me massage since at the time I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with my life.” Your head falls to the side, examining how the lamplight shines on ghost and deepens the already significant definition in his physique.

Ghost falls against you even more, and this time he lets his head fall back against you. Trying to counterbalance his weight and keep both of you from falling backwards with just him limp he’s becoming, you wrap on arm around his neck and hold his head in the bend of your arm. He gives another sigh, and settles against you heavily. He. looks at you in silence out of the corner of his eye listening to your explanation.

“Why was she your only friend?” You can’t help but chuckle at his question, resting your chin on his opposite shoulder and bringing your other arm under his to begin scratching and rubbing at his chest, feeling deep and puckered scars littering nearly every inch of him.

“I didn’t know anyone else. And you know me well enough to know that I’m not exactly extroverted.” You smile, tracing lightly up and down his well-defined arm. Ghost couldn’t be more comfortable laid against you.

“Sorry to hear that.” His voice low and husky with his mouth so close to your ear. “She must call or ask about you…”

You shake your head. “No. She died just before I joined you all. Her mind was… failing her. And there was some kind of accident in the middle of the night The police told me she was likely trying to get to the bathroom and fell. She apparently died on impact… they didn’t say what, but I think her head hit something.” You explain quietly. “And you and I both know that means lights out. So she didn’t suffer.”

“Sorry to hear that,” he answers as softly as he can manage after hearing the darker part of your happy memories. “How did it become… intimate, like this?” He asks, nodding to the way you were leaned up against his back with your hand tracing over every inch of him that you could reach. The longer you’ve both let this go, the more boundaries get pushed further out of reach, making it hard for either of you to really know where it could end.

You smile with a blush creeping up your neck onto your cheeks, thankful you’re somewhat hidden out of sight. “This isn’t really what she taught me,” You mutter a bit quiet. “When i was massaging you… yes. That I got taught. But this, it’s… just me.”

Out of your sight Ghost’s face flushes slightly as well, his cheeks a warm rose-color. You’re touching him in a way that he’d never expected. But hearing that you’re not just doing it for… relaxation, it’s a heavy but welcome thought. And Ghost can’t help that his body reacts to it with chills raising all over his skin despite the house being perfectly warm. He lets out a deep breath focusing on your words, repeating him over just to ensure that you’re not saying it one way and him interpreting it differently due to your hands being all over him, making him feel so good. Mind racing, heart pounding, he truly realizes just how vulnerable he is under you at this moment.

“I can stop if you’d like?” You offer, preparing to move away from him.

“No,” His hoarse voice gives away his sudden dry mouth. No matter how much your touch is affecting his body, he’s not willing to stop you right now. You’ve crossed into a level of trust that he can’t think to make you abide by anymore. It’s a foreign feeling for him, but he wants to push through it. Hoping he can feel more of you if he just holds on a little longer to this.

“Don’t stop."

Comments & Reblogs are Appreciated <3

[writingoddess1125]

Relationship Fluff

Simon 👻, Soap 🧼, König 👑

They realize they are getting chubby being in a happy relationship

Simon, Soap, König x GnReader

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Ghost - Comfort Meals

You and Simon had been dating for well over a year now, it had been a happy accident how you two had met. What was anquick tumble in the sheets after a drunken night you had woken up early and made breakfast for the solider much to his surprise. Truthfully it had been far too long since he had a home-cooked meal so it had been a delight to his senses and heart.

Assuming it was just a one off, Simon did agree to take your number and 'maybe' stop by if he got the need or chance.. Which ended up backfiring on him wonderfully, It took 6 months for you two to move in together, 8 months for you to see his face and Simon taking leave more often to be with you.

This was one of those times, having 3 weeks to himself to spend being pampered in your love and affection. That and the cooking- he hadn't realized how much he missed good hot meals that weren't from a bag or a mess hall, So he was practically a garbage disposal for you. Eating all the food you had to make, every treat you wiped up from a pinterest blog.

It was heaven!

He had gotten up early, like every morning and sat out on the patio taking in the morning air while reading. He did some basic chores and straightened up, knowing you preferred the kitchen area to yourself. Saying it was 'Yours' afterall.

"Honey! Breakfast is ready" You call out, Simon quick to set down his book and roll up. Knowing a nice breakfast and black coffee was waiting for him.

"Thank you Lov" He said softly and kissed your cheek as you set out both plates, pouring a cup of black coffee for himself as the plate of waffles, eggs, and bacon greeting him.

"My angel" He said and kissed your cheek lovingly as you sat next to him to tuck into the meal.

Mindless conversation taking place between you two as you guys ate, Simon getting seconds and a cup of tea for himself as well.

"Oh before I forget, Si can you go to the market to pick up some things? I was going to make cakes tonight" He nodded at the simple request, the closest market at around a 20 minute drive from your home anyway so it wasn't an issue.

"I can head out now, Get it done with" He said calmly, Standing up to take both your empty plates and cleaned them up. Always cleaning since he felt it was fair before heading upstairs to change to head into town.

Deciding that his jeans and coat would do fine started to change into that quickly, Mumbling about needing gas and.. and?..

Simon Paused- The pants felt tighter then it had before.. even if these were admittedly older pants they should have been fine not a new tightness around his admittedly full stomach.

Pulling off his shirt he took a look at his for in the bathroom mirror- while still seeing his muscular and admittedly large build however around his stomach and sides there was a new thin layer of.. Fluff? Some pudge that had defiently not been there before and just slightly dampening his abs.

"The hell?" He mumbled, look over himself. You walking into the room as well and seeing him staring at himself in the mirror.

"Something wrong?" You question, walking back to him as you see him looking at himself in the mirror.

"I've gained weight?" He questioned as he looked back at you, This surpsing you as you personally didn't see any difference.

"You look fine to me, Sexy too" You wink which earns a laugh from the man who quickly pulls you into his arms.

"While I do appreciate your support I've gained some weight. Seems I've gotten too comforble with the nice suppers and cakes" He said with a sigh, surprised he had let the comfort of food do this. You kissed his cheek gently and giggle.

"It's probably relationship weight"

"Relationship weight?" He questioned with a brow as you laugh and blush softly.

"It common for people in a comforble and happy relationship to sort of- Get comforble physically if you will" He hummed at hearing this smirking at the idea.

"Well if that is the case, I'm going to end up like the Stay Puff Marshmellowman" He said with a chuckle and kissed you.

Soap - Candy Monster

Candy- candy everywhere. That's how you two even found each other was by candy. Johnny wasn't a man huge of sweets till he met you, working as a repair specialist for the team you would fix all the toys they constantly broke- often eating on candy or giving out candy whenever any of the team members would stop by to gather their things. Johnny enjoying your clear sweet tooth always partook in your offers, which lead to hour long talks, sharing different candies from around the world and eventually dates. Who knew that just some candy could lead the Scot to the happiest time of his life-

Two years of relationship bliss which had fulfilled the Soilders life in ways he didn't know possible. While he was still in the service with you in his life, he was starting to take some steps back in order to create a distance for you to be in his life. The nice condo adding to this as well since you two had moved in together the year previously.

"The new candy bag is here!" You call out as you walk into the kitchen area seeing Johnny sipping his drink and excitedly looking to see what was brought. The monthly surprise bag of candy was your idea and truthfully he had found it genius.

"Uh let's see, some yuzu japanese white chocolate, Lucas chamoy candy, oh Cream savers! I used to love these" You say cheerfully ajd quickly open the bag- Johnny curious as well as he held out a hand which you happily handed him a few.

Johnny unraveled the strawberry sweet and put it to his lips as normal. Used to the constant wave of new confectionery that you passed to him, humming as he tasted the waves of strawberry and cream that filled his senses.

"Oh these are good- a little odd?" He hummed as he bit through the hard treat making your face scrunch up.

"Impacient as always" You muse as he crunched through the hard candy with a grin.

"Just like to get to the good part" He winked taking a few more candies into his mouth as you giggle at his reaction.

"Still ready for dinner tonight?" Johnny questioned, a gleam in his eyes as he watched your enthusiasm at it.

"Yeah- Also the show is on tonight" You remind him earning a knowing smile from the man, His eyes drifting to his phone to check the time which prompted you to do the same.

"Oh the shows almost on! Wanna watch it then head to dinner?" You said cheerfully, always watching to catch your favorite TV show before leaving anywere. Johnny of course agreeing before he headed upstairs to get a head start on changing.

"I'll be right down!" He called out, having a outfit in mind already as he reached for his 'sexy jeans' and a nice botton up.

Johnny huffed as he jumped up and down to get the jeans over his body. Stopping as he looked, sure they must have shrunk in the wash or- thays when he looked again.. noticing the thickening of his thighs and admittedly his ass.

He stared for a moment at the jeans before breaking out in a laugh. Grabbing some sweats instead as he headed back down to you with a smirk.

"You Husband weight me Darlin" He said with a almost proud smirk, you raising a brow at this.

"Husband weight?" You question, Watching him slap his plushed hip with a laugh.

"You are fattenin me up like I were ya husband" He said calmly as he plopped next to you, pulling you into his lap.

"I hope that's not a bad thing" You giggle, assuming he enjoyed it.

"It means ya make me happy darling" He said with a laugh before kissing your cheeks and leaned back to enjoy the show, well hidden in his sweatpant pockets a velvet box laid.

König - Taste Tester

Now most would find it cliché that a soldier ended up with a medic- and König would have no issue telling them to mind their own. You had saved his life, and gained his heart in one swoop.

After a rather nasty battle he had been rushed to the nearest Army Hospital were you had been, saving him from the brink of death and respected his boundaries. You two spending hours just talking about books, shows and different foods you had tasted while in the military- Both of you being quite the foodies.

It had been a long time to build trust between each other, however it had been worth it to say the least. After several years of a slow and steady relationship it had become clear you two would be permanent in each other's lives, moving in together and creating a routine for each others wants and needs.

It was a rare moment but both of you were on leave at the same time, having a nice long break from the hard demands of your guys jobs. König was sitting at the dining room table finishing a Lego set, this time being the Van Gogh one, a hobby he had taken up to help him relax and focus.

"Hey Love, How does this taste?" You question and hand him a spoon of something which he eats without question. His eyes lighting up as he nodded- Fried rice, some form of gravy or curry, and nice soft eggs.

"Ja, gut Schatz! (Its food Love), What is it?" He questioned as he hands back the cleaned spoon and you give him another spoonful which he inhails.

"It's Omurice, I found the recipe and wanted to give it a go. I don't know if I got the egg constancy right but I'm more concerned about taste" You shrug truthfully König clearly agreeing as he turned to look if you had anymore- this drawing a laugh from you as you make him a fat plate which he accepts happily.

"Danke" He says quickly before tucking into the large plate, happily chatting away setting his lego project further on the table so it didn't get disturbed. You only pausing the conversation to point to the larger males shirt which had a large stain on it.

"You got sauce on your shirt love" You say with a giggle, the Austrian make looking down and sighing softly. Giving a quick curse as he stood up to change his shirt.

Heading upstairs he took off his shirt and went to grab another when he paused and looked at himself in the mirror-

Now König knew he was a big guy- that was no surprise however he was defiently noticing he was becoming a bigger guy. Mainly his shirts didn't fit the same around his stomach and sides region but he hadnt really noticed till now, Looking himself over he saw a nice thin layer of plush over his whole form.

He blushed at this, realizing he may have been getting way more comforble then he realized. Remembering his mother telling him that once a person finds themselves in a life long relationship they can get bigger due to being comforble.

Had he truly gotten that comforble? He thought back to the days they would spend together, how he found everything that you did to be adorable and you had just become a part of his life. His heart fluttering at the thought as his need for a new shirt was forgotten and be stepped out of the room.

He walked back down, shirtless still in deep thought as he held his stained garmet. You raised a brow at seeing him so out of it and holding the shirt, Stepping forward you gently touch his hand to gently bring him back to you.

"König? Love you okay?" You question as he finally comes back to reality and blinks at you. Like he was seeing you for the first time all over again.

"König?.." You question again but he leans down and instead captures your lips in a deep kiss. A blush forming over both of your cheeks at the suddently passionate kiss, he pulled away after a moment after the need for air won out. After a moment of catching your breaths he stared you in the eyes.

"Let's go to the Juwelier (Jewlery Store) Tommorow Liebling~" He said with a shy smile and hands on your hips, A new sparkle in his eyes.

[stay-mon-army]

Daydream Kisses

Word Count: 4,040 words

Warning(s): Self-doubt, pining, like one swear word, angst (I really need some healing and OPLA Sanji is giving it to me)

Pairing: Sanji x GN!reader

After the conversation you had with Sanji, your life on the Going Merry couldn’t possibly have been any better. You felt calmer around Sanji, able to simply enjoy the company he was willing to provide. You spent time with all of the crew, laughing and drinking and making memories, but you spent the most time by far with the chef.

You were able to ignore the teasing looks and whispers most of the crew gave you when they noticed you spending so much time with the cook. You knew what they thought – you had heard it all from Nami, but you weren’t going to let them goad you into thinking bad thoughts again. After all, your conversation with Sanji had cleared it all up, you were feeling good about spending time with the chef in whatever capacity made the both of you happy.

However, your mind never could totally shut off.

One night, you lie awake, tossing and turning as you think over and over all the little things that happen between you and Sanji. You had sworn you wouldn’t think about what Nami had said to you that fateful morning, but you couldn’t help it.

Be with Sanji? Was that something you wanted? What would that be like?

Your mind wandered off, imagining the lovely life you could have with the chef. You already spent hours beside him, talking, working quietly beside each other, sharing quips and teasing glances and gentle touches. When you went into town with him to shop for groceries for the next voyage, he would often grasp your hand in his, ensuring you didn’t get separated in the crowded markets. He would lean into the counter to watch you while you talked, and he would always watch you closely, eyes dancing between your eyes and your lips as he let you try a taste of his newest recipe. He would pull you into a hug whenever you shared something even a little sad, like the time you saw a really pretty dragonfly get eaten by a flying fish. He was always right beside you during any dangerous moments, putting himself between you and the perceived danger.

What more would change, truly, if you were to tell Sanji you liked him?

Well for starters, he might kiss you. You imagined telling him, whispering your feelings to him one day in the kitchen, playing with your hands in a way you hope shows your excitement and your fear in equal measure. He would grin that beautiful breath-taking smile, like the world was opening up to swallow you whole. He would reach out for you, his hands resting against your elbows, then sliding up, up, up until one held your back and the other looped into your hair. He would pull himself ever closer, tilting your head to angle towards him, his lips coming down to just a hairs-breadth away. His breath would smell like mint and tobacco, ghosting against your lips as he breathed out a quiet, “may I, my love?” And the shiver your body gave in response would be all he needed before he dipped down and pressed your lips together in a slow, sweet kiss like you had never imagined.

Yeah, that would change things.

But there were some things you wouldn’t mind changing between you both.

You could imagine coaxing him from the kitchen after a long day of cooking, the contented, tired look in his eyes that he gets after another successful day full of recipes. Your hands would tug his, leading him out to the deck, where you would find the comfiest spot. You would lay down beside him there, on the deck, underneath the star-dusted sky, watching the way the world rocked from the waves lapping against the sides of the boat. You’d curl into his arms, your head resting against his shoulder as he held you, letting you point out particularly bright stars or what you imagined to be the constellations. You’d talk about your days, even though you spent most of it together; you’d talk about the future, dreaming of what would happen when you found the One Piece and the All Blue together. You wouldn’t be able to resist reaching up to press kisses against his collarbone, neck, cheek, lips, loving the way he melted into your touches, letting you do whatever you wanted because he just loved you this close so much. You could see yourself falling asleep like that, tucked underneath a blanket, wrapped in the chef’s warmth and comforting scent, drifting into a dream-filled sleep with thoughts of Sanji in your head.

Let’s just say sleep was hard to find when you thought of what you might want, how that might change things.

Some nights, you would wander out onto the deck, enjoying the sea breeze in the hopes it would chase away your aggressive thoughts. You hated that you worried so much – you had gotten better in some ways at dealing with your crazy thoughts since talking to Sanji, but in others you had become a total mess. You didn’t worry about your interactions with Sanji, but man, the moment you thought about your internal feelings? All hell broke loose and you hated every minute of it.

Tonight was one such night where your hammock and the darkness of your bedroom seemed like a war zone of battling desires. You hadn’t been afraid of the dark in years, but suddenly the moonlight created shadows of the blond chef, making you wish he was beside you in ways that sent shivers down your back.

You breathed in deep of the salty spray, staring up at the sparkling expanse above. Nothing settled you quite as much as the stars – they were soothing in their silent watchfulness, observing without judgment, taking in the lives of everyone below without malice or opinion. They wouldn’t comment on your wild thoughts, your deep-seated worries, your hopes and desires. They would simply watch, stand witness to the life you lead, beside you through all of it. The stars never leave.

You almost miss the tell-tale tapping of dress shoes across the deck, your mind too distant racing among the stars.

“Why are you awake so late, darling? You’ll catch your death out here in the cold.” Sanji drapes his coat across your shoulders, smoothing the sleeves against your arms before moving to stand beside you. The gentle press of his hands against your arms, even through the fabric of your shirt and his jacket, brings back the thoughts you had come out to avoid and you tried to blink away the embarrassing heat that courses through your body at the feeling.

“Couldn’t sleep, is all.” You say, pinching the edge of the jacket between your forefinger, middle, and thumb to tug it closer around your body. You don’t look over at the man beside you, afraid to meet his gaze after the thoughts that had been devouring your consciousness for the past few hours. “What are you doing up?”

“I had to prep for breakfast tomorrow. I was thinking of making a quiche with some breakfast potatoes.” You smiled, nodding to yourself. Of course, what other reason could he have for being awake. “If you’d like, I could make you some tea to help you fall asleep, my dear. I would hate to leave you with a restless night.”

You shake your head, finally looking over at the blond. He’s watching you with kind, gentle eyes. He wasn’t worried or anything, just attentive – paying attention to your needs and asks of him with precision. “I don’t think tea will do much.” Making jokes was the only way you could deal with the thoughts running through your head.

Sanji raises his eyebrow, smiling at you with that comforting look still gracing his eyes. “What could I do to assist you in sleep, my love? Perhaps you’d like to talk about what’s keeping you awake?”

You flush, quickly looking away, laughing awkwardly at the clear sign you just gave. You raise a hand to rub at the skin of your face, hoping it will make the blood go away and save you from your embarrassing moment.

“I don’t know. I don’t think that will fix much either. Might just make it worse.” You mumble, looking back up at the stars, wishing you could be scooped into the moon’s cold embrace.

“Would you rather I leave you alone then?” You turn quickly to face him, nearly losing the suit jacket draped over your shoulders before you clutch it closer to your body, like it will keep Sanji beside you longer.

“No! No, please stay. I don’t think being alone will fix much either.” You smile up at the chef, who is grinning widely down at you as well. You knew he loved hearing you tell him to stay, telling him that you wanted him around. You have a feeling he likes hearing it even more than you do.

“I’ll stay as long as you’ll let me.” You sigh, settling yourself down onto the deck, laying down with his jacket wrapped around you so you could look up to the sky. Sanji hesitates for a moment, before sitting down beside you, watching you quietly.

He sits with his arms back to brace against the deck, one leg extended, the other bent to point to the stars. You can’t help the small peeking glances you steal from the corner of your eye as you try not to think about how close this was to some of your daydreams. You try, but fail, to ignore the way the silence hangs suspended but soothing around you both, like a warm blanket; the way that you’re so close, you would only have to reach out your hand and you could be touching him, nearly a hand-span away from contact; the way you can see every lock of blond hair falling over his shoulder as he tips his head back to also stare at the stars.

“Like something you see, darling?” You blush, looking away even though you had already been caught. He chuckles softly, looking over at you and smiling. “Are you sure you don’t want to tell me what kept you up?”

You breathe deeply, debating with yourself for a moment. One the one hand, you trust Sanji. You know he wouldn’t judge you; he had never judged you. He was so kind, always offering you comfort and understanding in all things – never expecting anything but your honesty. You knew he would take anything you had to say to him in stride, never once faltering in his devotion to being caring and compassionate. On the other, you were terrified of what your thoughts might mean. The ways in which your relationship might change if the words were spoken aloud. You never wanted to lose that comfort that Sanji had to offer, and the thought that he might change his view of you scared you. You worried that there would be new expectations, new understandings, new problems to arise with the brief mention of your desire to kiss and hold the blond chef. The last thing you wanted was change. Right?

So why did your mouth open and your tongue begin to form words? Why did you spill out the inner secrets you had kept hidden for weeks after the incident with Nami?

“I just recently have been thinking about what Nami said, about us being a thing. I never really thought of it before she said it – we’re just friends, I like being like that with you, but I don’t see any problem with friends acting the way we do. But at the same time, now that Nami mentioned it, I can’t stop thinking if I might want something more. At night is the worst, when I’m alone after spending all day with you, I just can’t stop my mind from making these new ideas. These new scenarios where I get to hold you, hold your hands, curl up against you,” you hesitate before whispering, “kiss you.” You throw your head back to rest against the deck, staring up at the twinkling night expanse above to avoid the look you know will be gracing Sanji’s face. He’s a flirt through and through, you know that he’s going to love the idea, even if he only ever said he was okay with being friends. He wasn’t going to take this admission without a little outward joy and playful teasing. “And the worst part is I don’t know what I want so I haven’t said anything and just held it all in. Because if I say this and then decide that I don’t really want things to change, then I’ve led you on and that’s wrong. But if I say this and then do something about it, everything will change and I might still lose you. But if I keep it all inside, I won’t lose you – you never have to know and I can pretend like nothing is wrong and I can just keep that all inside. It doesn’t hurt anybody in there. It just takes away a little bit of my sleep, and I’m okay with that as long as I’m still able to have you in my life.”

You roll your head to the side to finally glance at the man who you had just poured your heart out to for what felt like the millionth time since you’ve met him. It was getting easier and easier to share your inner fears and thoughts with him, the more you did it. As though the beginning was a dam cracking, opening up so that the water could seep out and flood through his river, releasing your pressure to share the load with him. It felt nice, you couldn’t lie.

He simply stared at you, an unreadable look on his face before he sighs, nodding, looking down at the deck.

“Okay, darling, that was a lot to process.” You had never seen him so stoic, so calm. Especially after you shared about your feelings, you weren’t used to him not simply bursting into action, face and body nearly splitting open at the sheer excitement at hearing your feelings, about him or otherwise. Usually emotions were Sanji’s forte so you couldn’t figure out why he seemed so withdrawn today.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have just dumped that on you. It isn’t fair for me to unburden myself like that on you – you’ve always been there for me and I’m just always so ready to share my thoughts and feelings and I never stopped to think how all this might make you feel. That was so selfish of me, I-”

“Don’t call yourself selfish.” The cold edge to his voice makes you freeze. Where was your flirty, playful Sanji?

“What?” You watch his face carefully, see the way his eyebrows furrow and his mouth dips down in the corners – the closest you’ve ever seen it to a frown. His eyes come up to look at you and there’s a depth there you haven’t seen before. As though all this time, there was a wall hiding his deeper mind away from you.

“Don’t ever call yourself selfish. You went out of your way, worrying about how I would feel or what I would say to your feelings, so much so that you lost sleep over it. You took into consideration everyone else’s thoughts and feelings and ignored how this all hurt you, bothered you. You were willing to let it continue to bother you until I made you say something. You are anything but selfish, and anyone who says otherwise is ignorant. You are the most selfless person I know.” His eyes are hard, as though he’s trying to convince you with his look alone. You nearly crack under his gaze, but you nod anyway, showing you understand what he’s saying.

His shoulders loosen at the sight, his eyes softening to a look of endearment as he looks at you.

“Now, I’ve said this before, but I will continue to say it, however many times it takes for you to believe me. I will be anything you need from me, my love. I can be your friend, your confidante, your lover; anything you want from me. All you have to do is say the word. I won’t leave you, you won’t lose me because of a change in feelings. Unless you tell me to go, I’m here, until the ends of the Earth.” He reaches out a hand, brushing back a piece of hair off your face. “The way I care for you can’t be put into words. You’re a god amongst men, a divine revelation of the true beauty of humanity at its core, you show the warmth of kindness and the darkness of fear and you do it all with the poise and delicacy of a butterfly in flight – you have never been anything less that magical, and to be in your life has been an honor I could never imagine finding anywhere else.”

You swallow against the lump growing in your throat, hoping that the burning in your eyes is because you’re tired and not because you’re about to cry in front of Sanji right now. You’d heard him say things like this before – Sanji was known for his kind words. But for some reason, hearing them now, you wanted to sob in relief. He didn’t have to say those nice words about you; he didn’t even need to care about your stupid feelings and listen to you complain and worry about why you can’t sleep.

Sanji sits up, opening up his arms for you as he whispers, “come here, love” and you can’t stop yourself from dragging your body over to curl into his arms.

Hugging Sanji, or in this case, Sanji hugging you, wasn’t an uncommon occurrence – you both were very affectionate people, so you were never shy about being close with any of the crew before. Yet somehow, this time felt different. His arms pulled you close, squeezing you against him as though he was pressing all your pieces back together, bringing you into his body as a shield where you could become complete again. His hands rested flat against your back, fingertips just digging into the skin as though he was afraid you might be pulled from his grasp if he wasn’t careful.

The scent of Sanji enveloped you; cooking oil, cigarettes, something else just distinctly him. You never could quite place that scent. You breathed it in, closing your eyes to the world as you relax into Sanji’s embrace. He rests his head against the top of yours, his lips pressing against your hair.

“Now, as for your confession.” You take a deep breath, not quite sure where this was going to go. “I don’t think I need to tell you again how dedicated I am to you, sweetheart. I would be honored to love you in any capacity you would like to have me. However, you have to make that decision – I am not going to pressure you any way. You can tell me exactly what you want from me, when you want it from me. You can change your mind at any time, I won’t hold it against you. Ever.” His voice was strong, confident, everything you weren’t feeling right now. You didn’t know how to take his words.

Part of you really wanted to leave things alone, to just stay like this, curled in Sanji’s arms until you slept. That you could stay this way, without anything changing and becoming awkward, was a comforting thought that you wanted to hold onto. However, the more you thought about it, the more you thought that maybe your daydreams and sleepless nights were telling you something. If this was causing you so much distress, maybe it was because part of you really wanted those things to happen. Maybe it couldn’t hurt to test out these new feelings and desires, especially if Sanji was the one saying that he would be willing to accept your changing mind if things don’t go well.

You lift your head, pulling back slightly from Sanji’s embrace. His arms loosen around you, allowing you to back up enough to look up at him; his hands still hold onto your sides as though he isn’t quite ready to let you out of his hold.

“If I asked to try… this,” you say, watching his face closely, the way his eyes shine in the moonlight. “But then I changed my mind and wanted to go back to being friends…”

“You need only say the word, love, and I would give you anything you wanted. Your wish is my command.” He smiles that stupid flirty smile that you know he’s flashed at a million women through his time working at the Baratie, and yet you couldn’t help the flare of warmth that shoots through your body.

“Fuck it.” You whisper, reaching up to grab his face. Your hands slide over his jaw, cupping his cheeks to pull him down to meet your lips with his own.

You had thought about kissing Sanji for a while now; what it would be like to have his lips against yours, what he would taste like, how his lips, his tongue, his teeth would feel against you. And yet all your daydreaming hadn’t prepared you for truly living it. You had a pretty good imagination, so it wasn’t like you hadn’t imagined how amazing it felt for him to press his lips against yours, pulling back a little between each kiss and feeling his warm breath against your face. But feeling him against you, feeling his hand slide up from your waist to thread through your hair, gripping softly when you nip at his lip – that was something else entirely. The way it lit your body on fire was hard to ignore.

When you pull back from the kiss, breathing deeply as you continue to cup his face, you met his eyes in the dim light, close enough to feel his breath fan your face with every pant he lets out. Your heart tightens as you look at him, feel the warmth of his body pressing against you, debating going in for another kiss.

“Is it okay if I kiss you again?” You whisper, afraid of breaking the moment you felt encapsulated in. It felt as though the world stopped turning, the wind stopped blowing, time stopped ticking as you glued yourself against Sanji’s body.

Sanji simply smiled and leaned back in, pulling you in by the back of the neck to capture your lips again. Your body arches up to meet your bodies together, needing to be closer to him. His hand that isn’t tangled in your hair slides to the small of your back, tightening to help you arch against him further, as though he wants to pull you into his body, make you one with him in the same way you want to curl into his body yourself.

You couldn’t deny it any longer, being with Sanji was too good not to want to be with him forever. You still felt a little fear – you never knew a day without some concern of how life would play out for you, how others would react to everything you do. However, feeling Sanji’s arms around you, being this close to Sanji, you loved him enough to overlook that fear for a little while. You didn’t think you needed him this way so badly – kissing him, holding him, loving him – but now that you’ve had a taste, you didn’t think you could go a day without having him this way. Your dreams hadn’t prepared you for the incessant need that began to grow in your bones.

“You can kiss me whenever you desire, my love. I will be waiting for the chance to hold you like this again, every day until I die.” Sanji’s kind words were drowned out by the pounding in your chest at the thought that he felt the same way you did.

Yeah, you could see yourself spending hours with him like this. Maybe daydreaming wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

[celenawrites]

Mornings like these are rare. 

You wake up and look outside the window, seeing the dawn rise on you as you estimate that you only have an hour until the sun shines through the beige curtains of your room. An hour before you have to get up and leave for work. 

You yawn audibly, and then you turn to face your boyfriend, Simon. He’s sound asleep, which is a first, especially since he’s usually up and running - years of serving in the military ingrained in him a sense of strong discipline, something that even soft domesticity cannot break him out of. He was always up by four o’ clock(maybe out of habit, maybe because he couldn’t sleep as well as he wanted, maybe because he had a nightmare he wouldn’t burden you with)  and he stayed in bed for ten minutes or more, until muscle memory forced him to leave the soft bed and take a cold shower to get himself awake. Then he’d eat a protein bar from the pack you had ordered for him the week before he was supposed to come home, and then he’d put on his running shoes (all clean and nice due to you) and he’d go for a morning run with his face covered with a black surgical mask instead of his usual balaclava or skull mask. 

He’d come back around six o’ clock, all sweaty and heaving as he sits down on the rickety armchair in the living room as he catches his breath. He’d look at the clock and notice the time, slowly making his way to the kitchen to brew two cups on Earl Grey tea and he carefully pours it into the mugs with cute puppies scribbled on them (you got them for a steal from a flea market, and all he could do when he saw your shopping bags was huff in amusement with eyes twinkling as he aids you into arranging the small trinkets, utensils and potted plants around the house). He’d take out your favorite cookies to serve along with the hot beverage, plating it up on the tray like you usually did and he’d enter your room again, softly running his scarred hand through your soft hair as he’d gently ask you to wake up and share some tea with him before the day begins. 

This small window of time, where you and Simon do nothing, speak nothing but let the tea and the love you have for each other warm you up was the highlight of the day for the both of you. 

Then he’d send you off to work while he busies himself with all the overdue handiwork needed around the home you share with him. Fixing creaky doors, mowing the lawn, putting nails in the wall so you can hang up more paintings, hooks - anything that would make this place more homely than he ever remembers it to be. On days you didn’t have work, you would stick around him - half a dozen steps away from him as he went around the house and worked to fill in the hours before lunchtime. Sometimes you’d make him lemonade to drink in the scorching heat, and other times you’d rope him in to watch a movie with you, only to end up sleeping on his shoulder as he gently shuts off the television and whisks you off to the bedroom, holding you in his arms and letting himself have the much-needed rest his brain refuses to let him have at night. 

If he wakes up before it’s evening, he’d gently urge you to grab some lunch, maybe an early dinner before curling up beside you while you read your book as you gently muss up his badly cut hair, promising to him that you’d help him fix the uneven cut he’s had to give himself while he was deployed. He hums contently, letting himself feel like he deserves this as he dozes off in the night. Like he deserves you. 

Today he does none of it. 

It is rare for Simon to sleep through the night uninterrupted, and even rarer for you to wake up before him. So you soak up this moment, hoping that the memory that follows it will do you justice as you try to remember the few times you got to admire your other half the way he usually gets to do with you. You count his soft eyelashes, your eyes squint as you look at his hair as the sunlight shines upon his head like a halo. Terrifying as he may be with his persona as Ghost, you were certain that this is another sign that Simon, your Simon, was nothing short of angelic. You sigh as you look at his crooked nose, broken by a very violent bar fight he had engaged into when he was young and brash and thirsting for senseless violence and blood. (He won the fight, despite his inexperience. He had told you so with a dry chuckle, and you tried not to let your amusement show through as you shook your head in disappointment)

You look at the scar that runs from his temple down to near his left earlobe, white and thin like lightning as if Zeus had struck this behemoth of a man for being mortal and still putting all the heroes of past eons to shame.  You look at his lips - pink, dry, thin and scarred, and you almost let your fingertips touch them as you memorize this rare visage of your lover. But you know Simon’s tired (oh so tired), and you’d rather give up on the opportunity to admire him than interrupt him when he’s finally asleep after fighting fruitlessly to finally rest for the past three weeks. 

However, your attempts at being quiet fail you anyway. 

Suddenly, as if he can almost sense your awake state,  his eyelids flutter and his breath picks up as he blinks awake. Brown pupils meet yours as he intently stares at you with sleep-laden eyes, his blonde eyelashes flickering whenever he tries to blink off the fatigue plaguing his weary bones. You smile at him kindly, letting your hand gently rest on his face as your fingers curl up into the blonde tufts of hair on his head. He leans into your touch, softly kissing the inside of your wrist as your fingers trail over his head, around his face. 

“Good morning, Simon”, you greet him softly, and his breath hitches slightly as he looks at the love you carry in your eyes for him. At the love that drips from every word you say to him. 

“Would you like me to make you some tea?”

Note - I felt like writing some domestic fluff with our beloved Lieutenant right after watching Barbie, so here we are. Hope you enjoy.

Divider by @/firefly-graphics on Tumblr.

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