#I hope that properly conveys how much I enjoyed these

[copper-16]

Why Would She Say That?

Ingrid and Mapi’s daughter calling the Norwegian by her name for the first time

(a/n: hi guys! So a few people have been asking for a kid fic with Mapi and Ingrid, and to be honest I came up with a ton of ideas so I decided to just post little chapters as I write them instead of compiling them all into one big fic! I used the same character from an old kid fic I wrote about these two back a few months ago. I hope everyone enjoys! :)

Elena was just a little under a year old when it happened. She hadn’t properly started talking yet, had only babbled in the way that all babies did. It was one of Mapi’s favorite activities, to sit there with her and pretend that she understood what her daughter was saying. They would have whole conversations, Elena perched on her lap and just talking away at the Spaniard, who appeared to be hanging off her every word despite not understanding an ounce of what she was saying.

Ingrid, personally, found it incredibly adorable if not a little frustrating at times. She loved Elena very much, but when the little girl was upset sometimes there wasn’t much that could be conveyed through the pointing of her chubby fingers.

Which was why the Norwegian was elated when Elena began speaking, real, whole words.

She had tried not to be too discouraged by the fact that her daughter’s first word was “Mami,” the name they had very clearly picked out for Mapi to be called. Mapi was “Mami” and Ingrid was “Mama” they had decided, figuring that would be easy enough for a baby to understand while still being able to delineate between the two of them.

“Princesa, can you grab me Elena’s bag?” Mapi called out from her spot near the apartment entrance, with their daughter settled comfortably on her hip. The sandy blonde little girl eagerly pulled at her mothers hair, and Mapi winced slightly before gently pulling her chubby hand away, shaking her head at the baby despite the fact that she was smiling down at her.

But Elena just smiled back at her with delight, clapping her hands together as the brunette bounced her lightly, waiting for her wife to bring the bag they needed before leaving the house.

“Ma-ma-ma, pra-pra-pra, buh-buh-buh,” Elena puffed out softly, and Mapi nodded her head as she smoothed down the mess of sandy blonde curls atop her head.

Ingrid came around the corner with the bag in just a few seconds, smiling widely at her two girls, depositing a kiss on each of their cheeks as she passed the bag to Mapi.

“Elena, can you say bye-bye to Mama?” Mapi prompted, doubting that the baby would actually do it but still trying to get her to say the M-word, either way. But Elena just smiled up at the Norwegian without saying a peep, instead waving her hand goodbye. Ingrid allowed herself to lean into the laughter that tumbled from her mouth, tickling her daughter's belly slightly before she kissed Mapi softly in parting.

“Bye princesa,” Mapi mumbled against the Norwegian’s lips before she slipped out the door with their baby.

—

When the center back arrived back home just a few hours later, Ingrid was waiting at the door with anticipation.

“Elena!” The dark haired woman cooed in excitement, having missed the baby despite the small amount of time that had elapsed since they had last seen each other. And to her credit, her daughter was equally excited to see her, reaching for the Norwegian easily and allowing for her Mami to facilitate a quick trade off.

Ingrid covered the little girl's face in kisses before she turned her attention to her wife, who was gazing fondly at the two as they greeted one another.

“How was the doctor?” The taller woman asked, referencing the check up that Mapi had taken Elena to.

“Everything looks good. She’s in the 52th percentile for weight and the 45th for height, and everything looks healthy according to her doctor,” Mapi parroted, and Ingrid couldn’t help but nod in relief. When she had been pregnant with Elena, nobody had really warned her about the pre and post-partum anxiety she would feel. And while it had gotten better as Elena had gotten older, occasionally it still held her tightly for the most random of things, like a routine doctor's visit.

But Elena was fine, and Mapi was smiling at her brightly, and everything was okay.

After the three of them had dinner, they migrated to the living room to settle in for the night. Mapi was curled on the couch as Ingrid sat on the floor with Elena, playing with her blocks while she babbled away.

“Yes, this one is yellow,” Ingrid explained as the little girl held up a yellow block, watching as Elena dissolved into giggles and reached for another one, holding it up to her mother expectantly.

“That is purple,” Ingrid supplied easily, and instead of laughter Elena looked down at the purple block with confusion, her little brows knitted together in clear skepticism.

“Do you not like purple?” Ingrid asked, looking up at Mapi with an equally confused expression. Elena looked up at her Mama just as Mapi replied, also a little lost on what was going on.

“Mami!” Elena cried out gently as she looked back at Mapi, before looking at Ingrid again, the block still in hand.

“Maybe she just does not like that purple block, princesa,” Mapi tried, unsure of what was going on inside her daughter's little mind.

But just as Mapi finished her sentence, Elena dropped the purple block and reached for Ingrid insistently. The Norwegian easily reached for her daughter, pulling Elena into her with a gentle hug. Her daughter's little body melted into her completely, letting out a relieved little sigh.

When the dark haired woman pulled her daughter back, Elena smiled at her brightly.

“Prin-prin-prin,” Elena pushed out very insistently, as though she was trying to tell her mother something, and it was Ingrid’s turn to furrow her eyebrows, shaking her head slightly.

“Hm?” She asked the baby softly, not really expecting an answer but trying to mirror what her wife did with the little girl when they spoke.

“Princess!” Elena finally giggled out triumphantly, pointing at Ingrid with one of her chubby little baby fingers.

Mapi pitched forward with surprise from her spot on the couch as Ingrid nearly dropped her daughter from complete surprise, and for a moment both of them were completely still and silent as they looked from each other to their baby, back and forth.

“What did she just say?” Ingrid squeaked out, her voice an octave higher than it usually was. Mapi had slapped her hand over her mouth, and she was trying desperately to keep from laughing.

“María, what did she just say?” Ingrid repeated, staring at Elena with wide eyes. Her daughter was staring back at her with big eyes, confused as to why her mother was acting so strangely.

“She said princesa, I believe,” Mapi said from her spot on the couch, a smirk dancing across her lips. Ingrid looked over at her with huge eyes, more than a little shocked.

“Why would she say that! That’s not my name!” Ingrid exclaimed, but Mapi just raised a brow at her, unimpressed.

“Is it? It’s not like I haven’t been calling you that for years, princesa,” the Spaniard points out, emphasizing her last word heavily.

“Princesa!” Elena repeats happily, reaching forward to place her hand on Ingrid’s cheek as if to prove her point.

Ingrid looked from her wife back to their baby, who was staring at her with big eyes, as if she was the only thing in the whole world that mattered. She had never expected to have loved such a small human so much, and yet here she was. Completely and utterly head over heels in love with someone so tiny.

“Yes, that’s right, that’s me,” Ingrid whispers, her voice choked up as she struggles to get words out over her impending tears. The Norwegian pulls their daughter back into her, and Elena settles into her chest easily, her whole body pressed flush against Ingrid.

“You know who I am,” Ingrid murmurs into the little girl's sandy blonde hair, her words just barely audible. Tears are slipping down her cheek of their own volition, falling onto the carpet as Elena snuggles into her, and her wife finally moves from her position on the couch to join them on the floor.

She wraps her arms around Ingrid, allowing the Norwegian to press her face into her neck as she still cradles Elena close to her, the brunette bringing her hands up to gently rub at Ingrid’s back soothingly.

“She always knew who you were, you know that, right?” Mapi murmurs softly, trying to reassure the Norwegian that just because her daughter hadn’t said her name, didn’t mean that she loved the dark haired woman any less. Ingrid nodded into her neck, gathering herself for a moment before she leaned back, rocking Elena back and forth as she sniffled lightly.

She knew, but it was still something else entirely to hear her daughter say something that signified her, out loud.

Mapi reached forward to wipe the remaining tears from her cheeks, given that her wifes hands were relatively full at the moment. When Ingrid pulls Elena back slightly, the little girl seems concerned, looking up at the Norwegian with worry in her eyes. Ingrid can probably guess that she’s clocking the redness and blotchiness of her face from her crying.

“Mama?” Elena asks gently, and Ingrid feels her jaw fall open again as her face lights up, and she looks from their daughter to Mapi, who is looking back at her with excitement.

“That’s right, Mama! Mama is alright, mi sol,” Mapi reassures the little girl, but her words are twinged with excitement for her wife, and Elena giggles at them both before she reaches for the Spaniard, allowing Ingrid to safely transfer her from one parent to the other.

Mapi smothers the small girl with kisses before she looks back up at Ingrid, only to find her with more tears in her eyes.

“Are you crying again?” Mapi asks with a laugh as the Norwegian fixes her with a glare, but the intensity of it is lost as a tear rolls down her face.

“Ti stille,” Ingrid snaps, telling her wife to shut up though there is little bite to it, and the Spaniard simply chuckles in response as she bounces their daughter a few times before depositing her back to the Norwegian.

“Gosh - what a day! Ingrid…I think we might have the smartest baby ever,” Mapi decides with complete and utter seriousness, and Ingrid rolls her eyes slightly at the hyperbole, but she finds herself agreeing rather easily either way.

“I think you might be onto something there,” Ingrid decides as she cuddles her daughter close, the little girl giggling at all of the excitement as she tries to pull on some of Ingrid’s long dark hair.

“Ow, Elena!”

[wosoluvrr]

sorry about the blood in your mouth, i wish it was mine || a. russo x reader (1)

summary: everyone knew the game against united was going to be scrappy, but no one was quite prepared for that.

warnings: lots of talking about blood and injury, angstangstangst, a curse word or two, not much else i don’t think

a/n: i love that quote by richard siken and i just have to be different so i figured including it in my first fic/writing thing (?) was the way to go. anyways, i hope you enjoy! i’m happy to be here, and excited to post more and hopefully get to know some of you:) all my love 🤍

"what the fuck is your problem, zelem?" the question came out more like an insult, your body taking over as you moved towards her on the pitch. in doing so, you left alessia's side, the girl flat against the pitch as she gripped at her ankle and fought back tears. vic and lia stayed kneeled beside her, the rest of the team taking notice and making their way towards the midfield where alessia had gone down.

katie only rolled her eyes at your screaming, sparing alessia a quick glance and then focusing back onto you. "i barely touched her, you've all gone soft," she replied with a scoff, her teammates remaining in their positions.

"the audacity you have is a bit mind blowing really, who'd you have to pay to get that armband?"

she doesn't reply this time, her face curling into an expression you can't quite read. you're not sure how the hell you'd come up with something like that, but you opt to keep your expression blank as you turned your attention to the ref who was jogging towards the scene.

alessia still wasn't getting up, the ref signaling for the medics as she made her way from the scene to the two of you. jen was approaching you as well, her face offering a warning for you to take the scolding and not let anything go further.

before the ref can reach you she pulls out a yellow card on zelem, writing her name down sloppily once she arrives and beginning her scolding of the two of you. jen's hand on your shoulder keeps you in your own spot, zelem's eyes fixed blankly on your own as the ref opts to check back in with the medics and leave the three of you alone.

"keep your mutt off my shit, beattie." she begins to storm off but you're quick to follow, your body slipping out of jen's hand as your pace quickens.

your only intent was to give her a push and bag the yellow card, deeming it worth the release of steam. however, somehow seconds after zelem had jolted forward and turned to make her way back towards you, a first slammed square into your face. you ended up on your hands and knees, spitting blood into the grass below you.

medics guessed a broken nose and a split lip which might need stitches due to your face accidentally getting stepped on when the players reacted.

sitting on the locker room floor was undeniably embarrassing, your body slumped against the wall as you struggled to keep the gauze firmly against your face. even with the pain consuming you, it was hard not to wonder just how badly you’d be punished.

benched for x amount of games? kicked off the squad? banned from football for life? the possibilities seemed endless, each one worse than the other.

"that was quite the shove you got in," alessia was standing in the doorway, the large puffer coat on her body making your eyes crinkle in place of a smile.

you didn't dare take your eyes off the floor as the shame burning within you only deepened in her presence. there wasn’t a single part of you that wanted to know how angry she was with you, the thought of her conveying her disappointment making you feel sick.

"your ankle?" you ask, ignoring her insinuation.

alessia laughs gently, properly walking into the room and shedding her puffer onto the closest surface.

"rolled, which really sucks." she moves a stool in front of a bench, slightly limping her way over to you as she extends her hand out. "i'll be out for a few weeks at worst.”

you feel like crying, the girl in front of you wrapped in a bandage and you had somehow managed to make things worse. you accept her hand and allow her to guide you to the bench, your head falling back against the lockers as you groan.

"why aren't you at the hospital?"

"i wanted to apologize before i went," you answer. "my selfishness is making sure i don’t do a very good job at that.”

your voice is more pathetic than you imagined it'd be, the pain from your face spreading all around your body. pain was doable when it was just pain, but this just had too much in it for you to feel able to manage it.

"let me help you," she beats your slew of apologies, hands reaching out to the hold the rag against you. her fingers are cold against your hand for the seconds they do touch causing you to pull away quickly, the burning in your arm from holding it up so long dulling down to an ache.

her pressure immediately becomes too harsh and you moan in pain, arm back in the air as your hand roughly grips onto her own. "please be gentle," you gasp, her face washing with regret as she nods, free hand moving to rest on your bare thigh.

her newly adjusted position has her face far too close to your own and you're certain if your nose was working you'd be able to smell her minty breath. it was really her eyes that had you going crazy, the deep blue they sported making you feel dizzy as you examined them.

"thank you," you start, eyes closing as you continue to fight the threat to cry. "i regret it already, i don’t want to be a violent person.”

you quickly find that it's easier to look past alessia, fixating on the door frame and instead of anything else. she's frowning back at you, trying to come up with the right things to say.

"you're a sweet girl," her voice is barely a whisper. "katie's completely fine, and you're going to be fine too, yeah?"

you nod, finally looking her in the eyes.

“is ella angry, you think?”

you hadn’t even considered how awful it must’ve been for you to start a fight with a team that coincided with tooney. there was somehow more guilt to be felt, your brain imagining the damage you may have caused between the two girls.

she doesn’t answer, eyes narrower than they were before.

"i'm sorry, alessia." it's sincere, your head nodding to convey your feelings better as she nods back, something resembling her usual smile creeping onto her lips.

"you can check that off the list now," she teases, a feeling of relief spreading through your body. “i just want you to be okay.”

you had expected her to be far more angry, far more disappointed in you. but, she's not. because how could she be? it was alessia, after all. sweet, composed, and painfully beautiful alessia.

it's embarrassing how caught you are by her even in the state your in, your mind barely able to keep up with just how closely you're getting to see the girl now. you decide now you have to very carefully memorize the small details of her face, selfishly noting you'd probably never be this close to her ever again.

"you're too good to me," it's barely a whisper, your eyes shamefully fixated on alessia's lips. it's hard to contain yourself anymore, your heartbeat finallt recognizing that there was more than pain against you in this moment.

"no such thing," she says.

she readjusts her hand and tilts your head to the side in an effort to examine if anything else had left you with marks. to her disappointment, she finds the scratches your face had taken from the rest of the cleat on your face. it wasn't a pretty sight, you were sure of that, but her gaze didn't feel like pity.

she was looking at you like she always did, merely taking you in for what you were.

she moves the gauze slowly away, wincing at the what was beneath the fabric. your nose is offset, blues and greens inviting themselves into your usual complexion. dried blood stained it’s way from your nostrils to your mouth, your bottom lip sporting the nasty gash.

it was uncomfortable knowing how ugly you must look right now. you opted to close your eyes and pretend you were somewhere else, desperately trying to act normal when she ran her thumb over your cheekbone.

“i’m sorry about the blood in your mouth,” she whispers. “i just wish it was mine.”

you’re crying now, body shaking with sobs as she pulls you into her chest, your chin hooking onto her shoulder as you cried. alessia’s fingers are rubbing your back, her lips whisper ‘it’s okay’ over and over until you start to believe her.

“i think it’s time you get some help with all this, don’t you think?” you’re still pressed against her, hands desperately clenching her jersey. you don’t want to pull away. you don’t want to leave when you’re certain you’ll never have her like this again.

it’s selfish, having her like this when she doesn’t know the way you feel. it almost feels wrong to be tended to so lovingly by her, your secret administration making the weight of her actions far different for you.

but, of course you nod, pulling yourself out of her embrace and allowing her sweet hands to brush the matted hair from your forehead to the sides. her touch is so gentle you almost cry again, cursing your stupid brain for making things harder.

you wanted to ask her about so many things. you wanted to ask what she had meant about the blood and what she had meant when she chose to rest her hand on your thigh. or why she had chosen to be kind to you instead of absolutely losing her head over your recklessness.

you settle for a later date. “can i call you once i’m finished?”

the laugh she lets out makes you feel warm, her arms helping you to stand up and bracing you as she walks you to the physios. you curse yourself for asking something that stupid, walking into the room with a newfound embarrassment.

“you think i’d let you go alone?”

a/n: part 2, mayhaps? part 2 for a kiss and some confessions, mayhaps? feel free to request, too! i’d love the help :)

[msbigredmachine]

Power Couple: The Aftermath (Roman Reigns)

When the Tribal Chief falls, no one helps him back up better than you do. Set after the epic main event of Wrestlemania XL.

Pairing: Roman Reigns/OC

Warnings: Excess fluff and of course, smut.

Word Count: 3.3k

A/N: Yes, I'm still in my feelings, and there was only one pairing I could properly convey my feelings with, because this has also been their story all along. For new readers, I strongly suggest reading the first two one-shots before delving into this one. Hope you enjoy!

Banner made by me. Credit to the owners of the pics and gifs

--------------------

1,316 days.

All wiped away with three slaps of the referee’s hand to the hard canvas.

Even after Cody rolled away from him, Roman could not move. Hell, he couldn’t breathe. Not when the air had been punched out of his lungs, literally and figuratively. It was only when Dwayne pulled him out of the ring by his pants leg that his body managed to kickstart itself into some sort of motion. And even then, all he could do was turn his head to look back and watch as Cody celebrated in the ring with his wife Brandi, holding his title belt aloft for the whole world to behold as the ultimate symbol of his victory. 

It should have been you and him up there. It should have been him. Again. But it wasn’t. Because the one time he got careless in battle, it cost him everything. Throwing years of hard work down the drain.

And it made him sick to his stomach.

The sound of ‘Kingdom’ blaring through the Lincoln Financial Field Stadium was torture to the former champion’s ears. His legs felt like lead as he dragged his battered body up the ramp, ignoring Dwayne’s baseless, performative complaints about nothing, as he put distance to the tableau of triumph of his opponent. The weight of this defeat was heavy, suffocating even, and he was desperate to get the fuck out of there, to get out of Philadelphia, out of Pennsylvania and all its environs. As he reached the top of the vast WrestleMania stage, pain surged through his abdomen, forcing him to recoil into himself and double over in pain. 

His Wise Man noticed his plight and paused to observe his charge. "My Tribal Chief, are you alright? Do you need-"

Roman shook his head. "I'm fine,” he snapped, willing himself to keep walking until he made it past the curtain. He leaned against the wall and bent over, resting his hands on his knees.

“What can I do, my Tribal Chief?” Paul implored.

“Just…get my wife on the bus and make sure everything’s ready to go. I’ll be there soon."

“Right away my Tribal Chief,” Paul replied eagerly, scurrying off to do as he was told.

It was a good long minute before Roman managed to pull himself back upright, staggering towards his locker room. Walking was so hard, his body hurt so much, but none of it hurt as much as the gut punch of failure. Much worse than any of the bumps he took was the shame, the disappointment engulfing him; so much so that he couldn’t bear to look anyone else in the eye right now.

Because he had failed everyone who cared about him.

He had failed you.

----------------

All good things come to an end. That’s how the saying goes, right? The interesting part of that was that on the surface, it was a throwaway little trope, harmless and benign, until something that meant a great deal to you got taken away in the blink of an eye, or in this case, a three-count. The moment the bell signaled the pinfall that confirmed your husband's time as the Undisputed WWE Universal Champion had come to an end, you knew he would never be the same again.

It wasn't unlike Roman to be a little on edge weeks before a big premium live event. And given the nature of the two main event matches he was locked in for the fortieth annual WrestleMania, you expected he would be grouchy. But this time around seemed different, and not in a good way. He’d been surly towards everybody, including you. He disappeared for hours working out obsessively. He’d even thrown out a female member of the press who had dared to boo him at the press conference on Saturday night. Now, despite the final match of the weekend concluding nearly an hour ago, Roman was yet to return to his tour bus. That only meant one thing; he was not taking this defeat well, and it was up to you to lift him up, like you always did.

When you found the door boasting your husband's name, Heyman was outside, pacing back and forth. The Undisputed title, which you had grown accustomed to seeing on his shoulders on behalf of his Tribal Chief, was missing; a stark, prickly reminder of the outcome of tonight’s proceedings. 

"That bad, huh?" you asked, reading the Wise Man’s expression in a second. In fact, he looked on the verge of tears, his shoulders sagging with despair. The weekend had taken an emotional toll on him, too.

"He won’t come out," he informed you, his usually confident voice shaky and helpless. “He won’t let anyone in and he won’t speak to anyone…”

You raised your index finger to cut him off. "Correction, he won’t speak to anyone that’s not me," you stated, shooting him a warm smile, one among countless others you had shared with him since burying the hatchet after years of friction between you. "Go be with your family, Paul. I’ll handle my husband.”

“He’s my family, too,” he declared softly, the conviction in what you used to call his beady eyes, palpable and heartbreaking, “Both of you are.”

Touched and at a loss for words, you could only look on as he turned around slowly and made the lonely walk down the hallway. Turning back to the locker room door, you sucked a breath between your teeth and blew it out, mentally preparing to confront this task head-on.

You knocked timidly and stuck your head inside. If Roman was in as foul a mood as Paul let on, even you did not want to be there. It had taken a few unfortunate incidents over the years for you to learn that even a kiss from his wife wasn't enough when he got too stressed. It never stopped you from trying, though. Kissing was one of your favorite things to do with him after all.

"Knock, knock," you called out softly, listening for signs of movement as you stepped inside and closed the door. The room that was bustling just a few hours ago was now stripped bare and cloaked in dead quiet. It was an eerie contrast to the majestic, sweeping grandiosity that encompassed his entrance to the ring tonight. “Babe?”

Venturing further inside the room, you found him on the couch, his strong, broad back to you, his shoulders slumped dejectedly. An open bottle of Jack Daniels sat on the coffee table in front of him. His ula fala was draped over the headrest, where his title belt would surely have been. 

This was the reality no one warned you about after a monumental loss. It plunged you into a cold, dark abyss, wrought with biting silence and dreary loneliness now that the show was over and the lights were no longer bright. The what ifs, buts and maybes crooning in your ear like a morbid symphony. It was an experience all too familiar to you unfortunately, and recently, too; you and your husband had traveled down this terrible road following the tragic miscarriage of your son in the summer of 2022.

Stepping in front of him, you wiggled into his personal space and made yourself at home on his lap. Gently wrapping your arms around him, you sighed with relief when he instantly melted into you and his huge arms enveloped your waist, holding on to you like his life depended on it. 

“My baby,” you cooed soothingly, the sound of your lips meeting the side of his head piercing through the emptiness of the locker room. “My love.” 

The audible hitch of his breath at your soft words was expected. In the course of your lifetime, those two little phrases had garnered a poignant significance. As words of comfort and solace first uttered by your mother when you were a child, you murmured those words regularly to Roman between sweet, playful kisses when he was courting you, basking in the bliss of newfound love, and again as part of your wedding vows as you became man and wife. They were the first words you whispered to Laleia the first time she was placed in your arms. They were the words that you had cried yourself to sleep with as you mourned the baby boy you had lost. You and Roman had seen each other at your absolute best and worst, and now, in the isolation of this room, with just the two of you and nobody else, this was another bad moment you had to overcome.

“On Matt’s birthday, too,” Roman finally spoke, wiping at his nose with a sniffle. “Fuck, man.”

“I know,” you replied, running your hand comfortingly up and down his upper arm. As he met your gaze at last, you saw that his eyes were bloodshot. Seeing him like this broke your heart afresh. You held him as close as possible, willing all his pain and his hurt into your soul, wanting nothing more than to take it all away.

"I fucked up," he breathed, his voice raw and choked with misery, "I fucked up out there, babe...I let Dwayne down...I let y'all down. I lost the title and I'm sorry."

"Sorry? For what? Over thirteen hundred days as champion?" you countered, "Nine WrestleMania main events? Billions of dollars in revenue? A roof over your child's head and three square meals a day? One loss will never wipe any of that away, don't ever get it twisted."

He exhaled tiredly as he hugged you tighter, resting his head on your shoulder. "I really wish I felt that way right now," he mumbled.

"It'll take some time, but you will," you asserted, running his fingers through his loose hair before tugging it lightly, making him look at you again. "Roman, you changed the industry, just like you said you would when we started this. No one will ever, ever forget what you've done these past four years. Be proud of all of it. You've been through so much, you sacrificed too much to not be proud."

Roman nodded in understanding. He just wished he didn't feel so down. "Baby, I...I want you to know how sorry I am. I know how much you wanted this. And I've been such a dick to you lately-"

You kissed your teeth and waved his apology away. "Nah. That don't matter no more. And I don't care that you didn't win. All I care about is you being safe when you're out there. Being healthy for our family and our daughter, who will be very happy to have her Daddy home, by the way. So we took an L. Okay, we'll only come back stronger. We had one bad night. Guess what? I plan on giving you a better morning, if you know what I mean." You rounded off your words with a wink, your heart blooming when he chuckled in response. "See, there's that smile I love so much. Keep your head up, baby. You did so good tonight. I couldn't be more proud of you."

Roman leaned into you, his forehead pressed to yours, breathing you in and filling his head with your scent. It was like breathing fresh air. “I love you, Y/N. I love you with all of my heart. I don’t deserve you, I never have.”

The tears you'd been fighting all night resurfaced, but you blinked them away as you captured his lips with yours, your hand sliding over the back of his neck. He clung to you, a different emotion quickly overtaking him as he returned your kiss with a bit of aggression, his tongue whipping hungrily against yours, savoring your mouth as though he was tasting it for the very first time. You surrendered to his every whim, your other hand raking through his hair then caressing gently down to his chest, resting your palm over the spot where his heart pumped for you. You could feel how much he needed this moment of intimacy, and you had no qualms giving him anything he asked for.

With one quick tug of your legs, Roman had you straddling him on the couch, bringing you chest to chest with your lush backside resting on his growing bulge. He paused for a moment to take a deep breath, then sealed your mouths again, his tongue invading, probing, a moan rumbling in his chest when you matched his energy, the emotions take over this loving embrace. He could never get enough of you, of the passion that overwhelmed him by your mere presence, immersing him in a love and gratitude he would always feel for you no matter what state of mind he was in.

Eventually, you pulled away from each other, breathless, panting, lips glistening with each other’s saliva. His heart raced at the familiar gleam in your darkened eyes. You weren’t done with him, not just yet, and this was confirmed as you slowly slid off him and sank to your knees between his spread thighs, pushing the front of his shirt up to expose his newly honed six-pack abs.

“Do you know how fucking hot you looked tonight, Daddy?” you purred to him, leaning in to run your tongue over the ridges of muscle on his taut belly. “Last night? All week? Do you have any idea of all the nasty shit I’m gonna do to you on the bus?”

Roman’s dick jumped in his joggers as his imagination ran wild. He squirmed in his seat, his bottom lip slipping between his teeth as your tongue lapped at his belly, your mouth warm on his skin, all while you rubbed the fullness of his bulge straining eagerly against your touch. “Baby girl…” he choked out, as your fingers peeled the waistband of his pants, unveiling his big, beautiful brown dick. 

“Hmm, commando. I like it,” you commented with a smirk, curling your fist around his turgid length.

“Babe, wait…ain’t Paul outside?”

“I sent him home. Plus, won't be the first time he's seen me suck you off.” Your small hand massaged his blunt, plum-shaped head as you licked a trail along the underside of his dick, enjoying the gasps of pleasure that he made. Licking up the pre-cum that had gathered at the tip, your mouth opened wider to take him in. He stared you down with an intense look in his dark irises, which soon fluttered shut as your lips wrapped tight around his flesh, his stomach tensing as he felt himself slide deeper inside. “Awww, fuuuck,” he moaned.

Pulling back for a second, you held his lust-filled stare and stroked his dick a little harder, giggling when it twitched in your grip. A defiant look clouded your eyes as you licked at his tip before pushing him back into your mouth. It was enough for him to nut by just watching you, the visual of your lips sliding slowly up and down his length, that sexy mouth of yours making sweet love to his dick. It felt so good that he sank further into the plush leather of the couch, his head rolling back lazily against the headrest, his toes curling inside his brand new Air Reigns sneakers. All the pain and punishment his body had endured tonight melted away and was replaced with much more pleasurable sensations.

“I love the way you suck my dick, wifey,” he praised you, forcing himself to observe you through his barely open eyelids. “Mmm, that slutty little mouth is warm as fuck…You so sexy, baby, keep lookin’ up at me like that...” 

His raspy growls had you glancing back up at him, batting your pretty eyelashes as you sucked him off. Wetness pooled between your thighs at his famished expression. Completely aroused, you picked up the pace as your hands and your mouth worked in tandem, sucking and stroking his dick, pleasuring him from tip to base. His breathing became heavier as he throbbed against your tongue, his hands finding the back of your head as he got lost in the paradise of your warm, wet mouth. 

“Damn, baby. I bet that pussy leakin’ for me right now. You gettin’ wet sucking Daddy off, beautiful?” he taunted, his tongue swishing over his bottom lip at the same time your tongue swirled around the base of his shaft. The little moan that escaped your throat told him he was right. Of course he was; he knew his wife better than anybody else. “Good girl. Keep goin', I want that pussy extra wet. I’ma lick all that shit up when we get on the bus.”

With another soft moan, you crawled closer to his body and bore down on him, bobbing your head up and down that long, fat cock. Scooping your hair up into his large fist for leverage, Roman rocked his hips upwards from his seated position, thrusting in and out of your mouth. You relaxed your throat to take him deeper, moaning around his dick and letting him know how much you were enjoying him fucking your face. You rolled his balls in your hand, caressing the heavy, tightened sac to send him over the edge. It was working, as he began thrusting faster, his husky groans of pleasure amplifying as he neared his release.

“Unnnhh, baby, here it comes…Fuck, open your mouth,” he gasped, not waiting for you to do so as he yanked you by your hair to free himself from your intoxicating mouth. You quickly opened wide as he grabbed his cock and jerked it desperately against your tongue. He caught sight of the glazed-over quality of your gaze, and he knew that your panties were completely ruined, your pussy dripping with your need for him. He planned to take care of that very soon.

It was a show more spectacular than Mania, the sight of his gorgeous face contorted with pleasure, his head thrown back, eyes rolled to the heavens as his orgasm washed over his big body. Your moans harmonized together with each spasm of his cum down your throat, making you swallow every drop he unleashed. His grip on your hair was tight and almost painful, but you were turned on anyway, aroused by the knowledge that no one brought him to this state of paramount pleasure like you did. Licking your lips, you scooped him back into your mouth to clean him up, released him with a soft pop when you finished, and tucked him back inside the confines of his joggers. You giggled as he stared dazedly at the ceiling, licking his lips to catch his breath, his big frame slack and helpless as he recovered from the intense orgasm.

"Goddamn, baby...Shit," he groaned.

Wiping your mouth with the back of your hand, you stood up and sat back on his lap, welcoming the gentle press of his mouth to yours in a sweet, grateful kiss. “You feel better, Daddy?” you asked.

"Much better. I needed that so much. Thanks, baby," he smiled up at you, his stomach doing flips as you smiled back. He truly was the luckiest man in the world.

“Mm-hmm. Luckily, there’s more where that came from,” you assured him with another kiss before getting to your feet and pulling him up to his. “Come on, Daddy. Let's go home. We got a toddler to take care of. We'll figure out all the other stuff when it's time."

He nodded in agreement and squeezed your hand. “Okay, baby. Home it is.”

A new chapter in your story had been opened tonight, and the path ahead seemed uncertain and even scary. But you both took pride in the fact that as long as you kept writing it together, your love story was going to remain as beautiful as it already was.

But make no mistake about it; Roman Reigns was going to rule the wrestling world again. That was one story that was never going to end.

THE END

--------------------

Thoughts? How sappy was this😢Was quite cathartic for me, loved writing it.

Thank you all so much for reading and commenting!

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[toournextadventure]

I LOVE your Wednesday! I was wondering if you can write a Wednesday/gn!Reader where the reader writes to her a love letter and wants to give it to her with a black rose but they see Xavier give to her the cellphone so, thinking they're dating, Reader just throws away the letter and the rose.

Wednesday finds them..

Looky looky here, two fics in one day. This one was fun to write, I loved the idea!

im no poet

You were no writer. No amount of your rambling thoughts could compare to those of Shakespeare, Hemingway, or even Wednesday Addams. All those big emotions came out in actions, not words, and not even your mouth could keep up or properly convey all you wanted to. No, most of those big, bottled up feelings ended up left unspoken.

But for Wednesday, you gave it a try.

It had started with a very heated debate about the phrase “actions speak louder than words.” She, of course, had opted to disagree, claiming her words spoke pretty loud. They sure do, you thought as you shook your head and counter-argued. It was by no means an argument, much more of an actual debate with each side presenting their case.

You lost. Because, as you had previously pointed out, you were not good with your words.

Not a bad thing though, you realised once you sat down to try and write out how you felt. The first few paragraphs were messy; no structure, no reason, barely coherent. You crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it into the corner of the room, not even attempting to hit the trash can. But you pulled out another piece of paper and started again.

It took half a notebook before you could even start making sense of your words. Even then, it wasn’t what you wanted to say. How could you even start to explain why you were writing such a letter? Should you start it off with “Hello, I think I’m in love with you?” Words wouldn’t work.

Words wouldn’t work.

You put your pen to paper - the third pen you had ruined so far - and started explaining your emotions the only way you knew how: with actions. The feelings she envoked in you couldn’t be put into words, not so simply. No, because she made you want to live, and living was such a beautiful thing. That rare smile of hers made you feel as if you were running through the farm of your childhood. Laughing as you ran up and down the crop rows until your bare feet were dirty and tired and you collapsed in the field with the feeling of utter peace that only a child could experience.

Being with her made you want to do every little thing she had never considered was important to her. It made you want to bring her coffee whenever she was writing, or turning the page of her music as she played. You would connect your headphones whenever she came in because you knew she liked the silence. Or grabbing all the songs she enjoyed and turning them into a personalised record that she could use without having to switch them out all the time.

When it was all said and done, you had exhausted five pens, half a notebook, and came out with three pages of a written confession.

You had asked Miss Thornhill if you could raid the greenhouse. It wasn’t that you were a teacher’s pet, but you knew how to kiss up when needed. She agreed quickly, and all you had to give up were a few Saturdays of your time to help clean up and organise. A fair trade, no consideration needed.

The Black Dahlias weren’t in bloom, so you hoped Wednesday would settle for a black rose. That was still romantic, right? It was black, at least, that had to count for something. A small envelope, a single black rose, your bright shining face. What more could she want?

“I already put my number in it,” Xavier’s voice rang out even though he was talking fairly quietly.

He bought her a phone. The very thing she had adamantly refused to become a slave to. Yet she took it from him anyway. Oh, you thought with a furrow of your brows. Suddenly the items in your hand felt like lead, weighing you down and you almost wished they would drag you under the ground to escape.

It had been a crapshoot to make a move, you knew that anyway, but it still hurt nonetheless. Wednesday gave the equivalent of a smile, and you nodded to yourself in silent acceptance. You wouldn’t ever wish to put her in a position to “choose” between two people. So instead you turned around and started walking off. You only paused at a trash can to drop the rose and letter inside, patting the cold silver can twice before walking away.

You didn’t see Wednesday watch you leave with worry in her eyes.

“Go see,” Xavier said with a gesture of his head.

Wednesday didn’t hesitate to walk over to the trash can and pick up the rose and envelope. The sight of the flower made her heart race; had you gotten that for her? What had possessed you to get her something like that? You knew she was difficult to get along with, why would you go out of your way to get her a rose in her favourite colour?

And the envelope. It had her name on it.

“What’s their number?” Wednesday asked Xavier. He gave her a smile and gestured for her to hand him her phone.

—---

You practically fell onto the bench in the lockerroom of your hometown gym. After getting out of school a few weeks ago, you had thrown yourself into helping out at the gym. The owner was a family friend and he had quickly accepted your offer. It was an added bonus that he gave you full access to the gym, too.

It was almost time to start closing up, but you had managed to get a good workout in once everyone was gone. Hell, you deserved it, the girl you were in love with was very clearly not in love with you. In fact, she was nice and happy, and even though that’s all you wanted, it still hurt. 

You never even told her, your mind thought.

“Oh shut up,” you mumbled as your head fell into your hands.

With a sigh, you pushed yourself up to your feet and grabbed your change of clothes from your bag. Maybe you just needed to change and get home so you could wallow in your self-pity and fall asleep with some Kitchen Nightmares on in the background. That would surely keep your mind busy. God, you were pathetic.

You were pulling your clean shirt back over your head when your phone vibrated against the bench. No one should have been texting you this late, everyone you talked to knew you were usually asleep. Besides, why would they be texting you this late? Didn’t they know you were in mourning?

The screen lit up when you held your face over it, still adjusting your clothes to fit properly.

Unknown Number: You forgot this. 1 Attachment.

“Oh fuck.” It was a photo of the rose and envelope with Wednesday’s name on it.

You: I’m sorry. You can toss it I didn’t know about Xavier

Oh god, why was this happening? Why did this have to happen? Getting silently rejected was hard enough, but now there was going to be humiliation too? You lifted your hands to grab the sides of your head as you started pacing, trying to keep yourself grounded. That’s it, you weren’t going back to Nevermore. Nope, you were going to run away, maybe live in the woods and find a Bigfoot family to take care of you.

The phone vibrated again and you rushed over.

Unknown: Did you mean it? What you wrote.

“Fuck!” You shouted. What did you say? There’s no way you could say “Yes, Wednesday, I meant every word of devotion that I wrote on that letter. Tell your boyfriend I said hi.” But if you didn’t let her know now, it was going to eat away at you until the day you died. Fuck fuck fuck!

You grabbed the phone and typed out the one word, but your thumbs stilled over the “send” button while your heart tried to beat out of your chest.

You pressed send.

You: Yes

“Oh shit,” you groaned. Your hands were getting clammy. “Why did I do that.” Oh god. Oh shit. Why wasn’t she answering? There goes any chance of even being friends again. You were going to have to change your name and run away. Surely your family would understand, right? Yeah, they could even help you come up with a new identity.

The vibration against the bench was about to send you into a frenzy.

Unknown: Call me tomorrow night. We can watch the new Scream movie.

You had never typed so fast in your life.

You: Is this a date?

The text couldn’t come quickly enough.

Unknown: Yes. But if you tell anyone, I will remove your tongue.

You stared at your phone in utter disbelief. A date. With Wednesday Addams. A real date with the girl you were highkey in love with. Your letter had worked. It had worked!

You: It’s a date

A smile took over your face as you put your phone back into your bag. You had a date.

“Fuck yes!” You shouted as you threw your fist in the air. You were definitely calling out of work tomorrow.

[theteasetwrites]

Begin Again

Chapter 2: Ami ou Ennemi?

❧ Media: The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon ❧ Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Female Reader ❧ Era: Season 1 ❧ Pronouns: she/her ❧ Warnings: violence, scary situation ❧ Word Count: 4.8k

❧ In This Chapter: On the road west, things take a turn when the first people you and Daryl come into contact with in France turn out to be a bit less welcoming than you'd hoped they would be. Meanwhile, a watchful pair of eyes just might be what saves you.

❧ A/N: Okay so this was going to cover the whole rest of the first episode but I didn't want to cram it all into one giant chapter, so here's a smaller (kinda boring tbh) chapter! This chapter is necessary because it leads up to the kick-off of the storyline in Chapter 3, which I promise will be MUCH more interesting (and have way better Reader x Daryl interactions, of course). But for now, please enjoy this chapter! I am having so much fun writing for the spin-off ahhh

Carried by a limp and an aimless hope still lingering in your heart, you walked.

In fact, you walked for days. About five total, you were sure. Well, you couldn’t be too sure. Everything was a blur, and you’d given up keeping track with the tally marks you’d scribbled on the edge of the map. All you could bother to rely on now was the natural movement of the earth, the sun rising on one shoulder, setting on the other. Then a few hours of sleepless sleep, then walking again, through what seemed to be a once sparsely populated countryside, amongst a collage of ancient ruins. 

From your navigation, you’d determined that the snow-capped mountains you walked just at the base of were those of the Pyrenees. For miles you walked along those foothills of thick green shrubbery and ever-expanding stretches of woods, through which a wide gravel road snaked and occasionally branched into small hamlets or mysterious medieval ruins you didn’t care too much to research. 

As your eyes squinted hard at the map you’d come to loathe the now taunting familiarity of, you felt your steps slow to a halt, crushing the ancient gravel underneath you with a dying enthusiasm. Daryl followed behind you, himself preoccupied as well, but by the wound on his arm, which had been festering for almost two days now. 

You’d been tending to it, of course. Daryl could’ve done so himself, but you hardly trusted him to be as diligent with the care of his own injuries as you were. 

The good news seemed to be that the burn did not inflict a fever upon him, or have any other kind of deadly effect. Still, as Daryl put so eloquently, “It hurts like a son of a bitch.”

You turned around, approaching him as he studied the burn, in the distinctive shape of a handprint. Taking his arm in your hand, you frowned at the festering wound, still a little too raw for your liking. 

It seemed to be healing a little, though, with only slight accumulations of yellowish fluid around the parts where flesh had been burnt. That was good. It meant the wound was draining properly, exuding serous liquid that would help the flesh to heal and eventually scar over. But the inflammation, the redness, worried you.

“It’s not purulent,” you said. “So that’s good.”

Daryl looked at you, eyebrows furrowed. He didn’t have to speak to convey his confusion at the SAT vocabulary word.

“There’s no pus,” you clarified. “No green drainage… But we should cover it up again.”

Nearby, you settled by an abandoned car, mangled and ravaged by time. It was a good cover for the moment as you sifted through a first aid bag you’d scavenged yesterday. Thank God you had, otherwise his arm might’ve looked much worse than it had.

As he knelt beside you, you set out a roll of gauze, then uncapped your canteen of water. Daryl couldn’t complain too much about you using the water to wash his wound now, considering how much it was beginning to burn.

The sting was worse than yesterday as you poured the cool liquid over it. You yourself winced at the sound of Daryl’s hiss, knowing full well that his tolerance for pain was much higher than anyone you knew, so that burn must’ve been agonizing. 

Spinning the gauze around his arm, you wrapped the burn tight. He sighed softly in temporary relief, but he could already feel the festering begin to return. 

The back of your hand situated itself against his forehead, brushing back the loose hairs as you did so. 

You swallowed down the lump in your throat. He was warm. Daryl always ran a little warm, of course. You’d often referred to him as a human heater. But this was off for Daryl, warmer than you were used to feeling. 

It terrified you.

The thought that this burn could be akin to a bite was one which haunted you the last two nights, keeping you ten times more aware of Daryl’s state at all times. 

You’d seen plenty of people in the process of turning. You’d known the signs. It was hard to tell now. Daryl didn’t have enough of a fever to render him fatigued, but it was enough to worry you. 

“How do you feel?” you asked, still brushing back the hairs that framed his face, as if fixing his hair could somehow improve his condition.

“Like shit.” He took a sip of water from your canteen. A small sip, of course, lest he leave you without enough water to keep you moving. 

“You just need some rest,” you said, watching as he began to lift himself to his feet, with half his body weight supported by the spear that had served largely as his walking stick. 

Clearly, he wasn’t going to be resting anytime soon.

“I’ll rest when the sun goes down,” he replied gruffly, while a gust of wind began to blow his hair in wild patterns across his face. You rose up, too, despite your body’s inescapable urge to sleep right there on the gravel. “We still got a few hours of sunlight… Best to keep movin’.”

With a strained grunt, he reached for his spear, pressing it into the dirt below as he started to lift himself, using the spear as leverage.

The day Daryl would listen to you when you asked him to rest was the day Hell would freeze over, but you couldn’t fight him. After all, you weren’t itching to stay put in any one place for too long. You had to keep moving, to try to find some kind of way back home. 

You raised yourself to your feet alongside him, reaching into your backpack to tuck the gauze and your canteen back inside. But there was a slight tremble in your hand, and a racing of your heart as your body reacted to the intense burn of a distant stare before your mind even could. 

Daryl felt it, too.

Practically in sync, both of you turned to face the direction of the stare. There was a cliff just ahead, surrounded by lush shrubbery. The distance was great enough to ease your paranoia, but still too close for comfort. 

There was a figure atop the cliff, looking down. Well, you supposed so, despite not being able to make out the figure’s face. What you could see was a reddish cowl encircling their head, but the rest was simply the shape of a human, standing still, watching. 

It sent a shiver down your spine, the inescapable fear of being watched suddenly taking hold over you. It was something you’d known since childhood, with frequent nightmares of a decrepit elderly man cupping his hands as he looked in through the window of your childhood bedroom, smiling wide at you. Despite your dream self’s attempts to escape, you couldn’t move, you could only cry as the man stared at you, watching you. 

But of course, that man was only a figment of your imagination, a childhood fear that stuck with you all through your life. You hadn’t thought of that man in years, but now, feeling the eyes of a stranger on you, you felt it again. Only this was real. Well, perhaps it was a mirage, induced by the emptiness in your stomach and the fog in your head, but it did not matter. There was nothing you could do. Maybe that was what was so frightening about it.

“C’mon.” Daryl’s hand brushed your forearm, dislodging you from that momentary stupor. Fortunately, he seemed much less perturbed by the mysterious apparition, though he couldn’t deny the uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Keep movin’.”

So you did, following behind him by just a few steps, until he stopped abruptly shortly after, examining the road sign standing before him. On its pole, a small piece of paper was plastered to it, with handmade strokes of black paint spelling out three words: DIEU VOUS AIME.

Your curiosity piqued, you quickly shrugged off one strap of your backpack, reaching back to unzip the largest pouch and grab the French-English dictionary you’d so wisely picked up back at the boat in Marseille.

Looking between the pages and the sign, you flipped through the book, until the phrase appeared among the list of D’s. 

Daryl looked at you in waiting as you let out a slightly amused huff. 

“God loves you,” you said. 

“Pfft.”

An hour or so down the road, and the eerie light of the dying afternoon had begun its domain.

Sleep was the new objective, somewhere to hang your hats for the night that would soon be upon you. 

Just ahead, beyond a desolate field of tall, green grass, was a lone building, decrepit and overgrown, with a thick, swirling layer of fog rolling over the ground at its base. Not particularly inviting, but it could be a good place for shelter.

The place was dilapidated, to the point where you could hardly tell what it had once been, but there was just enough shelter to provide some protection from the elements, and the dead. It looked as though there had once been a fire, as the walls were blackened and opened up into a courtyard through a section of destroyed wall. 

As you stepped carefully, quietly, over fallen beams and overgrown twining vines, you set sight on a string tied between a bush and the wall, stretching across the walkway with rusty tin cans tied to the twine. Either someone had once called this place home, or someone still did.

Stepping over the trap, Daryl went first, with you following shortly behind, alertness as high as it possibly could be given the famished state you were in.

A rustling from your right startled you. Daryl moved somewhat quickly to peer around the edge of the wall into the open courtyard—a young woman, perhaps in her early twenties, standing by an overgrown well and pouring the water from the bucket into a tin pail. 

Daryl didn’t get a very detailed look at the woman nor the area, but he could tell that he didn’t want anything to do with it. 

You weren’t so sure, however. People were exactly who you needed. You wouldn’t be able to get home without people, and maybe this woman knew English. She could help you, somehow. 

But Daryl backed up, too fast for you to notice that he was about to activate the tripwire just behind him. 

As the cans rattled together, making a loud clanging sound, you almost felt a bit of relief. 

Looking back towards the woman, you began to step forward, ahead of Daryl, who followed rather reluctantly.

Unsure of what to say as you met the woman’s gaze, coming further into the pale light of the diminishing day, you raised your hands up in a gesture of peace which you hoped was universal. Daryl followed suit, moving close behind you, despite his instinctual urge to stand in front of you. It took a great deal of willpower not to, but he figured you were possibly more friendly looking than him, with the huge spear he used as a walking stick.

“Bonjour,” was the only word you could make out, the rest was a blur of very beautiful-sounding gibberish. From an archway leading further into the building behind the woman came an elderly man hobbling in on a cane. So far, the first two French people you’d met turned out to be rather unintimidating, which was a good sign. 

The two of you kept moving forward, perhaps more out of confusion than curiosity, but a part of you just wanted some semblance of human interaction. As much as you loved Daryl and his company, it was a sight for sore eyes to come face-to-face with another woman, even if you couldn’t understand anything she said. 

But she seemed friendly enough, raising her hand in a wave as she carried the pail across the way, coming closer, but never too close. Finally, she spoke another word you could understand: “Madame? Monsieur?” 

You turned to look at Daryl, whose face looked confounded, bordering on worried.

As per usual, you’d have to be the more sociable one. 

“I’m sorry,” you began speaking, despite your fear that speaking in English might be a waste of breath. “We don’t understand you.”

On the contrary, the woman seemed… excited. 

“Ay!” she exclaimed, the old man now right behind her as they slowly but surely moved closer. “You Americans? And I speak English very good!” Her mouth formed into a wide smile. So far, so good. “What’s crackin’, noobs?”

Despite your slight confusion at her use of the colloquial term, one you had not heard since you were in college, you smiled back, nodding.

The woman spoke another French term, and waved her hand, gesturing for you to come closer. You did so, despite Daryl’s hesitation as he looked at you. He didn’t have to speak or even sign to indicate what he thought: I don’t trust them. 

But it didn’t matter whether either of you trusted them or not. They had food. They must’ve, as they looked to be pretty settled here, at least for the night.

He followed your lead, stepping faster to match your pace as you moved closer, further into the courtyard.

“My, uh… grandfather, he hurt the ankle” the woman spoke again, carrying her pail of water to a gently roaring fire. Around it were a few bags and crates used as seats. A modest setup, but comforting nonetheless. “Only… Only small English, him.” She gestured towards her grandfather, whose eyes were covered by a black cloth wrapped around his head. Still, he waved in your general direction, then started to speak.

“Hello,” he said.

You smiled, your heart beginning to soften at the sight of the poor elderly man. You always did have a soft spot for older people, one which Daryl feared would make you a little too eager to spare your medical supplies.

“Hello,” you spoke back. 

Daryl said nothing.

The woman’s face turned more serious now. “You got medical?” You did not answer, unsure of what to say. While you did have it, you weren’t so sure you’d give it away on a whim. You already had one old man to take care of—Daryl. “We trade you for apple or, um, uh… a rabbit, maybe.”

“Very good rabbit,” chimed in the old man.

Daryl heard rabbit, and suddenly he was walking past you, coming closer to the woman as he slung his backpack off his shoulders. 

The man was always food-motivated, afterall.

Setting his pack on the ground, he kneeled as he rummaged for the first aid kit. For a moment, he held it up, then tossed it underhand towards the woman.

“Merci,” said the old man.

“Merci,” the woman repeated, the first aid kit now in her hands. She pointed towards a wooden crate just a few yards away. “Food there.”

Daryl did not hesitate, hurriedly crossing over to the crate as if the offer would be taken away at any second. You followed suit, coming up behind him and taking the handful of shiny, red apples that he held out to you, while he himself bit into one and chewed it hungrily. 

“So,” the woman continued, but for a moment, you couldn’t hear her over the sound of your own chewing as you bit into an apple. “Where are you going to?”

This time, Daryl answered before you even had a chance to speak. The fact that they had given you food must’ve warmed him up a little bit. 

“Back where we came from,” he said matter-of-factly, looking up at the woman to address her, then returning to gathering as many apples in his hands as he could.

“Across the ocean?” questioned the woman again.

“Yeah,” Daryl answered.

As he stood up, you both looked curiously at the woman, who spoke something to the old man in their native language. They appeared to be laughing, too. You wondered, in that self-conscious way the two of you shared, if they were making fun of you. Not that it mattered terribly, since the idea of someone making fun of you was nothing compared to what most people in this world would do without any hesitation. If subtle ridiculing was the worst of what you got out of these people, you’d consider yourselves lucky.

With a huff, the woman sat herself down on an upside down crate, whilst holding the skewered rabbit that had been roasting over the fire. Your mouth practically watered at the sight, which must’ve meant you were truly on the verge of starving. It took a lot for you to want to eat a rabbit.

“I’m Maribelle,” she said with a smile. Next, she pointed to her grandfather. “Um, he Guillaume. So maybe we go together, you know?”

That piqued your interest, but Daryl moved behind you, taking the apples to his pack and almost hurriedly stuffing them inside. 

“Get somewhere safe, maybe?” Maribelle continued, and you wanted so much to say something, to say yes. Anything would help. Of course, you knew you couldn’t trust these people, and something about them, despite their friendliness, threw you off. Daryl must’ve felt it, too, because almost as soon as he settled in, he was ready to get out of there. “You can help us. We can help you find a way.”

Following Daryl, you knelt down beside him as he packed. You couldn’t speak much above a very hushed whisper. “They can help us get back.”

He looked up at you momentarily, a stern look in his eye. “No.”

“Hey, yankees.” Suddenly, Guillaume spoke up. You both looked his way.

Guillaume spoke more, but only in French. You turned your attention back to Maribelle, your eyes begging for translation. 

She spoke with a slight laugh. “All the time he talk about World War II.”

“La résistance,” Guillaume continued, like the ramblings of your grandfather. In fact, you recalled his stories from that war, how young he was when he was stationed in England. Not quite France, but close enough. “U.S. GI’s fight together. Your country, my country. Like friends.”

Daryl did not say anything, only turned his attention back to packing his bag. You stood up slowly, managing a smile. You weren’t sure if the man could see it, but you wanted to somehow convey to him that you appreciated his ideology. Afterall, you needed friends. 

But you couldn’t think of what to say. You knew Daryl was not going to budge, and it wasn’t your place to accept his offer of friendship. All you could do was think of something nice to say, but before you could, Guillaume spoke again, catching onto the silence that lingered for several moments.

“You are no friend,” he said, a tinge of vitriol in his voice. 

“There ain’t no countries no more, neither,” Daryl replied. 

You huffed, frustrated by his coldness. It wasn’t your favorite side of Daryl, his harshness, but you couldn’t entirely blame him—he was stressed, injured, and sad. You could tell, despite him never letting it really show. He held emotions inside, whereas you wore them on your sleeve. Still, you knew him better than anyone else, and you knew that this situation you found yourselves in was taking a greater toll on him than even he realized. You hadn’t pressed him about it much, but you knew: he missed your babies. 

He missed home. He missed your friends. He missed the life he’d devoted himself to creating with you. Ultimately, he was tired. 

Before you could try to talk some sense into him, though, you heard something that startled you: a distant roaring of an engine, coming closer. Fast. 

Daryl stood up quickly as a rather militaristic looking jeep came through the wide archway into the courtyard. Two men were sitting in the front seat of the uncovered vehicle, both armed with guns.

Upon the hood of the vehicle was some kind of symbol painted in white that you couldn’t quite make out without taking your eyes off the two men as they stepped out, their guns seemingly locked and loaded. 

Daryl kept a firm grip on his spear, you on your knife. Still, there wasn’t much you could do against a gun, especially in this open area. 

As the men came forward, you took note of their appearance: each were heavily armed and wore camouflage patterns. They looked like some sort of paramilitary group, and from your history with such groups, you were not looking to make friends. 

One of the men set his sights on you and Daryl, while saying something in French. All you could do was stare back at him, until he raised his gun, speaking again. This time, he spoke more commandingly. 

Your heart dropped for a moment, but Maribelle spoke quickly to the man, then turned to face you both. She held her hands up, as if in surrender. 

“Sit down, he said,” she said to you seriously. 

Daryl exchanged a quick look with you, somewhere between reassurance and a warning of cautiousness. In situations like this, perhaps you fell into that old trap of taking the man’s lead, but Daryl had had a gun pointed at him many more times than you had, and it was true that he looked much more threatening than you, so you followed his lead, walking several steps with him over to the crates around the fire that were being used as seats. If you were going to sit down for two French assholes with guns, you were at least going to be a little bit comfortable. 

Now sitting, each of you dropped your weapons, slowly raising your hands to match Maribelle. The two men seemed to trust you both much less than they did Maribelle and Guillaume, as both their guns were pointed towards you—one of you, one on Daryl. It was not quite reassuring.

One of the men began to speak to Maribelle again, going back and forth for a moment. The only word you could make out was American, which you weren’t sure was a good thing, given the way the man looked at you both suspiciously.

No, you did not like these guys one bit. 

And now, after a few more rather ominous sounding words in French, he came forward, taking Maribelle by the shoulder and tugging on her jacket, pulling her away to God knows where. Though you couldn’t understand what he had said, you feared for Maribelle, knowing the kinds of things men could do, especially to women… It boiled your blood, especially as she tried to get away, yelling something at him in French and struggling against him.

The other man, meanwhile, kept his sawed-off double-barrelled shotgun pointed at Daryl, but he looked away, his eyes focused on the scene as the other man struggled to drag Maribelle away. When he became frustrated with her reluctance, he backhanded her hard, the force causing her to fall down with a thud. 

And, with one look exchanged between you and Daryl, you knew it was time to do something… So much for making friends.

Daryl moved first, reaching for the knife he kept strapped to his leg and standing up to grab his spear with the other hand. He moved faster than you, and faster than the man who was supposed to be keeping an eye on you. 

He used the blunt edge of his spear to first hit the man’s leg, then, as he raised his gun to defend himself, Daryl disarmed him, then dropped his spear to raise his knife and puncture his neck.

You stood up, too, sprinting towards the gun that had been dropped on the ground, while Daryl held the dying man in front of him like a meat shield. If there was one thing about Daryl, it was that he was resourceful.

But just before you could get your hands on the shotgun, the other man came towards you both, shouting in French as he held his gun out. In a matter of seconds, he fired, shooting towards Daryl. 

The loud gunshot made you flinch and grab your ears as you instinctively flung yourself onto the ground, trying to dodge it. Immediately, though, you looked up, your sights setting on Daryl, himself on the ground, holding the left side of his neck and sticking out his right hand in surrender. The man did not seem so eager to show mercy, leaning down beside you to pick up the shotgun and point it towards Daryl. 

“No!” you cried out rather helplessly, crawling on hands and knees to Daryl’s side. If you couldn’t sacrifice yourself for him, you’d die together. At least you’d die knowing you tried to save him.

But Maribelle moved quicker, striking the man in the back with Guillaume’s cane. The blow was so hard that he fell to the ground, allowing Daryl to quickly stand up and grab the shotgun. As he held his bleeding neck, he pointed the barrel towards the fallen man.

“Stop,” said Maribelle, coming forward with a spear. “Save the powder.” She plunged the spear into the man’s chest, causing you to wince in slight surprise.

Maribelle turned to Daryl, uttering a simple, “Merci.”

Quickly, you stood up, coming over to daryl and removing his hand from his neck to get a look at the damage. Obviously, the bullet must’ve only grazed him, because if the bullet had gone just a bit more to the right, he might not even have a head right now.

“Just a superficial graze,” you said, taking off your glove and pressing it to his face as a bandage, but of course you’d need something more suitable. 

As you carefully helped him sit down on his knees, you called out to Maribelle, “Can you hand me the medical bag, please?”

All your attention, now, was on him, so much so that you didn’t notice how suspiciously silent it was, and how the two Frenchpeople did not seem eager to help.

But that was all peripheral to you, as you brushed back Daryl’s long hair to get a better look at the injury.

“You’re gonna be fine,” you said, with just a tiny curl of your lip to offer him some comfort. 

And it did, his tired eyes softening as he felt your hand caress his cheek. Despite the stinging pain and the feeling of blood seeping into the glove you held tight against his wound, he couldn’t help but believe you. If there was anything in this world he truly believed in, after all, it was you.

But there was a horrible sense of suspicion growing between you, a lingering threat that became more and more apparent with each step the man behind Daryl took. 

You raised your eyes, and Daryl turned to look at whatever had caught your attention—Guillaume.

His eyes were uncovered now, and beady with aggressive intent. But most startlingly, he held his wooden cane much too high for your comfort. He wielded it more like a baseball bat than a walking stick.

But he wouldn’t do what you thought he was going to do, would he?

Yes. He would.

The cane struck Daryl across the head, knocking him to the ground. Eyes wide as you started to lift yourself, you were met with the same fate: a strong hit to the head that sent you back down, reeling in pain. 

You weren’t unconscious, though. Neither was Daryl, who opened his eyes despite the intense blurring that obstructed his vision. He caught sight of Guillaume, rummaging through his bag, while Maribelle got to work rifling through yours, throwing out its contents with carelessness as she seemed to be searching for something more useful than the maps and blankets you’d collected along the way from Marseille.

Notably, though, you watched the blonde Barbie doll you’d carefully tucked away in your bag get tossed behind her back like a worthless piece of junk. It almost riled you into a fit of sudden strength, but your head swam too much to allow your legs to carry you. 

Your eyes became fixed on that doll, left abandoned amongst overgrown blades of faded green grass. Somewhere in your haze, as unconsciousness threatened to take over, was her voice, speaking the words she said to you before you left: “It’s okay, Mommy,” she said, her small voice echoing in the dizzied cavern of your head. 

Just then, you felt a presence coming towards you, one which seemed both known and unknown. 

Turning your head, your heavy eyes focused as well as they could on the approaching figure, cautiously side-stepping into the courtyard. Though you could not make out their face, you recognized one thing: a red cowl.

“We’ll be okay. Everything will be okay.”

A gunshot rang out, muffled by your fading consciousness. It had come from the approaching figure, and had seemingly run off Maribelle and Guillaume, which may have been either a good thing, or a bad thing. 

“Maybe when you get back, Wes will know some more words.”

Your eyelids became immensely burdensome, and with each blink, you found yourself unable to keep them open for much longer. 

“Yes… Robin…”

~

Thanks for reading! Likes, reblogs, and comments of any kind are always appreciated!

Series Masterlist Next Chapter ➳

[fatuismooches]

HII SMOOCHES OMG I LOVE YOUR WRITING SM AHH OKAY I GOTTA CALM DONW, uhm so can I request like Dottore and segments with fragile reader who went outside without telling them? I imagined that reader went out to the market to the park or shop and stuff, and Dottore or the segments were worried when they realized that the reader were gone so they went out to find reader and when they come back to the lab they scold the reader a little bit but it’s out of worries but the reader weren’t scared or afraid cause they think it’s cute how the segment or Dottore were scolding reader out of worries, I JUST THINK ITS CUTE SOMEHOW CAUSE DOTTORE AND THE SEGMENTS WERE SEEN AS A HEARTLESS PEOPLE BUT WHEN IT COMES TO READER TEHY DROPPED EVERYTHING FOR THEM, ANYWAYS I LOVE YOU SMOOCHES I HOPE YOUR DOING WELL BYE BYE💗💗💗

It had been an impossibly long time since you had to deal with your illness, but over time, there were times Dottore was able to stabilize your condition enough to allow you to enjoy normal things more easily. One such thing was leaving the lab to enjoy the beauty of Snezhnaya. Very simple, but so fun for you, who had been deprived of such things for so long. It had taken a long time for Dottore to be convinced to let you go, still cautious about your health, (now that was an understatement) but in the end, you won (of course). Always, there was a segment or one of your friends accompanying you though. But this time, Bina couldn't come to pick you up, and it seemed like all the segments were too busy to even bother - wrapped up in the middle of an experiment or meeting... well, this was an issue. You really wanted to go! You had plans! Well, maybe if you return quick enough they wouldn't notice? If they did... that's it, you'd just tell Zandy to tell them the situation. And you'd take lots of Fatui agents, yes, everything would be okay.

And it was great! You made it and had lots of fun by yourself and with Bina... exploring the frosty nation and picking up a few specific ingredients you wanted for some recipes. Very fun. Unfortunately for the group of blue-haired scholars back at the lab, nothing was okay. One worried segment had turned into two into three into all of them who were currently flipping the lab over to discover where you could have gone. For themselves and also before Prime terminates one of them for not watching you properly. (Zandy had fallen asleep for a nap before he could convey your words.) All while you were none the wiser.

After very much scoping out every inch of the huge lab and discovering you are actually gone, for once they manage to work together flawlessly and it takes them no time to start investigating and discovering your exact coordinates. You may have succeeded in escaping their radar for a little bit but, you can't underestimate their tracking skills.

When you're entering the carriage to go back home and the original Dottore is there inside waiting for you, you nearly lose your footing. Needless to say, you have a lot of explaining to do...

You can tell he isn't exactly angry at you, just a bit annoyed but out of worry for you. Yes, he can understand why you did it, but you still need to be more cautious than that! What if your condition acted up and no one could help properly? The long lecture from him and mostly the older segments is thoroughly embedded in your brain, and although you feel bad, you can't help but think it's cute, how much your crazy lovers care for you this much.

[traumxrei-archive]

【 these battles we live through 】

prompt #5: It’s time to fight an overblotted person and if he don’t tell them now, he might not live to tell them later (ft. riddle rosehearts, trey clover, leona kingscholar)

gn! prefect (you/yours), drabbles, word count: 1.4k

a/n: wooo overblots !! tbh i wanted to make these longer to impress a sense of danger, but it was already plenty long after i checked it with the word counter...so rip.... i hope that you can still enjoy tho <333

Riddle Rosehearts

Riddle was absolutely furious. Not only was he furious at Leona for suddenly overblotting, he was also mad at himself. He cursed as he cast another healing spell, the blood that stained his glove making his own heartbeat thunder in his ears. How incompetent was he to see you get injured in front of his eyes?

"Riddle, I'm...I'm fine." He bit his lips at your words. You were fine. Objectively it was a deep gash to your arm. But Riddle couldn't help but feel like...

"Like I almost lost you," He pressed his forehead against your shoulder. Leona was still rampaging, his efforts now focused on Ruggie and the others rather than him.

"You didn't lose me," You said softly, holding onto his hand. "I'm right here, Riddle." Not even five minutes into the fight, and you had gotten injured. The gravity of the situation weighed on Riddle's shoulders heavily.

"I want you to leave this place," Riddle mumured, his grip on your hand tightening. "I don't think I could bear it if you got hurt again."

"It's a fight," You reasoned. "Everyone's gonna get a bit battered."

"But if I lose you, I..." Riddle tasted ash against his tongue as he swallowed. Maybe he would never get the chance. Maybe this fight would rob him of what he held the most dear. Maybe he would never be able to convey what he really felt.

"Prefect," Riddle said slowly, holding your gaze for a moment too long. "I know it is improper to do this in such a setting, but...I care for you. Deeply. And I wanted to...inform you in case anything happened."

"Then promise me," There was something resolute in your tone. "Promise me that you won't die here, and that you'll confess to me properly after all this over."

"Demanding as always," Riddle chuckled, and he could feel a faint warmth tickling his heart, even in this dire situation. "I promise. I will return to you."

This was a battlefield. Riddle was more than sure of that now. He flexed his soiled glove, pinpointing one of Leona's blindspots before releasing an attack spell. Leona simply roared in outrage, not at all fazed by his attack.

But Riddle had to try. He had to try and succeed. And what better motivation did he have than returning to your arms unscathed?

Trey Clover

Never in Trey's life would he have imagined that he would be caught up in, not one, but two overblots in his lifetime. He was under the impression that such ocassions were rare, but....

"Watch out!" A student shouted as the overblot beast raised its tail into the air, smashing through the trees like they were toothpicks.

He pressed himself against the foliage, watching as the beast passed by silently. And it was exactly then where he found you, crouching in one of the bushes. Relief flooded his chest as he checked you for any injuries.

"Thank Sevens you're safe," Trey said, pulling you into his arms. It was no secret how much he cared for you. It was to the point that Cater and the first year duo had an ongoing bet on who would confess first. But...

You smiled weakly, "I'm glad you're here."

His heart thumped almost painfully in his chest as he turned his head towards the direction of the overblot, "I have to help them."

"You don't have to," You pleaded, your hands mercilessly gripping his shirt. "You'll get hurt if you fight."

"The longer he stays rampant, the more time he has to hurt you, sweetheart," Trey pressed his forehead against yours. "You know....even if I didn't ever say it, you know how I feel about you."

"No, if you say it like that then—"

"I love you," Trey chuckled, though it sounded hollow and afraid. "And I'm deathly scared of dying. But more than that, I'm scared of losing you."

There were tears in your eyes now, "That just sounds like a final goodbye."

"It's not a goodbye," Trey said, gently wiping at your cheeks. "I just want you to know. It's bad timing, I know. I just...we can talk more after this is over, I—"

You leaned forward, wrapping him in an embrace so tight he almost didn't want to let go, "If you're going, then you're better try your best to come back unhurt."

"I'll try my best for you," Trey reluctantly let you go, grabbing his magical pen. "I will be back. Soon."

"Soon," You echoed as he ran off into the clearing, facing the overblotted person unafraid. There were already a few students attacking the beast, and he made sure to yell out his instructions.

Yet all Trey could think about was you. He would return, he vowed then, he would return unhurt, and he would finally be able to tell you all the words that he had been keeping inside his heart.

Leona Kingscholar

Azul overblotting was not a part of the plan. Leona dodged as anothe tentacle came to swipe at him, hauling another bystander behind a coral structure.

Then again maybe he should've been expecting it. An overblot was something he was all too familiar with. And Azul did lose everything that he had built up all of his life. He gritted his teeth as he launched back into action, shooting more spells towards the octo-bastard.

Leona just hoped that you would stay out of the fight for once; that the Leech twins would keep you occupied enough that you wouldn't get caught up in this battle.

But it seemed that there was no God smiling down at Leona today. Instead, here you were grabbing at his arm and tugging him behind a coral structure.

"Why are you here?" Leona hissed, hastily throwing up a barrier to shield you both from the surrounding chaos. "You're gonna end up getting yourself killed."

"Like you're one to talk!" You fired back, bringing your hand up to his head. "Did you even notice that you were bleeding?"

He released a harsh breath, "It's just a scratch. But I need you to get out of here."

"Why would I leave?" Your brow furrowed. "I can't just abandon you here."

"You don't have any magic to protect yourself."

"I won't do anything reckless—"

"Staying in this battle is the definition of reckless," Leona gripped at your arms. "How long will you hold on to your stubbornness?"

"Leona-senpai, I am not abandoning you here." The words felt like needles stabbing Leona right where it hurt.

"Please," The words were laced with emotions that Leona was unequipped to voice. "I can't see you get hurt." Your gaze softened, and for once he thought that you might listen. For once, he thought, that maybe he could keep you safe.

"Then I'll keep hiding," You said quietly, your hand now holding onto his wrist. "You'll be able to protect me. You're Leona Kingscholar, right?"

And Leona was foolish to think that his words could do anything about your bullheaded loyalty to your friends, and as an extension, to him.

"Hah," Leona leveled you with a glare. "What an unlucky thing, for me to be stuck harboring feelings for such a stubborn herbivore." He stabilized the barrier when one of Azul's tentacles thumped against it. He didn't have much time before the barrier fully collapsed.

Your eyes widened, "Did you just...?"

"You can hear the rest of it after the battle," Leona muttered, wiping at the dust caking your cheek. "That is if you don't get any major injury. Otherwise you'll have to wait even longer to hear it."

"Wait, Leona-senpai—"

"I'm casting a radius shield. You step out of it and I'm sending you out of here," Magic sang under his finger tips as he wove together the spell, and he watched as you nodded. "Good. Now shout if you see any openings, I'm not expecting you to stand around doing nothing."

"I wasn't planning on being a sitting duck," You huffed, though you stepped closer to him as he aimed another attack spell at Azul.

He should've been more nervous, considering he was facing an overblot; something he had no experience with prior. But he felt strangely calm, especially when he saw you right next to him as he fought. Maybe after all this was over...

Leona gripped his magic pen tighter. He just had to— no, he had to make sure that this was going to be over soon.

ty for reading these slightly hurt/comfort scenarios !! i hope that you enjoyed >:D if you did, go check out the rest of the 600 follower drabbles OR my masterlist ^^

[bitterpngs]

...

...

...

… trust, huh?

TL;DR: what i want to highlight with this comic: satoru calling suguru "geto" / suguru crossing satoru's metaphorical line and permanently severing his relationship with him. kenjaku's plan in canon will never come to fruition in this au. what happens after is up to you :)

and yes ik the trust quote is in the context of the other 2nd years! i added it bc it fit, in a way.

this got long sorry lol i started to ramble

LAST NAME - what started this all and what i hope others picked up on was gojo calling geto by his last name, not his first: geto. even after everything geto did during jjk v0, gojo still calls geto 'suguru.' he's still 'suguru' to him. i wanted a scenario in which gojo would reject his first name - reject their past and their relationship. this whole comic idea sprung out of being unsatisfied with geto and gojo's canon relationship. personally, im not the happiest with how things were written in the story and feel like the author could've done some things differently. this isn't to say i don't like or enjoy what the author has written either. i just have mixed feelings.

KENJAKU - in case it wasn't clear, the door closing on page 14 depicts geto with stitches on his forehead - aka kenjaku. what that page is trying to convey is that the moment geto killed yuuta, the future where geto's body is used to box gojo ceased to exist. in this au, kenjaku's plan that we see in the canon timeline would never and will never work. by killing yuuta, geto crossed a line and permanently severed his relationship with gojo. if gojo wins here, gojo will dispose of the body properly. the panel after shows a closed door with the memory of who suguru was. the person who suguru used to be and the best years of gojo's life etc etc. but "broken" bc it's gojo truly realizing that's not who geto is anymore + the whole "severing relationship" thing. does this make sense.

what happens after the comic ends is up to interpretation though

GETO'S PLAN - i didnt focus a lot on the specifics of how this could've happened considering geto's plan changed in this au. how it happened isnt really important, you can come up with whatever you want. what i wanted to focus on, and what i hope people managed to pick up on is the situation itself - geto killing yuuta. sorry yuuta. i'll make it up to you.

i ended it here because it felt the best place, but here's some scrapped dialogue of a few seconds after: GETO: "… It was a necessary sacrifice, Sato-" GOJO: "don't you dare call me that" basically to emphasize the first name vs last name situation

GOJO N GETO - ive always felt uhhh. nitpicky, i guess. about the specifics of everything regarding gojo and geto. ive felt unsatisfied for a variety of reasons, and this was basically an idea that sprung out (a looong time ago) of a want for gojo to be angry at and feel more.. negative emotions, i guess, toward geto. i still do genuinely enjoy their canon relationship a lot tho. i enjoy the way they’re written together and individually, i just have different/multiple feelings about the same thing :)

RIKO AND YUUTA - erm there was a scrapped panel... you can find it on my blog if you're really curious but there was a panel of geto 'remembering' riko's dead body (a distorted memory, because the blood reflects yuuta's injuries). it's not necessarily that riko and yuuta are similar, it's that geto becomes a bit like toji in the end. just like toji, geto tries to kill a young teenager for the sake of his own goals. while toji's was selfish and geto's, in his own eyes, was for the greater good, there's still the similarity of killing a child. of stealing their future for their own goals. plus the fact that gojo killed both of them in a similar way.

TRUST - yeah i know the quote is in the context of the 2nd years fighting geto. still. gojo trusted geto to a large degree, despite everything he did. so. it's going here.

PG 4-6 - geto values and cares about sorcerers so so much. again, he was fine with trying to kill yuuta for his vision and all but i dont think he wouldn't feel some level of. conflicting emotions i guess. (i am very against the idea that geto wasn't... trying to kill yuuta? i don't really get that perspective at all. it'd make all of that meaningless imo. but this isn’t about that.) ok im done.

if you read this entire rambly thing, thank you :D hope you enjoyed!

[silent-sanctum]

✧ Polaris ✧ - Jotaro x Reader

PART 9: Get to Know You

— The previous parts of the fic can be found in the pinned post of my profile. Hope you enjoy! —

I rise from the dead yet again! But sorry for the wait! College's been rough with the workload but I've managed to put out a new part! No warnings this time, just joot's emotional development and a bunch of jotaro and reader fluff interactions~ But what if I told you that there's 2k+ more story over in my AO3? It's exclusive over there because it contains my OC's lore (aka the character the reader's standing in place of here). However, I promise you it's worth reading with jotaro gradually learning to open more to you and both of you just basking in peace. Regardless, hope you enjoy!

word count: 2.6k

Bright light dawned beyond his shut eyes.

Already? Jotaro stirred from where he lay on the grass, flexing his arms to stretch, though he did expect his left to be a bit heavy. Through his early morning squinting, he turned to the spot where a girl should be lying only to find it unoccupied and his arm free.

“Morning~”

Jotaro sat upright and turned to look at you sitting cross-legged across from him. He quickly swept his gaze over you to check how you fared- faintly flushed cheeks, puffy eyes, fixed hair, smoothed-out uniform. You appeared good compared to the state you were during the night prior but-

“How are you feeling?”

You looked up in thought, humming as you planted your hands on the ground to lean on them. “Better? But admittedly still like shit. As expected, I couldn’t sleep for long and ended waking up shortly after falling asleep but,” you glanced at him with a soft smile. “Company was able to get me through the hours.”

Jotaro nodded once at the words with the smallest of smiles on his face responding to yours.

“So yeah. I somewhat patched bits of myself back to… this.” You gestured to your body with one sweep.

“That’s good.”

You tilted your head with concern. “How about you?”

The probable bruises spotting all over his back and arms as a result of the chaotic whipping ached at the mention but he paid no attention as he shrugged with casual ease. “I’m fine.”

“Jotaro,” he paused at the mention of his name. He stared into your eyes and felt the weight of your gaze towards him. One that, paired with a gentle smile, carried an array of sentiments unable to be conveyed through words. “Thanks for last night. Really…”

You had a lot going on behind your confident strides, and to this moment Jotaro has yet to know about them. But with the shared look of trust between him and you, he was in no hurry to figure them out.

He tipped the visor of his hat down as a sign of acknowledgment and as means to cover his warming cheeks.

“Alright,” And as if nothing happened, you were up and standing with a clap and dust of your clothes. “Enough with the sappy stuff, we should head back to the others. They must be starting to think we did something freaky last night knowing them.”

Getting up as well, Jotaro rolled his eyes at the thought of the Crusaders poking fun at them for the nth time. “Definitely.” Though, by the feel of the mellow sunlight on his skin, it wasn’t too late in the morning and a bit more exchange of words would be nice before returning to the annoyance that was the group itself.

It’s been a while since you’ve properly talked to him like this after all.

“Let’s?”

He nodded, shoving his hands into his pockets.

With you leading the way back, they both returned to the main campsite and was greeted with the bizarre sight of Kakyoin dropping what looked like a literal piece of shit into a bowl Joseph’s breakfast pudding, before offering the bowl to the old man to feed the evil-faced baby with enthusiasm.

Jotaro didn’t question what the reasoning behind it was nor did he care that much, though you were about to if it wasn’t for Avdol, the moralistic guy that he was, politely telling you that infant was devious for some reason and what the other student did wasn’t entirely wrong.

You glanced at Kakyoin’s arm, read the “BABY STAND” carved on the skin, and understood, joining them to watch the whole feeding happen.

Polnareff woke up minutes too late to witness the child suffer from feces-tasting food.

Letting that be a bygone, the Foundation managed to track the group by the time the sun was high in the sky. In two separate teams, one transported the grimacing infant to a nearby village while the other brought the Crusaders to a remote island where they would wait for another vehicle departing for Egypt.

A submarine if he heard right.

The island itself wasn’t all too bad- Fine sand, lush tropical trees, and the tranquil ambiance of the sea. Jotaro wouldn’t mind waiting here. In group fashion, everyone kept themselves preoccupied to pass the time. The Frenchman ran off to god knows where, you and the older adults engaged in simple conversation, Kakyoin probably went to look for Pol to make sure he didn’t get himself into any trouble-

While Jotaro was left sitting by himself on the sand, a lit cigarette in hand when finding some temporary peace in the near-rhythmic crash of waves.

It felt… strange.

Even though he’d asked for breaks numerous times during their battles, a weight grew heavy on his shoulder at the fact that with each passing second, his mother’s life was slowly dwindling away and all the times they got blocked off by either an enemy or mundane inconveniences were seconds thrown away that could have been used to further progress this damn trip.

He took one long drag of his cigarette and sighed deeply, letting out a small plume of ashy gray into the air. All those times he cursed at her, dismissed her motherly affections, downright ignored her… Jotaro placed his hand on his nape, scratching lightly as if it would alleviate the rising guilt in him once he realized what he’d been doing.

What was this for? Why was I so mean to her when she did nothing but love and care for me? For a well-kept facade I didn’t even want in the first place? He hated that it took a life-or-death situation for him to ponder like this. Mom… I should call her soon…

“The young Joestar is in deep thought I see.”

Jotaro snapped out of his thoughts to notice Avdol taking a spot beside him. “So?” He took another drag.

“There’s nothing wrong in self-reflection from time to time,” he said. “For someone in their youth, all this chaotic fighting and constant travel must be starting to make you wish you’d be in school right now, right?”

“It’s fine,” the teenager shrugged. “School sucks and it bores me.”

“The high grades Holly-san told me you got throughout your academic years says otherwise.” Jotaro grumbled something incoherent that he himself didn’t know what the words were. “You’re thinking of her, aren’t you?”

“It’s shitty to think about how much of an asshole I was…”

Avdol chuckled. “I’m not going to say you’re wrong. You definitely disrespected your mother most of the time all of us were in the same room together, but as terrible your behavior was-” he patted the delinquent’s shoulders. “I know you still love Holly with all your heart. You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t the case.”

Jotaro remained silent. He wasn’t wrong…

“Toss all my other wisdom talk aside if you wish, but I hope this advice would stick with you,” Avdol turned to his clasped hands. “Holly’s still here and when you return to her, I suggest you let her know how much you love her the way you can instead of pushing her away. Cherish the ones you love while they’re still here with us.”

If it were weeks ago, Jotaro would have done what Avdol said seconds ago and dismiss this sagely talk as nothing but some sort of “respect your parents” propaganda. Oddly enough, he didn’t feel the urge to ignore his words now that he’s stuck worrying over his mother’s life.

The spark in his cigarette dimmed down to ashes. “What’s with the random inspirational speeches? You a counselor or something?”

The Egyptian smiled. “Teacher actually. If I wasn’t doing readings or fortune telling, I worked with children, especially the troubled ones, and guided them with the right knowledge and values to live through life. That is until DIO found me and I had to seek Mr. Joestar for protection.”

Jotaro scoffed. “You see me as a kid then? Is that it?”

“Are you not? You’ve yet to mature past your rough edges after all.”

He clicked his tongue, thought not entirely disagreeing with the adult. “Whatever.”

“An answer expected from you.” Avdol stood. “You’ll understand when you’re older. Who knows? You might be a teacher in the future as well if fate deems it to be.” With that, he walked back to the others and left the reserved teenager alone with his thoughts.

Yeah right… like that would ever happen. Time continued to pass as he remained sitting on the sand, mulling over what Avdol had said to him together with memories of his mother stirring in his thoughts. At some point, Jotaro had dozed off, leaning on his propped-up knee with the remains of his cigarette left somewhere on the sand beside him.

When he came to, the sun was halfway down the horizon, dimming the sky above as the stars slowly made themselves visible. He expected to wake up by himself as is the case every time he took his naps, but with one glance to the side, he found you watching the sea beside him.

You noticed him staring so you spoke. “You’re awake.”

“I assume the sub’s not here yet?” The pointed stare and silence you gave him the answer. He sighed. “Figured.”

“Mr. Joestar and I took one stroll around the place and there’s a bunch of neat little hideouts on the island you could have slept in. It’s more secluded and quiet, has enough wind to keep cool, and the grass is short enough to not be itchy,” you said. “Why choose this spot by the water?”

“Ambiance,” he said in return. “I like the sound of waves. It’s… calming.”

He took one glimpse at you to gauge for your reaction. You weren’t looking at him when you had that soft smile on your face as you had this faraway gaze facing the mellow movements of the ocean. “The waves make me relax too. It’s what helps make it so beautiful aside from its glittery surface.”

Jotaro thought about what you said to him back in Singapore. The ocean looks beautiful, don’t you agree? Fresh from his talk with Avdol, he couldn’t help but be nostalgic for a second. “Mom used to take me to the beach when I was little… usually when I felt like shit. And it helped somewhat.”

“Lucky you. My birthplace is by the sea and by this point, you already know I had a rough past. So, I’d watch that huge body of water sway with the breeze and let myself listen to the waves as a mean for comfort.” This time, you faced him and locked his gaze with yours. “Looks like we’re not so different from each other, huh?”

“You tend to overshare though.”

“But you’ve gotten used to it by now, huh?”

He shrugged. “A bit.” A bit? A complete understatement considering his level of tolerance to her numerous bouts of talk. “But it’s either that or spend the rest of lunch bored out of my mind.”

You cooed, cupping your cheek with a small tilt of your head. “Are you saying you miss the simple times of lunch with yours truly? Or am I hearing things?”

Though he hated admitting it, he thought about what Avdol said and with some heat to his cheeks, Jotaro tipped his hat over his eyes and gave one small bob of his head. Not allowing him the silence to wallow with self-embarrassment, you giggled as you shoved him lightly.

“And here I thought you wanted this bitch to shut up.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Jotaro looked at you this time, finding some sort of relief in the fact you blushed deeply at the sentiment despite the teasing you were fond of doing to him. “I still prefer some peace and quiet.”

“Hey I’m not judging,” you raised your hands. “Not when I also miss our mini rooftop breaks. It’s… a nice breath of fresh air. Literally.” You let out a breathy laugh, eyes closing from your smile.

Jotaro could feel his heart beat a bit faster than before. One that always came with warmth on his face, his hands turning clammy and his stomach feeling a sensation similar to that of fluttering butterflies. It happened more often the more they made progress to Egypt.

Fuck. I don’t want to think about this. He took in a deep breath and sighed, blurting out the first thing that came to mind to divert the subject away from the familiar banter. “Admitting you like the smell of smoke now?”

“Huh?”

“It can’t be a breath of fresh air when I smoke next to you every time.”

You rolled your eyes. “The winds blow them away from for most of the time so I don’t really care, but don’t think I’ve noticed you’d smoke less and less the more we hung out.”

Jotaro cocked an eyebrow and fished through his pockets, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. To prove a point, he flipped the lid open to reveal five sticks remaining inside out of 20. “I beg to differ. This is my 3rd pack this trip.”

Which was a lie. It’s his first and is this empty only because Polnareff wanted some to smoke and practice the delinquent’s parlor trick for the nth time.

“Yah!” You leaned forward to try and snatch the box off his hand. “Are you trying to kill yourself on purpose?!” You swiped again only for Jotaro to lean back and stretch his arm away from you with a smug smirk. My turn to tease. “You can’t do that now, we have unfinished business!”

“I don’t care.”

You deadpanned. “Liar. Now give me.”

Without anyone noticing, you ended up sprawled over his lap still struggling to reach for the pack of nicotine in his outstretched hand. Too preoccupied with making sure your grabby hands won’t reach it, Jotaro didn’t notice the slim strip of rose-gold creeping up behind him to snatch the box off his hold.

The delinquent clicked his tongue, crossing his arms. “You cheated.” Though you didn’t care as you leaned back with cheeky smile and tiny shimmy, pack of cigarettes now in your hand. “Doesn’t matter. I can always buy another.”

“To practice your little cigarette trick for the masses?”

“I can do 5 at once.”

“Shut up. You’re lying.”

“I can show you.”

You scoffed, tossing the box back at him with defeat. “Unbelievable. You really do have a death wish.”

Jotaro grew acutely aware of how much closer you got to him without you noticing, so close that he felt his shoulders brush against yours and the back of his hand overlapped with your smaller, softer one. His chest tightened and his pulse increased yet again beneath his aloof expression.

As the two of them watch the sun set below the horizon, he stilled as you leaned your head on his shoulder. Respecting the quiet air of the area, you said to him in a hushed voice. “I’d rather you not die on my watch. I don’t think my heart can handle any more of those.”

You said it with nonchalance and a smile, but he knew better. He slowly turned to glance at you still facing the ocean. Any trace of playfulness you had minutes ago dissolved, making way for that tone of sadness and longing to make its appearance just as it did prior to your breakdown.

Under the touch of your hand, his fingers twitched ever so slightly, wanting to graze your skin as minuscule means to soothe you. But Jotaro had a feeling you just needed company and nothing else at the moment.

He allowed you to rest your head on his shoulders, peacefully watching as the sky grew dark and its stars started to twinkle.

“I won’t.”

[icarusmonsoon]

healed wounds, mender hearts pt III - rafe cameron

rafe cameron x reader

nothing much is going on in this chapter, just a filler chapter following the previous one. Hope you guys enjoy!

Part I

Part II

___________________________________________

The weight of the unconscious form in his arms felt both fragile and burdensome, like he was carrying a precious treasure that could shatter at any moment. Rafe's heart pounded in his chest, not just from the physical exertion of holding Y/n's body, but from the fear and guilt that clawed at him. He couldn't believe how much he had let things spiral out of control, how much he had lost sight of himself and the consequences of his actions.

Now, the consequences were staring him in the face, and he knew he had to make things right. Gently, he laid Y/n down on a nearby crate, his hands shaking with trepidation. His fingers hovered over her wound, unsure of what to do. He desperately wished he had some medical knowledge, but he wasn't even sure how to properly clean and dress the injury.

He berated himself for not paying attention during first aid classes, for being too reckless and impulsive.As the reality of the situation sunk in, Rafe's mind was flooded with regret and remorse. He remembered all the times he had acted callously, the times he had hurt people physically and emotionally, all in the pursuit of his father's approval. He thought about how he had let his obsession with the cross blind him to the real dangers around him, including the ones he had inadvertently caused.

Tears welled up in Rafe's eyes as he looked at Y/n's still form. He felt an overwhelming sense of responsibility for her well-being, and he knew he had to do everything in his power to ensure she survived. He took off his shirt and ripped it into strips, using them to try and staunch the bleeding from her wound. He winced as he saw her flinch in response to his touch, reminding him that he was the last person she would want taking care of her.

"I'm so sorry, Y/n," he whispered, his voice barely audible above the ship's noises. "I never meant for any of this to happen. I never wanted you to get hurt." He swallowed hard, trying to keep his emotions in check. He knew he couldn't afford to break down now; he had to stay focused and keep her safe.

With trembling hands, Rafe retrieved his phone again and dialed the ship's infirmary, praying that someone would pick up on the other end. He explained the situation as best as he could, stumbling over his words and trying to convey the urgency of the situation. When he finally got through to the doctor, he was instructed on how to stabilize Y/n until they could reach the infirmary.

Rafe felt a mix of relief and anxiety as he followed the doctor's instructions. He was afraid of doing something wrong, of causing more harm than good. He kept talking to Y/n, hoping that his voice would somehow reach her unconscious mind and let her know that he was trying to help.

As he waited for the medical team to arrive, Rafe's mind drifted to the events that led them to this moment. He thought about the treasure hunt, the rivalry between his family and the pogues, and how it had all escalated into this chaotic mess. He couldn't help but feel responsible for the violence and danger that had overtaken their lives.His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps.

The medical team had arrived, and Rafe quickly stepped back to give them space. He watched anxiously as they assessed Y/n's condition, their faces serious and focused. The doctor acknowledged Rafe with a nod, silently acknowledging his efforts in stabilizing her.

Rafe felt a mix of gratitude and guilt as the medical team took over. He knew he had done what he could, but he couldn't shake the feeling that he had caused all of this. He stayed by Y/n's side as they prepared to transport her to the infirmary, his heart heavy with worry and regret.

Once Y/n was safely in the hands of the medical professionals, Rafe found himself feeling lost. He didn't know what to do next, where to go, or how to face the consequences of his actions. He knew he had to confront his father and put an end to this dangerous quest for the cross, but he also knew that it wouldn't be easy on him. After all, Ward's validation is all he ever wanted. And he was so close to getting what he wants, in exchange of the safety of the only person he can ever think about. The person he genuinely have feelings for.

Rafe's not sure what his feelings are, what he actually want. But as he wandered through the ship, Rafe's mind was a whirlwind of emotions. But one thing he knows for sure, he genuinely cared about Y/n.

[scarletwritesshit]

🎨 Albedo x Reader 🎨 Thousand Strokes, Thousand Words

Made for @n3r0-1417 as part of the Favonius Library's secret santa event. I hope you enjoy!

-

The paintbrush gracefully swiped along the canvas.

Smooth, gentle strokes...rough, vigorous textures, where Albedo saw detail fit, he commanded his brush to make his visions into reality.

All of this work to be put in a painting, only for Albedo to completely discard his current idea. The vision he had was simply not translating onto the canvas very well, as something was weighing heavily on his mind. Something that he couldn’t even visualize properly on a canvas, something that words could do no justice for. Usually, Albedo would resort to painting to clear his mind of any inexplainable burdens, however, Albedo could not find relief in even his most therapeutic pastime.

He was weighed down by lingering feelings that he had for a rather close friend of his. This was all a rather new experience for him, given that he wasn’t exactly too fond of forming and maintaining strong bonds with others. Sure, he was well acquainted with Sucrose, Klee, and a few others, but not to the extent that they were constantly occupying his mind.

It was an odd feeling to say the least…a strange sensation in his heart that made him feel as if he could face the treachery of Dragonspine all on his own, yet simultaneously held him back. Albedo had no one to blame but himself for allowing himself to remain distracted by his feelings for you, but every attempt to suppress these emotions only lead to them intensifying as soon as he allowed himself to be ever so slightly vulnerable.

He stopped painting once again to take a step back and look at the canvas as a whole. The artwork appeared very...disorganized, as if he was attempting to blend too many vastly different landscapes all into one piece. It appeared as if the scrambled innerworkings of his mine manifested into a chaotic mixture of brushstrokes and color. Too many newfound feelings in Albedo’s mind seemed to all jumble together and manifest in such a way. And how, he wondered, could he alienate himself of what ailed him? It wasn’t exactly a question that could be solved through alchemy, unless he were to craft a potion that freed himself of these feelings. He was neither willing to deal with the possible side effects that may befall upon him nor unintended damage that could be done to your well-being. Plus, the solution to ever-present burden was rather quite easy, if he was willing to take the leap and confess, that is.

He took the canvas off of the easel and placed it on top of the stack of numerous other abandoned canvases with his half-finished ideas. He dared not discard the fruits of his labor, no matter how dissatisfactory his progress on every piece was. The amount of canvases Albedo had was finite, however, and he had only so much room to continue making flawed pieces.

Albedo needed to think of a way to take all of his scrambled, unfamiliar thoughts, and turn them into a masterpiece in order to properly convey his true feelings. Words couldn’t possibly do them justice, and heartfelt conversations weren’t exactly his strong suit. If words failed him, then what better way than to communicate than though painting, the language that was outclassed only by his knowledge of alchemy? If only now, he could properly visualize those feelings he had, instead of agonizing over every imperfect idea.

The sight of a flower was far too unexceptional, he feared. Sure, the gesture of gifting a flower was common and its meaning was easily conveyed, but its common nature is why he feared it being a failure of a confession. Perhaps Albedo could take the route of painting some hobbies or objects that he knew you were fond of? Again, it felt like far too generic of an idea to pass as a gift from the heart.

Not even the simple idea of painting out his feelings was proving to be the least bit simple.

Instead of dwelling on his internal conflict, Albedo resorted to what he knew best; observing the details of the world around him. He closely observed Dragonspine’s landscape before him and studied the abundance of snow, rock formations, and so on. It was an odd dilemma of his, if he could truly capture the beauty of a person he loved in the icy mountain that he called home.

He decided that, if he truly felt such a way, then he should make it very clear in his piece. What were Dragonspine’s most beautiful features, he pondered? Personally, he viewed the snowy landscape itself to be quite gorgeous, but to one normally an outsider, he feared that the interpretation may be rather treacherous, on the contrary.

Rather than looking at the bigger picture, Albedo thought that perhaps he shouldn’t think of Dragonspine as a whole that was beautiful, but rather, its minute components that contributed to its beauty, like the individual ingredients that went into every one of his concoctions. He thought about you catching Cryo crystalflies, and how you would attempt to snatch them out of the air before they flew out of reach. He thought about the Pyro Seelie, and how he couldn’t help but silently laugh as you fumbled though the snow to chase after their warmth.

Most notably, he couldn’t help but think about how you would trudge your way up the mountain to accompany him, no matter how thick the snow had fallen. Your snow-caked boots, frosted coat, everything inclined him to warm you up as soon as he possibly could. He wasn’t too keen on keeping his cavern particularly warm, but he would do anything to assure that you didn’t travel through all of that snow just to freeze to death at your destination. He realized that with each and every little thing that made Dragonspine what it was, he could recall a precious memory that he shared with you

So, Albedo finally let loose, and began to let his brush paint for itself.

Finally, after what felt like hours’ worth of scrapped ideas, Albedo’s canvas seemed to manifest his own feelings before his very eyes.

A Cryo crystalfly, illuminated by Pyro Seelie in Dragonspine’s snowy, mountainous landscape. To him, it was the perfect visual of the feelings he held for you. A perfectly blended masterpiece of every little thing that he was familiar with in Dragonspine and every little detail about it that he noticed that you admired. For once, he felt as if he could step back and admire a completed canvas that he was proud of.

He dragged the other canvases back to the inside of his cavern and stacked them up neatly to the side. It was quite a significant number of discarded projects, but he dared not paint over them, should inspiration to polish his ideas strike him at a future time.

Albedo hung his completed work in a strategic location in his laboratory, not too obvious yet not blending in with the equipment and the rest of his art. He wanted you to take notice of his most recent work, so that he may jump at the opportunity to gift it to you, as well as a proper explanation of his feelings. Truthfully, Albedo also did not want to be the one to initiate such an awkward conversation as well.

To the average eye, it appeared to be an artistic representation of the less appreciated aspects of Dragonspine. To Albedo, however, it was these little things that, over time, he had grown to develop such a strong association with your happiness that never failed to warm his heart, even in the dead of the Mondstadt winter.

He hoped that you would understand this, despite his struggles to properly communicate just how important you were to him.

Albedo knew that if you did share his feelings, you would be more than delighted to hear even a few words of affection. He would dare not to deny you those three words that you would so badly want to hear from him, but he hoped that his painting could convey what simply couldn’t be spoken.

[juicyflawless25]

Those Ocean Eyes (Ch. 1)

Word Count; 1,477

Notes; A plethora of memories, both cherished and heart-wrenching, shared with the one and only Larissa Weems. Cross posted on a03

Warnings; No warnings for anything just yet, but the rating of this will change as chapters are added. I don't know how long this will be, but I do hope you enjoy it nonetheless!

To honestly describe the feelings you felt when first seeing Larissa, one would need a much more vast knowledge of a language than even the brightest humans could ever achieve. There were truly not enough words in any language to properly convey the bluest and loveliest eyes to ever have existed. 

When first given a glance at the blessed cerulean irises of one Larissa Weems, it had taken your breath away. She had been sitting in the library, curled up with notebooks and reading material. The cap of her pen was tucked between her perfect teeth. The way her eyes danced across the paging of her book, so intensely focused on her learning, had made you quite jealous of what she was reading. 

Did you feel ridiculous having felt that way over a woman you had just seen, not even spoken to yet? Yes, you did. However, there was no stopping the flow of feelings coursing through your body because of her. She gave off a vibe that you knew your vibe could coincide with. Your soul knew there was something special to be had here, something to be cherished. But of course, like any anxiety-ridden gay, you would be taking your sweet ass time moving forward to create that connection.

Her eyes were like sparkling sapphires, obviously, there to make all shiny and gorgeous things feel inadequate next to her. God, the knowledge and depth you could see behind them were something to be revered and feared simultaneously. You could see the cogs turning in her head, moving quickly to understand what was being read. Seconds later, you could see a light click inside those eyes, a moment of understanding before she quickly wrote a few sentences down in her notebook. A small, but triumphant smile curled the edges of her lips and you felt your knees go weak at the sight.

You had been slowly getting closer to Larissa, your legs moving of their own accord as you watched her intently. You had come to the library to do your studying, following the path you always took to the exact seat Larissa was sitting in. Under no circumstances were you going to disturb her though. It’s not like your name was on that seat. Besides, she looked so comfortable there, writing away her thoughts on the paper. 

The moment you were a split second away from turning around and finding a new seat to take, Larissa’s eyes looked up at you surprisingly. You stood still in the spot you were standing, a nervous smile on your face. Those captivating eyes looked you over, not judging, but reading you. You swallowed the lump in your throat as you wondered what she could be thinking. 

You weren’t sure how long you stood there, staring back at her like someone who’d just remembered they’d left the stove on at home. Larissa blinked and shifted in the chair, slightly uncomfortable.

“May I help you?” She questioned, blue eyes boring into yours, making your head feel slightly numb from the anxiety of being caught staring. 

Finally, after hearing her melodic tone drift to your ears (even if it was in annoyance), you cleared your throat and threw her a small, apologetic smile. 

“I’m so sorry! I did mean to stare!” You began, holding your hands up in front of your chest in a surrender motion. “I usually sit here to study and was surprised to find someone else. I’m normally the only one who comes to this corner of the library.” You chuckled lightly, rubbing the back of your neck timidly.

“My apologies. I can move if you like?” Larissa questioned, already starting to unfold her long legs from underneath her.

You took a step forward, waving your hands to try to stop her. “No, no! Please! Stay!” Your words were rushed, rising in tone as your eyes widened. “You look so comfortable and I would hate to make you move! I didn’t mean to disturb you, I was just…” 

You cut yourself off, minding reeling for a moment for a way to finish that sentence. You couldn’t exactly tell her you had been standing there basically daydreaming about her. How creepy would you come across confessing something like that to a stranger?

Larissa stilled her movements and stared up at you, the space between her eyebrows crinkling as she watched you flounder for words. Truthfully, she found you kind of cute the way you seemed so nervous over her offering to find another place to sit. A tiny, barely there smile lifted the corner of her mouth as she suppressed a chuckle. One shouldn’t laugh at someone who was struggling with something.

“Just what?” She pressed, raising one of her perfect eyebrows in question. Okay, maybe she was teasing a little, but she just couldn’t help herself with how adorable you looked with your mouth agape.

“I uh…I was just really admiring how focused you seemed in your work. I don’t see that a lot here, what with the way everyone’s teenage hormones seem to be raging.” You laughed, giving her a timid smile. It was a confession of sorts, but only a small one. That’s all she was getting out of you for now.

With a hum, the woman nodded her head and sat back in the seat. “I know what you mean. Sometimes I wonder how some of them even pass their classes.” Larissa shook her head, clearly thinking of a few students in particular.

A grin spread across your face, finding hope in the fact that she didn’t seem to find you utterly ridiculous. She was speaking with you, which meant you hadn’t given her some kind of impression that you weren’t entirely dumb. Good, good. You would hate to make someone as beautiful as her find you hard to speak to.

“I can imagine they do so by the skin of their teeth. If even that.” You quipped, a little lopsided smile gracing your features.

Your smile grew when she laughed, head tilted back slightly. The triumph you felt of making her laugh, her eyes gleaming with a knowing look as she looked back at you. And what a laugh it was, sending shivers up your spine and making your laugh appear on its own. That was a sound you knew you’d want to continue hearing. 

“I have no doubt you’re right.” She replied as she settled herself back in the chair. 

After a moment of readjusting her sitting position, she looked back up at you with a welcoming and gentle look on her face. She waved her hand at the chair opposite of hers as her eyes cut over to it. “If you like, we can study together.” Larissa offered, trying to make herself seem as open as possible. 

That was unusual for her. Most of the time, she was guarded around the other students at Nevermore. But there was something about you that called to her. She wasn’t sure what just yet, but something in her brain was telling her to just go for it. Make a friend, other than Morticia. 

“I’m Larissa Weems, by the way. And you are?” She looked at you expectantly, head tilted ever so slightly.

Larissa Weems. Larissa “Goddess of the Sapphire Irises” Weems. That’s how you referred to her in your head. Not that she needed to know that. She had such a gorgeous name, fitting for the perfect picture of loveliness sitting before you. You knew the name, having heard others speak of her, but you were new enough that you hadn’t run into her yet. You were thanking whatever gods there were out there that you had finally come across her. 

You smiled widely at her and moved timidly to the other chair she had pointed out to you. You knew the damn chair was there, but your brain had short-circuited upon seeing the prettiest woman in the school sitting in the other. 

“Y/n.” You responded, curling yourself in the chair similar to how she had done so. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

“The feeling is mutual” Larissa replied, giving you a winning smile before redirecting her attention back to her books.

After that first meeting, each time you went back to the library, you looked for her and those gorgeous eyes. And she was there, every single time. Each time you saw her look up at you as you rounded the corner of the bookshelf, looking hopeful that it was you and not someone else, your heart skipped a happy little beat. The fact that she seemed to enjoy your company as much as you did hers was truly shocking. You weren’t going to question it though. You were going to take whatever time this lovely woman was willing to give you and you were going to cherish it greatly.

[kinkydents]

I love how you write Lucifer. He’s so complex in Penance. He’s still that goofy clingy -yet neglectful- depressed dad from Charlie’s perspective, but then there’s moments of the fact this is a guy who created the prison for the exiles where fallen angels are killing themselves and not hearing shit from him. Then there’s the whole his deal with Alastor and the implications there. Down to his glee at the crumbling of the Eldritch family. Even his reaction to seeing Alastor again and that shitshow. He really does have many titles. Just, had to say I love him and I’m excited for more.

omg and i love writing lucifer! 😭 thank you so much!

i'm so glad that i can convey this "moral grayness" to him properly!! i feel like there's a lot of potential with him in his position as the "king of hell" that doesn't get explored a lot in the show.

if you enjoyed those tidbits about him, i hope you'll like these upcoming chapters!!!

[presidenthades]

I am doing very minor revisions of Daemon’s Handbook (mostly formatting and continuity errors), and I wanted to do some behind-the-scenes commentary before too much time passes and I forget my original thoughts. Here’s Chapter 3!

(Note that these commentaries aren’t canon to the verse until/unless the author writes them into the series. I might change my mind on a few points later, but these are the thoughts I had while writing.)

Joff might be a precocious witchy 6 year old, but like any 6yo, she thinks farts are hilarious. Sorry, Gerardys. (Also, notice how Joff dissembles/changes the topic when she doesn’t want to directly answer a question.)

Should Joff be mixing bleach and ammonia together? Nooooo. (And if you’re reading this, please don’t do this at home.)

As mentioned in the Chapter 2 commentary, Jace freaks out about her ruined slippers because they were a gift from Aegon, and now she can’t easily get presents from her not-boyfriend anymore. 🥺

I might write a lengthier scene of the girls’ rebellion re: Daemon and Rhaenyra’s marriage in another installment of the series. Here, I tried to make each girl’s reaction indicative of their overall personalities/mannerisms: Jace tries to be diplomatic, Luce goes for the drama, Baela out-cusses Daemon, Rhaena lets her emotions show through the cracks, and Joff is silently disapproving.

IMO, in the show, Rhaenys takes Baela as a ward because she sees Baela as her eldest true grandchild and the rightful heir to Driftmark. (I’ve also seen fanon in some fics that Daemon and Rhaenyra send Baela as a conciliatory gesture after they elope.) Here, Jace is Rhaenys’s eldest grandchild AND slated for the Iron Throne (and Rhaenys’s secret favorite), so Rhaenys would prefer to take Jace and ensure that a future queen of her blood is properly trained and educated.

Confession: in a VERY early draft of this fic, Baela and Rhaena had much smaller roles. I was going to send them both to Driftmark so I could focus on Daemon getting to know Rhaenyra’s daughters. But I’m very happy I went with the blended family aspect in the end.

Lucera has dyslexia, AKA “an affliction of letters.” I enjoy the trope in a lot of Aemond/OC fics that they bond over a shared love of reading, but I wanted to do a twist. Luce likes stories and learning, but she has trouble working through the books on her own, which means Aemond reads aloud to her a lot. 🥰 Now that she’s at Dragonstone though, she has no Aemond to read aloud to her (and she’s mad at him anyway).

I reallyyyyy wanted to write a scene where Luce explains her “marriage = whoring” argument to Alicent, but it never fit into this fic. Maybe one day. But I think Luce has this thought (marriage is about money and copulating) in the back of her mind when she deals with all her suitors later.

I was fascinated by the range of commenters’ reactions to Daemon’s argument about not letting the girls marry the Targtowers. Some people 100% agreed with him and others thought Daemon was being stupid. Which is the kind to reaction I was hoping to get, so yay! I wrote this fic with the intention of conveying that Daemon THINKS he’s right about a lot of things, but he’s not omniscient so take it with a grain of salt.

I wanted the boys’ handwriting and writing styles to reflect their personalities. Aegon is messy and unstructured, and he doesn’t always follow proper grammar/syntax rules. Aemond keeps up appearances and is finicky about grammar/syntax but adjusts his script for Luce. Daeron is still very young but tries to imitate the neatness he sees in his primers.

The gift that Aegon mentions Luce is helping with is supposed to be a song he writes for Jace. (Much more wholesome than the wedding song lol.) I was going to include it in this chapter but it seemed forced so I tabled it. He’s also pretty talented at drawing. I like the idea of Aegon being an artist/romantic at heart, but those aren’t traits appreciated in a potential king so Otto (and maybe Alicent) tries to quash those traits.

[blairamok]

Hello Blair!

I am so sorry about you in ER. Hope you will be okay soon!

I have a difficult question to ask and though I would be so happy to have your advice, please feel free to ignore it. (Plus, I am French, so I hope I'll be understandable, so sorry by advance)

Your "On Thin Ice" content is wonderful, I adore everything about it - the fic, the artworks, the "behind-the-scenes" details, everything. But it seems like you need a lot of time for writing the next chapters (and you are so right, please take your time!). And sometimes it seems like writing is difficult for you. So, do you have some advices about how to resolving it?

Let me just explain why I am asking this: I am French and I started to write fanfictions 20 years ago, when I was 15. It was great, it was easy most of the time, and sharing my stories was freeing me. Never have to learn how to write, it was just here, and it worked, people were enjoying my stories a lot and so do I. Music works a lot with me, it helps me, it unleashes my brain and for each story I had written, I can tell there is one or several musics behind it (that's why I am asking you, because you speak about music in your story and I love it)

I have some chronic pain issues, and it will last until the end of my days - it's ok, I am ok with it most of the time. But in 2020, I had a burn out at work and clinic depression. Met several doctors, tried a lot of meds. I was a mess. Didn't write during 3 years, I just couldn't, as if my brain was broken.

Now I feel a little bit better. I can write, but it feels like the spark is gone. Music still helps a lot, but writing is so hard. When I succeed in writing, I am unpleased with what I wrote. Everything seems so bad, or so OOC, or it's too slow, or "readers won't be interested", or "It's useless, what's the point?"

Sometimes I feel lost, I'm scared, it feels like I'll never be the same again. My friends told me it's ok, told me I just grown up and now I am stricter about my stories and it is not a bad thing. People here and there told me to stop to try to write, and to heal first.

I love to write, I love to tell stories. I am just tired to wait to heal, because doctors told me that maybe I'll never be completly healed. So?

Can I ask your advices about it? How will you manage?

Thanks a lot just for reading this. I wish you a lot of courage and a better health.

And thank you so much for shearing "On Thin Ice" and keep us dreaming about our dear ineffable husbands.

Elenthya

first of all, thank you so so much for your kind words and i am so sorry for waiting awhile to answer this (i'm not in the ER anymore!) but i wanted to properly sit down and dedicate all of my brain power to answering because a lot of what you said here resonated with me

yes, writing is very difficult for me. sometimes i just find it very hard to convey what i want to get across, other times it's my own insecurities keeping me at bay. i get stuck in this feeling of being too scared to write because i feel like i'm bad at it and i don't like being bad at things. brains are weird. i don't really have any way of getting over this other than forcing myself to actually sit down and write, and other times i will get a sudden jolt of inspiration (like for particular scenes). i don't understand it! maybe i just don't like connecting the dots lol

and YES, i love music! i think the reason why a figure skating AU resonates with me so well is because music is a sole component of the sport, and i work really well with music in the same way! a lot of my art is inspired by songs or specific lyrics, not every piece, but there is a good chance i had something in mind for certain things. music is a huge part of my AU so i've put a lot of thought in choosing the musical compositions for their programs that are relevant to the current story i'm writing. and i'm really eager to share that at some point

as someone also dealing with chronic pain, i'm really sorry you're going through it as well. i also had a very very low point, i want to say 2018ish. i have a cervical nerve injury that kept me from drawing for almost a year. there was a long time where i also felt lost and scared, as if things would never be the same. and for me, things are still not the same. i have had to learn how to live with a chronic injury, and working around it is one of the most frustrating things i deal with. i had to learn to be kinder to myself, take things slow, listen to my body, and try not to give myself a hard time when i couldn't do things when i wanted to. it's easier said than done because i still have days where i'm just so frustrated with myself. i am at the whims of my body, i can't do things how i did them before and that sucks because that makes finding the balance between the needs of my body and the needs of my mind pretty tricky. and learning how to live with that took a lot of time, sifting through a lot of anger and bitter feelings, at myself and the unfairness of it all. i know waiting around to heal is torturous. my injury will never heal so waiting is out of the question for me

but!! that's another reason i started writing my AU, because i channel all of that frustration into my version of crowley in that story, who doesn't know who he would be without the thing he's done his whole life, who equates his self worth to that thing, who struggles with an injury and being kind to himself. this is one of the many ways i manage, i think

you say that when you do manage to write something, you feel that it isn't good, or there's something wrong with it—i feel this too, and i know the difference between that and what it feels like to LOVE what you're writing, that spark you're looking for. i have a very hard time getting to that point, and i think what helps me here is to just keep spitting stuff out. it's like when i draw, i make a ton a very bad sketches that will never see the light of day, so i also have a ton of drabbles that will also likely never see the light of day, but nine times out of ten something has come from it. for art, sometimes i redo the same thing, sometimes a whole sketch, three or four times to get to a point where i like it, for writing i do the same thing with sentences, paragraphs. it's SO hard and discouraging to look at the bad stuff you make sometimes but the important thing is (if you are able) to keep going, keep trying, but don't push yourself. you do have limits, just don't give up. personally, i know if i just sit down and do the thing then i will at least get something done. progress is progress, after all

i do hope something in this huge chunk of text was useful to you, i'm not as eloquent as i'd like to be on stuff like this, but thank you for sending this ask and i sincerely hope you find your spark again (i have faith that you will) and soon 🤍

[planetkiimchi]

a love letter to your ex | x.dj

featuring: xiao dejun x gn!reader (but y/n tries to wear a skirt so), huang guangheng (hendery) ft. huang renjun, johnny suh

warnings: mentions of food, glass shards, mentions of blood, xiaojun is an idiot, so so much angst. i didn’t realise i was this evil? but anyway hope it’s good angst &lt;3

word count: 5.6k

summary — dealing with a breakup is hard. but you thought that it would be because you hated the other person, not because you still loved them! no one told you that. xiao dejun, in particular, seems especially determined to make things harder for you, and maybe, just maybe, you want to go running back to him.

dedication: @loves-theory hey nada! i hope you enjoy this one, and it doesn't let you down after the sneak peek you got. it's kinda crazy how this one came out less fluffy than i thought it would, but i hope it's okay.

GETTING OVER PEOPLE IS HARD. You would know. Yes, you and Xiaojun had broken up on good terms, knowing full well that you couldn’t put up with his late-night gaming and his habit of just kissing you instead of making up properly. In turn, he found you too organised (and particular) for him to deal with and hated your club-going habits.

So yes. You realised you just couldn’t live with each other. But that didn’t mean you didn’t love him anymore, and you definitely still liked him.

You see, it’s very difficult to undo months of loving habits and strange peculiarities. Every time you tied your hair, you were reminded of his fingers running through your hair and getting tangled in it, while you laughed it off because you loved him. Even if you were just a little bit annoyed.

You signed your texts with an “xx y/n” because that’s how Xiaojun did it. He always started his texts with “dearest y/n”, and signed off with “your favourite man”. Which was true, at least until you broke up.

With all this in mind, it was very difficult to be “just friends” with Xiao Dejun, despite your wholehearted promises that you would try your best to do so. Because all he had to do was run his hands through his hair, and you found yourself falling into the rabbit hole of no return.

Again.

These were the thoughts running through your mind as you half-heartedly listened to your friends, Shin Hyewon and Kim Aeri, discuss their own love troubles. Only theirs were much more amusing to listen to, because Aeri’s boyfriend, Renjun, was a literal angel. Her love troubles went something like, “He bought me my favourite perfume for Valentine’s Day, but I can’t get him anything for White Day because I’m broke and I feel so bad. Do you think he thinks I’m a gold digger because I never get him anything?”

(You don’t think Renjun would ever think that of her. Renjun is the most understanding person you’ve met, and he doesn’t look down on anyone. Out of all the trashy men in the universe, Renjun is definitely the most likely to be empathetic to Aeri’s financial debt, even if he didn’t and could never relate. That was just the kind of man that he was.)

You didn’t have to say that aloud, because Hyewon was ready to be the voice of reason. In the least patronising tone possible, she managed to convey your thoughts exactly without any snarky remarks that reminded Aeri how lucky she was to have a boyfriend like Renjun. Which was three entire snarky remarks less than you could have managed.

Hyewon’s troubles, on the other hand, often went unsaid. Hyewon hated to make things about her, even when she was obviously in need of support. You and Aeri had realised that if Hyewon needed help, you would have to provide it subtly, so as not to hurt her pride.

Hyewon was a strong, independent woman (who sometimes needed her man). But Johnny was a busy person, and sometimes he got caught up in his work, prioritising “his boys” over his girlfriend. Hyewon was no stranger to being stood up by Johnny, and there had been many a time that you and Aeri had had to show up in a fancy restaurant to order one meal to share to save your wallets. There were never any questions asked, but it went without saying that Hyewon’s relationship wasn’t the best.

The real reason she stuck with him was that Johnny had been the perfect picture of a significant other for three years, and after five years of dating, Hyewon just didn’t want to give that up. For a while, you even thought that Johnny might be intending to propose.

You supposed, that with all the similarities in yours and Hyewon’s relationship, you should have guessed that it would end up similarly. Not wanting a loveless, unmaintainable relationship, you had broken up with Xiaojun on good terms. It was a mutual breakup. It was supposed to be a stepping stone in the journey of your life. It was not supposed to be something to haunt you for the rest of your holiday.

Perhaps deciding to work at an amusement park was not a good idea, you fretted. You, Aeri and Hyewon had decided to do it ever since you were in highschool, to get a taste of having a job that was fun and exciting before you lost the chance to. At the time of decision-making, it had seemed like the perfect way to get a discount to theme-park tickets for a date with Xiaojun.

Now, it felt like a painful reminder of how many of your classmates, friends, and Xiaojun’s friends frequented amusement parks during the school holidays. Friends who were almost 100% sure to pity you for your breakup. (Friends who didn’t understand the concept of a breakup without cheating or shouting or crying or arguments involved.)

“Riri? Is it okay if I wear this to work?” You twirled around in the mirror, calling out through the open door.

“It doesn’t matter anyway, they’ll give us standard jackets to put on and—” Aeri’s voice, which had been growing louder as she came closer, stopped abruptly. “Y/n, I know your fashion taste leans towards the cutesy side, but I don’t think they’ll allow you to wear a plaid skirt to work. In winter. In the outdoor amusement park.”

You smile sheepishly. Aeri never criticised your fashion taste before, mostly because you took after her for the most part. However, that meant that you didn’t have a perspective on what to wear to different occasions, because your wardrobe consisted of the same style of clothes in different colours and patterns.

Hyewon grinned as she came in, taking your outfit in. “Is this how you plan to make Xiaojun jealous? Because it’s definitely going to work.”

You scowled at her. Was there no way to put the unprofessionalism of your clothing choice nicely? Hyewon was dressed practically in a black suit with a blazer, and she looked like she would blend in easily in an office situation. Clearly, you needed to borrow from her repertoire of comfortable yet presentable clothes.

Hyewon tossed you a matching set of black trousers and a white blouse, pulling Aeri out and closing the door as they left you to get changed.

“Oh and by the way, you have ten minutes to eat breakfast, or we’ll be late.” Way to make an exit, Shin.

IT WAS BITTERLY, FREEZING COLD. You had left your chapstick at home, and you were sorely regretting it. Despite the morning rush, your chapstick was an essential item and you never should have left home without it. You wrap the standard coat, laced in an ugly orange colour to differentiate the staff from the park visitors, tighter around your body as you try not to visibly hop from foot to foot. That’s a surefire way to get fired before even working for a day there.

Luckily, you were not working at the entrance, scanning people’s tickets as they passed through the barrier. That would mean having to look at your classmates individually and watch the flash of recognition pass over their face and the excitement in their eyes turn into pity. Why was it always pity?

Instead, you were out in the cold, limbs freezing to death. “Move along,” you called out, clicking the metal clicker once for each person passing through. One, two, three, four…

“Y/n?” Oh crap who is it please don’t be Yangyang or Haechan or one of the nosy ones…

Oh. It’s even worse, you realised as your heart sank. It was Hendery, the school prince. Probably prettier than yourself and master of making everyone’s heart swoon with his jet-black hair, which fell over his face and the back of his neck in waves. He was accompanied by no other than his best friend, Xiao Dejun.

You couldn’t help but feel the sting of, not jealousy, per se, but something close to betrayal and closer still to missing and longing. You used to be Xiaojun’s best friend, his confidante, his other half. Yet, it had taken no longer than the span of a week for you to lose your title and fall to the ranks of a, if not real then at least a forced, stranger.

You avoided his eyes and tried to remain in working mode. Because if he just bit his lip or turned his head to show off his perfect, sharp jawline, you probably wouldn’t be able to focus. In fact, you might just collapse right where you were, and your job would go right down the drain.

You chose instead to focus on Hendery, holding out one hand to stop them from progressing further in the queue. “Please wait here, sir.”

“Your lips are really dry. Would you like to borrow my chapstick?” You looked down at Hendery’s hands as he offered you his chapstick. Actually, you would, you decided. Your lips were cracked and you still had the rest of the day to endure. It wasn’t going to get any better, so you would take any help that was thrown your way.

You applied it quickly and gratefully before returning it to Hendery and waving the next batch of park visitors into the ride. Obviously, you realised the health concerns, but you weren’t crossing any boundaries socially. Over your time spent as Xiaojun’s significant other, you had grown close to Hendery, enough so that you could borrow items of his without feeling awkward or strange. As you waved them through, you didn’t miss the expression of jealousy that flashed over Xiaojun’s face, feeling a small sense of triumph at getting him to feel the way that you had.

LATE EVENING, SNOW FELL in dribs and drabs. It was still only the beginning of winter, so there was no heavy snow and no flurry of white, chilly wind. However, it was dark outside and freezing, and your blood felt frozen. You could swear your bones were stiff from the cold.

Still, it was a lovely evening, and the coat was comfortable enough. There was only one last batch of people going on the ride before the theme park closed, and just as you let them in with a smile, Xiaojun passed by.

You hadn’t been able to pay attention to him earlier, but his cheeks were red from the low temperature, and his eyes were as starry as the night sky. His smile was exactly the same as you remembered, gentle and encouraging.

“Are you leaving yet?” He asked.

“No.” Of course, as a staff member you would have to close up the ride before you could leave. It wouldn’t take long, but you didn’t want to be left alone with Xiaojun for any longer than a few seconds. More than that, and you couldn’t—and didn’t want to be—responsible for what would happen.

Hendery came up to the both of you, panting slightly. He had clearly been running, which gave rise to the question, had Xiaojun ran to find you? Why was he still at the park so late?

As the questions ran through your mind, Xiaojun said, “I’ll wait for you outside the entrance,” leaving before you could protest. Even if he had, what would you have said to him? You knew that once his mind was set, he wouldn’t change it no matter how hard you tried to persuade him.

You were saved by your coworker calling your name, and you went inside the heated area (oh, blissful warmth) and tried not to stress too much about it.

The sound of Hendery asking Xiaojun, “What are you doing, man? They clearly don’t want to talk to you.” didn’t go unheard by you, but by then they were too far away for you to be sure, and you had trouble discerning Xiaojun’s response.

The ambiguity of the sentence hung in your mind, fogging your senses. You mindlessly swept the snow off the seats and wiped them down, your body going through the motions, mimicking your coworker’s without a second thought.

However, as you picked up the lost and found items, your mind was on Hendery’s words. He was right, Xiaojun was (weirdly) a sore subject for you, and you didn’t really want to talk to him more than you had to. It went without saying that what Xiaojun was doing probably went further than what most friends did, and hovered in the grey area between platonic and romantic. Obviously, you still loved Xiaojun. You understood that he cared for you, but if he didn’t stop that you were going to fall for him all over again.

True to his word, Xiaojun was waiting outside the theme park for you, with Hendery idling beside him. Hendery’s arms were crossed over his chest, tapping his foot impatiently when you arrived. He shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, I tried to stop him. What more can I do?

But Xiaojun was too focused on you to realise the silent conversation you two were having. He looked like he was having trouble restraining himself from rushing over to envelope you in a hug. He jiggled his knee nervously as you went over hesitantly.

Aeri and Hyewon waited beside you, huddled together in the cold, but you were too curious to be bothered by such a superficial thing.

“What do you want?” Hyewon asked for you, seeing how slow you were to speak.

“P-please hurry so w-we can go home,” Aeri chimed in, teeth chattering.

“Just wanted to make sure you were okay,” Xiaojun mumbled. Noticing how red your ears were, he removed his scarf and wrapped it around you, almost as familiar as when he’d done it before you had broken up.

“I’ll meet you at the café down the street when school starts again?”

“I- Alright,” you sighed. Stupid feelings and the way you always fell for him.

“STUDY HANGOUT’,” AERI SAID mockingly, making bunny ears as she did so. “Yeah, right. It’s obviously a café date.”

“Ugh!” You threw your hands up in the air in defeat, collapsing in a heap on the bed. Xiaojun had taken you to that café so many times before for dates, and now that you two were “just friends”, he thought it would be okay to reuse the same idea? That wasn’t going to work!

Your friends weren’t oblivious, they knew Xiaojun still liked you, but you really thought you had made it clear that now that you were broken up, you would have to draw a line somewhere.

“I need to bring a friend,” you decided. “Someone who can make the boundaries clear and prevent us from doing stupid things— Not you, Hyewon. That’s too obvious. Maybe… Ten?”

Hyewon shook her head. “He’s too transparent, and he’ll either be absorbed in something else or completely forget that he’s the chaperone and not a wingman.”

“Kun?”

Aeri quickly shot off a text, and the ‘ding’ sound chimed almost immediately after. “He’s busy.”

“That leaves… No.” You stopped in your tracks. You couldn’t! That would be too awkward for all three of you. Plus, you inviting Xiaojun’s friend over? Wouldn’t that be against protocol?

Hyewon grinned. “Yes.”

“No!” You leapt up from the bed, trying to leave the room, but Hyewon blocked the way.

“Think about it. It’s perfect: Xiaojun would feel too awkward with his best friend around to hit on you, you and Hendery know each other well, and Hendery definitely agrees that Xiaojun shouldn’t go back to you. He’ll definitely cooperate the best among all of them. Unless you think Yangyang could do a better job?”

“There’s always Winwin,” you offered meekly.

Hyewon scoffed. “Please! As if he could look up from his games. Or if Kun successfully gets him to change this year, then he won’t be able to leave the library. They’ll be studying together.”

You sighed defeatedly. There was no use in arguing, once Hyewon had won the argument, she would definitely not budge. Aeri didn’t want to go against her, either, so you were forced to ask Hendery to chaperone you.

“Okay,” you announce. “He said yes.”

Hyewon nods approvingly.

YOU WERE THE SECOND TO REACH, and when you made a move to sit down, Hendery waved you over. You sat down opposite him, watching his concerned eyes but not giving any kind of answer.

The silence settled like sediments at the bottom of a flask of unstirred tea, uncomfortable and distinct from the smooth conversations you were used to, but nothing that would be harmful to your relationship.

Seconds passed, stretching like minutes. You tried your best not to fidget, avoiding Hendery’s eyes before his concern could overwhelm you. The anxiety and sweaty hands were enough to deal with.

“So what’s going on with you and Xiaojun?”

Speaking of the devil… Before you could reply, Xiaojun saved you from the awkward situation. He came up to you two, confused but not surprised at seeing his best friend and ex at the same table. His hands were behind his back, clearly hiding something.

“Am I interrupting?” You shook your head, and Hendery moved over for Xiaojun to sit.

With a shy smile, Xiaojun presented you with a small bouquet of flowers. The bouquet was a deep shade of red, with red chrysanthemums, carnations, and camellias, with blue salvias hidden in the center. You didn’t know how to tell him what the flowers really meant, having been interested in the language of flower bouquets for a time before.

“From a friend,” Xiaojun said quickly. “Just- just a friendly bouquet. For our friendship.”

How many times did he need to say it to convince himself? Because you knew better than anyone that Xiaojun did not give thoughtless gifts.

Red chrysanthemums, I love you. Red carnations, my heart aches. Red camellia, you’re a flame in my heart. Blue salvia, think of me.

Xiaojun knew what he was doing. You could see him asking the florist what best to give, trying to describe his message in terms that fit the flowers. You could see him watching attentively as the florist arranged the flowers delicately, carefully carrying it from the florist’s to the café.

And it was your anniversary. White day. You should be giving him flowers, if you were together. That was traditional, and you adored tradition. You always wrote a note or a card when you gave him gifts.

“Happy White Day!” You grinned, holding out the chocolate controller. You had specially ordered it for your one year anniversary, and were so proud of it.

“Happy White Day,” he replied softly, gazing at the controller with loving eyes. Perhaps, that was the same gaze he used to look at you. You tilted your head as if to say, Well? as you eagerly awaited his response.

“It’s beautiful.”

“It’s beautiful,” you told him. Then, right as he sighed in relief, “But not from a friend to a friend.”

Your words were whispered, but perhaps still too harsh. You took care to keep your voice low and not attract attention, but it didn’t ease the pain.

“Really, Jun? I love you, my heart aches, you’re a flame in my heart? Think of me? You can’t expect me to believe you randomly picked a bouquet. I know you too well for that. I don’t know what you mean by it, maybe you didn’t want me to know outright, but I do. And we can’t keep doing this anymore. I really can’t live like this, Dejun. You can’t keep chasing after me and expect me to be okay.”

“Why would you have to?” He asked, getting heated. Hendery put a hand on him, ready to calm him down—wrestle him back into sitting if needed—but he immediately lowered his volume.

“Because. We broke up, Dejun.” You stood up as you said this. You made to leave, and Xiaojun stopped you with a hand that was clearly clutching something. You pushed him away, maybe a bit too hard, because whatever was in his hand clattered to the ground. You noticed that the clear shards resemble glass, a choked gasp of shock stuck in your throat.

You stumbled back, too stunned to notice that you accidentally stepped on what’s left of his gift. You were so busy trying to get away that you didn’t see what happened next.

XIAOJUN FELL TO THE GROUND on his knees. tears streaming from his eyes. Quiet sobs wracked his body as his chest heaved, practically breaking down. He picked up as much of the glass as he could, the crystal shards glinting cruelly back at him. He sobbed as he tried (and failed) to put his broken heart back together, except it felt like it was falling apart exactly the way the shards of his gift did in his hands.

Hendery had seen enough.

“Get up,” he told Xiaojun. He handed him a stack of napkins, which Xiaojun used to wrap the shards in, stuffing it into his pocket. “Don’t touch anything, I don’t want you getting splinters and needing to go to the accident and emergency unit.”

Xiaojun's hands slid into his pockets, and Hendery immediately pulled them out. "You have glass on your hands. Don't be an idiot, you're already doing enough to hurt yourself."

Hand still on Xiaojun's wrist, he dragged him back to the bus stop, mumbling under his breath, "I just don't get why."

Xiaojun’s mind went blank as Hendery brought him over to his house, picking the splinters from his palms with a tweezer, muttering under his breath. Hendery’s parents weren’t home, or they would have asked Xiaojun to sit down for a cup of tea and fussed over his injuries like he hadn’t fractured his leg playing football before.

Luckily, Xiaojun was mostly fine. The blood was minimal, and there weren’t any deep gashes or cuts. The glass in his pocket dug against his hip bone, but the discomfort was at least familiar, and better than the emptiness he would feel for weeks without you.

Hendery slammed bandages and antiseptic on the counter, watching Xiaojun to make sure he cleaned up his wounds properly. Xiaojun tugged the bandages tightly around his palm, mouth pressed tightly together unhappily.

“You can’t keep doing this to yourself, you complete fool. You have to let them go. Don’t talk to them until you can do it without crying. I know, breakups hurt, but you agreed. Both of you are mature enough to get through this, you hear me?” Hendery reverted to Cantonese to say this to Xiaojun, sighing exasperatedly.

Xiaojun didn’t know if he could promise that. He didn’t know if he could live with a gaping hole in his heart, with the lack of interaction and “love you”s, cuddling under sheets with you.

He missed you so, so much, every bit of you. From the tilt of your head to the tips of your hair that curled when the air got too humid, the baby hair that fell in your face. He loved to watch you shake your head in annoyance, the hair curling around your ear in familiarity. The glint of your eyes when you were up to something, the way they sparkled when you held back tears, how they disappeared when you smiled.

He missed pressing kisses into the curve of your dimple-less smile, brushing over your cheeks and reminding you how stunning you were even when you were insecure of your skin. Loved the way your neck fit just right against him when you hugged him, the crook of your neck perfect for falling asleep in.

He missed your hands. Missed how icy cold they were in air-conditioned rooms, the gentle warmth coming off of them after gym class. Missed holding hands with you, fingers interlaced in a comfortable, unchanging pattern.

He wanted you back, wanted to carry you back into his life and welcome you to the home as if you’d never left. He wanted to have a conversation with you and not have it end in awkward silence, wanted to go back in time and change everything and what did he do wrong?

Could he have done something to make you cry when he gave you flowers, made you despise him to the point where you consciously avoided him? He couldn’t remember, but sometimes you bottled up your feelings and exploded at the seemingly smallest things. It took time to unpack your feelings and talk about it, after you’d avoided confrontation for so long.

He wanted you back, and he knew that to do that he had to apologise first.

EXCEPT THAT HE DIDN’T REALLY know how to. Not when Hyewon glared at him as soon as he got within two meters of you. Aeri’s glare was even scarier, it killed his courage immediately.

He had always seen Aeri as demure, pretty but innocent, and completely harmless. He hadn’t seen her defend somebody with her eyes, baring her teeth without opening her mouth in the slightest.

Her face fell so quickly when she saw him, scaring him away immediately. He couldn’t get near you, and as days went by, he started to question if it really was worth it.

He probably would have left you to simmer in your feelings if he hadn’t decided to play sad songs at home and cry in his room, which led to him flipping through old cards that he had received from you, leading to the (not-so-)brilliant idea to send you a love letter.

From a secret admirer, obviously, because if he put his own name, you would probably throw the entire envelope away before you read a word.

He sat by his desk for a good hour and a half, writing with a pencil and furiously erasing it when it sounded even the least bit like himself. Soon, his table was filled with eraser dust and the paper was marked with indents, and he finally settled on,

dearest y/n,

i think i like you. i’ve watched you for a while, and i want you to know you’re the most attractive person i’ve ever seen. meet me at the library, the middle row if you’d like to give me a chance? please?

- your secret admirer xx

The last line was a bit risky, since he knew you would recognise the way he signed off his texts, but it was still just ambiguous enough that any cheesy person could have written it.

He wasn’t good at changing his handwriting, but his hands were so sore from gripping the pencil tightly that he could rest assured you wouldn’t recognise it at all. The library’s inconspicuous, right? She’ll never suspect it’s me. I hope we’re far enough that Winwin and Kun don’t turn around to see us.

It haunted him throughout the night, the envelope sitting atop his table like a doll, watching him sleep and entering his dreams.

“A LOVE LETTER?”

You looked at it in surprise. It was plain, with the only indication of it being from a secret admirer the heart-shaped sticker used to seal it loosely. The cream paper felt thin, and was nothing extravagant. You were glad, at least it wasn’t blaringly obvious to anyone who passed by.

Hearing your words, Aeri was by your side in a flash. Renjun came over, eyes examining the envelope without a word.

“You got a love letter?” He asked. You frowned. Yes, you were surprised too, but why did he have to say it like he was shocked? Couldn’t you get love letters? After all, you were single now.

“I’m just saying,” Renjun said with a good-natured shrug. “I’ve seen Aeri get plenty of love letters even though we’re dating, but you’ve never gotten one before.”

“Well, times change.” You pried open the letter curiously, and scanned the contents quickly, trying not to raise your eyebrows too much.

Aeri snatched it from your hands, confused when you didn’t put up any resistance, frowning like you. Renjun peeked over her shoulder, nosily reading it as well.

“Wonder who it’s from,” Hyewon said suddenly. Your heart leapt in your chest, but you nodded and jerked your chin, asking her to read it as well to give her opinion.

“The handwriting looks familiar,” you muse, “but I can’t really put my finger on who it belongs to. Anyway, I’ll probably go, but just to reject them politely. I’m still… I think I’m still caught up in how Xiaojun makes me feel. I’m not really ready to move on yet, so I’ll probably think of some way to say that nicely.”

You have to give Renjun credit for not grimacing at what you’re saying, because usually if you talk too much about deep things, men tend to grow bored or cringe in embarrassment. Like you said, Renjun’s perfect and you hope Aeri treasures him.

You banish all thoughts of the letter to the back of your mind, that’s a problem for future you.

YOU’RE REHEARSING YOUR REJECTION SPEECH as you trudge towards the library, not dragging your feet but not particularly eager, either. 

It’ll go something like: Sorry, I’m not interested. I understand that I’m available now that Xiaojun and I have broken up, but I don’t want you to be a rebound. (If it’s a sweet person that you know, you might tell them that they don’t deserve that.) I’m not ready for a relationship, and I won’t be able to commit to one in the near future. Please, leave me alone.

You’re also contemplating if it isn’t someone nice, and whether you’ll have to run if they get violent or if it’ll be fine since you’re in the library. What would the librarian be able to do, anyway?

The library seat (in the middle row) that the mysterious person had specified for the meeting point was empty, but you sat down anyway. You anxiously tapped your fingers against the table, drumming impatiently as you waited for said person to arrive.

You gave your surroundings a quick look, spotting Kun, Xiaojun’s friend, who smiled at you and waved. Sitting opposite him, clearly struggling, was Winwin, who looked up and tipped his chin in acknowledgement before biting his lip and going back to his work.

You were just about to get up and search for the person elsewhere, when somebody walked up to you, and Xiaojun took a seat opposite you.

your secret admirer, xx. dearest y/n. It struck you like a punch to your gut. It was an innocuous enough way to start a love letter and to end one, but it also screamed Xiaojun, after all that time he’d sent his texts to you, you couldn’t believe you hadn’t seen his fingerprints plastered all over it. Quite literally so, because he had probably handwritten it. That was why the handwriting looked so familiar!

You got up, ready to bolt, but his hand grabbed your wrist before you could go anywhere. “Please.”

It was soft, filled with so much desperation and pleading that your past self would not have been able to endure. You would have caved immediately, listening to every word of his and hanging on to his apology. You could never turn him down anyway.

But you’d had enough. You were sick and tired of walking this tightrope, dancing between your tears and his. It always felt like with Xiaojun, you were going head over heels, tumbling, unconsciously turning over and over again. Now, the slope was getting steeper, and you were falling so quickly both you and Xiaojun were going to get hurt.

“I’m not your toy, Xiao Dejun. I’ve had enough with you. Please, leave me alone. I don’t want to do this,” you whisper hoarsely.

“Before you go- at least tell me something. Just- just this one question.”

He hesitated for just a second, but you caught it. “Was I a bad person to you? I hope I wasn’t. But I guess I was.”

“I didn’t want to- I didn’t think I was good enough of a person. I felt like I didn't do enough to deserve you and I don't want you to end up the way hyewon did, with a person she loved but couldn’t treat her right.”

The old Xiaojun probably would have left the moment tears threatened to drop from your eyes in a public place, in the school library nonetheless, where many people knew him and you were supposed to maintain silence.

As flustered as he was, he still refused to leave you like that, fumbling through his pockets for something to help. Fortunately, he found a packet of tissue in his pocket and he offered it to you, relieved.

“Xiaojun, can you not do that?” You sniffled, pressing the tissue to your eyes and your leaky nose.

“Do what?” The gall! The audacity to sit there and look handsome and clueless and pretend like he didn’t know he was driving you mad. That was the reason that you couldn’t stand just being friends with him! Didn’t he get-

“That,” you said, gesturing to him vaguely. “The thing you do with your hair. And biting your lip. And turning your head so I’m forced to see that perfect, sharp jawline. And really just being in my presence.”

“Lovely to know I’m ruining your day,” he replied. He dropped his hand to his side and fished in his pocket for something, pulling out a clip and pinning his hair back so his fringe stopped flopping in his face.

You grinned half-heartedly at his response, happy with the dynamic you knew best.

“So, about that letter…”

“Don’t push your luck. We’ll… We could try,” you say. Before he can rejoice, you add, “No promises.”

“Trying’s good enough for me.”