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#I wrote my fic the way I did for a reason lol
gggoldfinch · 7 months
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Aw it's too bad that it made you more put off by Munch. It was a pretty weird moment seeing all those anons come in. Don't stop loving him though. Munch is a great character and you wrote him beautifully. Even if you don't ever write for him again, I hope those comments didn't make you dislike him
Oh no I def still love his character dgmw!!!! I’m not put off by him, just some minor aspects of the fandom. He’s still my darling angel. I just need to separate fanon from canon & my personal perception. I’ll put a more longwinded response under the cut:
In my experience after a decade+ in fandom spaces, sometimes fanon can muddy the waters of fandom portrayal and water-down canon, and with an especially nuanced & subtextual & canon-heavy character like him, I personally don’t really wanna be influenced by other people’s perceptions and opinions, you know? I personally perceive his depiction to be a very nuanced and intellectual one, and enjoy engaging with his character in such a way, rather than just like… smut fodder…
Ofc people have a right to do whatever they want with any character, but in this instance, on my blog, I realized I didn’t want to veer too far off from what I’ve established in my head to be his characterization. Plus, like I said in the tags of that prev post, I’m not a request blog, and also I feel uncomfortable with posting nsfw things if they’re not from my own brain/ if I find them to be too ooc/ if they aren’t to my taste. I had to backtrack a lot and kinda feel weird about it still.
And also I’ve just genuinely never been so bombarded with asks like that and I was just very overwhelmed by all the facets of the situation tbh. No hate obv,,, this just… isn’t the blog for that.
So yeah. That was what that lil breakdown was about the other day lol. But rest assured I still love the big weirdo!
And also thank you for your kind words ❤️
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melverie · 5 months
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Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh today I've been constantly experiencing the urge to un-private today-in-the-devildom & start writing for it again
#i'm gonna ramble in the tags but#i've been talking with starr (if you're reading this--hi starr!! <3) about the blog today and sharing some of the entries#and it just made me miss it so much#+ the conversation actually made me realize some other reasons why i didn't enjoy the blog in general anymore#like i genuinely love the blog and i genuinely loved writing for it & that conversation reminded me of that#but also there were so many reasons that ultimately pushed me to more or less abandon the blog & then later private it too#so i'm kind of at a loss here#tbh i think i'm mostly just scared to pick the blog up again only for it to end exactly like last time i picked it back up#i've actually always wanted for the blog to be a source of inspiration y'know?#like the things mentioned in the entries are kinda just small ideas right#i was hoping that people would read these & feel inspired to write or draw something of their own based on my entries#that was actually what made me start the blog in the first place. the hope that i could inspire others that way#aaahhhhhh.... maybe it's on me since i could have more openly communicated that idea......#i did get to meet one wonderful person who wrote a few fics based on my entries tho!! (hi ali <3)#but yeah..there's that#also the way engagement just dropped significantly after a while#like i know i was gone for a good while & that a lot of people left the fandom and all that#but still getting maybe one reblog if i'm lucky really feels like a punch to the gut#ESPECIALLY considering that i was close to 900 followers on there#do you guys know that feeling when you proudly show someone you care about something you did only to get a disinterested answer?#yeah...#that's essentially how it feels like to me#and well as you might know the feeling of “why should i keep writing if apparently no one cares” eventually won... haha.....#but aaaahhhhh i'm still clinging onto the hope & what ifs here#that conversation with starr really just made me forget about everything that frustrated me about the blog & left me with this#longing feeling to start again lol#hey if you've made it this far into the tags let me just ask--would you care if i picked the blog back up?#would you also *show* that you care?#i'm actually quite curious (you could almost call me george lol)#anyway maybe we'll see each other on today-in-the-devildom again in the future.. who knows
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micamicster · 1 year
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Entertaining myself by fucking around putting all my fics into that Penguin Classics cover generator today! Link to my ao3 <3
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elisedonut · 7 months
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sudden itch to write a rare pair fic thats not Percy related
but like
the last time I did that it ended up becoming my top fic and lead to me deciding that you know... actually I hate that ship just out of spite so i'm not sure how good of an idea it is
maybe if i try like femslash or something super super rare with side characters or something
#using tumblr as a diary again#like is it healthy to feel that way?#no it's probably not but knowing that hasn't made the feeling go away in the months sense i posted it lol#like multiple people have asked for more for it but I'm ngl I'm likely never touching that ship again much less the fic itself#like if i even did decide to it would probably just be Percy and Viktor meeting#the whole reason it even became the ship it did was because I couldn't figure out how to write Viktor#But i don't think that's what people mean when they say they want more of it but maybe id be less annoyed if I did add a Percy/Viktor chapt#I feel like this is what those people mean when they talk about posting art you put your all into vs a doodle#because while i spent a hell of a long time procrastinating writing it i was never like actually happy with it#I just kinda wrote and posted it because I was running out of time and wanted to be done with it#which I think is part of why I find it annoying that it has like double the kudo's of everything else but it makes sense that it does#like it's a garbage fic yeah but its the main character and a fan favorite so ofc its going to get more attention#especially in comparison to the niche nonsense I make that I like more#will I ever delete it No I'm fire believer in not deleting things I've made because ive learned in my life i always regret it so#I just have to get better at writing so I can knock it off its horse >:)#or just keep adding extra chapters to Raspberry Muffin until it surpasses it lol#they only have a difference of 64 at the moment so its not impossible#I know im going to see this again in a few years and be so confused on why it bothered me so much i just know it lol
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archaeren · 3 months
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How I learned to write smarter, not harder
(aka, how to write when you're hella ADHD lol)
A reader commented on my current long fic asking how I write so well. I replied with an essay of my honestly pretty non-standard writing advice (that they probably didn't actually want lol) Now I'm gonna share it with you guys and hopefully there's a few of you out there who will benefit from my past mistakes and find some useful advice in here. XD Since I started doing this stuff, which are all pretty easy changes to absorb into your process if you want to try them, I now almost never get writer's block.
The text of the original reply is indented, and I've added some additional commentary to expand upon and clarify some of the concepts.
As for writing well, I usually attribute it to the fact that I spent roughly four years in my late teens/early 20s writing text roleplay with a friend for hours every single day. Aside from the constant practice that provided, having a live audience immediately reacting to everything I wrote made me think a lot about how to make as many sentences as possible have maximum impact so that I could get that kind of fun reaction. (Which is another reason why comments like yours are so valuable to fanfic writers! <3) The other factors that have improved my writing are thus: 1. Writing nonlinearly. I used to write a whole story in order, from the first sentence onward. If there was a part I was excited to write, I slogged through everything to get there, thinking that it would be my reward once I finished everything that led up to that. It never worked. XD It was miserable. By the time I got to the part I wanted to write, I had beaten the scene to death in my head imagining all the ways I could write it, and it a) no longer interested me and b) could not live up to my expectations because I couldn't remember all my ideas I'd had for writing it. The scene came out mediocre and so did everything leading up to it. Since then, I learned through working on VN writing (I co-own a game studio and we have some visual novels that I write for) that I don't have to write linearly. If I'm inspired to write a scene, I just write it immediately. It usually comes out pretty good even in a first draft! But then I also have it for if I get more ideas for that scene later, and I can just edit them in. The scenes come out MUCH stronger because of this. And you know what else I discovered? Those scenes I slogged through before weren't scenes I had no inspiration for, I just didn't have any inspiration for them in that moment! I can't tell you how many times there was a scene I had no interest in writing, and then a week later I'd get struck by the perfect inspiration for it! Those are scenes I would have done a very mediocre job on, and now they can be some of the most powerful scenes because I gave them time to marinate. Inspiration isn't always linear, so writing doesn't have to be either!
Some people are the type that joyfully write linearly. I have a friend like this--she picks up the characters and just continues playing out the next scene. Her story progresses through the entire day-by-day lives of the characters; it never timeskips more than a few hours. She started writing and posting just eight months ago, she's about an eighth of the way through her planned fic timeline, and the content she has so far posted to AO3 for it is already 450,000 words long. But most of us are normal humans. We're not, for the most part, wired to create linearly. We consume linearly, we experience linearly, so we assume we must also create linearly. But actually, a lot of us really suffer from trying to force ourselves to create this way, and we might not even realize it. If you're the kind of person who thinks you need to carrot-on-a-stick yourself into writing by saving the fun part for when you finally write everything that happens before it: Stop. You're probably not a linear writer. You're making yourself suffer for no reason and your writing is probably suffering for it. At least give nonlinear writing a try before you assume you can't write if you're not baiting or forcing yourself into it!! Remember: Writing is fun. You do this because it's fun, because it's your hobby. If you're miserable 80% of the time you're doing it, you're probably doing it wrong!
2. Rereading my own work. I used to hate reading my own work. I wouldn't even edit it usually. I would write it and slap it online and try not to look at it again. XD Writing nonlinearly forced me to start rereading because I needed to make sure scenes connected together naturally and it also made it easier to get into the headspace of the story to keep writing and fill in the blanks and get new inspiration. Doing this built the editing process into my writing process--I would read a scene to get back in the headspace, dislike what I had written, and just clean it up on the fly. I still never ever sit down to 'edit' my work. I just reread it to prep for writing and it ends up editing itself. Many many scenes in this fic I have read probably a dozen times or more! (And now, I can actually reread my own work for enjoyment!) Another thing I found from doing this that it became easy to see patterns and themes in my work and strengthen them. Foreshadowing became easy. Setting up for jokes or plot points became easy. I didn't have to plan out my story in advance or write an outline, because the scenes themselves because a sort of living outline on their own. (Yes, despite all the foreshadowing and recurring thematic elements and secret hidden meanings sprinkled throughout this story, it actually never had an outline or a plan for any of that. It's all a natural byproduct of writing nonlinearly and rereading.)
Unpopular writing opinion time: You don't need to make a detailed outline.
Some people thrive on having an outline and planning out every detail before they sit down to write. But I know for a lot of us, we don't know how to write an outline or how to use it once we've written it. The idea of making one is daunting, and the advice that it's the only way to write or beat writer's block is demoralizing. So let me explain how I approach "outlining" which isn't really outlining at all.
I write in a Notion table, where every scene is a separate table entry and the scene is written in the page inside that entry. I do this because it makes writing nonlinearly VASTLY more intuitive and straightforward than writing in a single document. (If you're familiar with Notion, this probably makes perfect sense to you. If you're not, imagine something a little like a more contained Google Sheets, but every row has a title cell that opens into a unique Google Doc when you click on it. And it's not as slow and clunky as the Google suite lol) (Edit from the future: I answered an ask with more explanation on how I use Notion for non-linear writing here.) When I sit down to begin a new fic idea, I make a quick entry in the table for every scene I already know I'll want or need, with the entries titled with a couple words or a sentence that describes what will be in that scene so I'll remember it later. Basically, it's the most absolute bare-bones skeleton of what I vaguely know will probably happen in the story.
Then I start writing, wherever I want in the list. As I write, ideas for new scenes and new connections and themes will emerge over time, and I'll just slot them in between the original entries wherever they naturally fit, rearranging as necessary, so that I won't forget about them later when I'm ready to write them. As an example, my current long fic started with a list of roughly 35 scenes that I knew I wanted or needed, for a fic that will probably be around 100k words (which I didn't know at the time haha). As of this writing, it has expanded to 129 scenes. And since I write them directly in the page entries for the table, the fic is actually its own outline, without any additional effort on my part. As I said in the comment reply--a living outline!
This also made it easier to let go of the notion that I had to write something exactly right the first time. (People always say you should do this, but how many of us do? It's harder than it sounds! I didn't want to commit to editing later! I didn't want to reread my work! XD) I know I'm going to edit it naturally anyway, so I can feel okay giving myself permission to just write it approximately right and I can fix it later. And what I found from that was that sometimes what I believed was kind of meh when I wrote it was actually totally fine when I read it later! Sometimes the internal critic is actually wrong. 3. Marinating in the headspace of the story. For the first two months I worked on [fic], I did not consume any media other than [fandom the fic is in]. I didn't watch, read, or play anything else. Not even mobile games. (And there wasn't really much fan content for [fandom] to consume either. Still isn't, really. XD) This basically forced me to treat writing my story as my only source of entertainment, and kept me from getting distracted or inspired to write other ideas and abandon this one.
As an aside, I don't think this is a necessary step for writing, but if you really want to be productive in a short burst, I do highly recommend going on a media consumption hiatus. Not forever, obviously! Consuming media is a valuable tool for new inspiration, and reading other's work (both good and bad, as long as you think critically to identify the differences!) is an invaluable resource for improving your writing.
When I write, I usually lay down, close my eyes, and play the scene I'm interested in writing in my head. I even take a ten-minute nap now and then during this process. (I find being in a state of partial drowsiness, but not outright sleepiness, makes writing easier and better. Sleep helps the brain process and make connections!) Then I roll over to the laptop next to me and type up whatever I felt like worked for the scene. This may mean I write half a sentence at a time between intervals of closed-eye-time XD
People always say if you're stuck, you need to outline.
What they actually mean by that (whether they realize it or not) is that if you're stuck, you need to brainstorm. You need to marinate. You don't need to plan what you're doing, you just need to give yourself time to think about it!
What's another framing for brainstorming for your fic? Fantasizing about it! Planning is work, but fantasizing isn't.
You're already fantasizing about it, right? That's why you're writing it. Just direct that effort toward the scenes you're trying to write next! Close your eyes, lay back, and fantasize what the characters do and how they react.
And then quickly note down your inspirations so you don't forget, haha.
And if a scene is so boring to you that even fantasizing about it sucks--it's probably a bad scene.
If it's boring to write, it's going to be boring to read. Ask yourself why you wanted that scene. Is it even necessary? Can you cut it? Can you replace it with a different scene that serves the same purpose but approaches the problem from a different angle? If you can't remove the troublesome scene, what can you change about it that would make it interesting or exciting for you to write?
And I can't write sitting up to save my damn life. It's like my brain just stops working if I have to sit in a chair and stare at a computer screen. I need to be able to lie down, even if I don't use it! Talking walks and swinging in a hammock are also fantastic places to get scene ideas worked out, because the rhythmic motion also helps our brain process. It's just a little harder to work on a laptop in those scenarios. XD
In conclusion: Writing nonlinearly is an amazing tool for kicking writer's block to the curb. There's almost always some scene you'll want to write. If there isn't, you need to re-read or marinate.
Or you need to use the bathroom, eat something, or sleep. XD Seriously, if you're that stuck, assess your current physical condition. You might just be unable to focus because you're uncomfortable and you haven't realized it yet.
Anyway! I hope that was helpful, or at least interesting! XD Sorry again for the text wall. (I think this is the longest comment reply I've ever written!)
And same to you guys on tumblr--I hope this was helpful or at least interesting. XD Reblogs appreciated if so! (Maybe it'll help someone else!)
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kamaluhkhan · 8 months
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THE GRUDGE (or: the 7 things luke castellan hated about you)
read part two GET HIM BACK! (or: the 7 reasons you want revenge on luke castellan)
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pairing: luke castellan x child of nemesis!reader (gender not specified)
word count: 8.5k
summary: luke hated your guts. he really did. he just hoped that no one could tell how, even after all this, you're still everything to him.
warnings/disclaimer: luke's POV. spoilers for the lightning thief and season 1 of pjo. some heated make-out sessions but no actual smut - MDNI / 18+. mentions of blood + death + alcohol. luke is 19 during tlt but i wrote this with him + reader being 21 by the end of this (this is important for the next part lol). anyways, luke + reader share clothes and lots of intense emotions they maybe possibly don't process in the best way. lots of ANGST - it's a greek tragedy fr!
author's note: welcome to my new hyperfixation! this fic is LONG but i hope she's worth it ♡
♪: the grudge by olivia rodrigo
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(i. you have a sharp tongue)
fourteen year old luke was overwhelmed when he first stepped into the hermes cabin. it was loud and overcrowded and no one really seemed to care that they had a new cabinmate. the head counselor showed luke to an empty bed at the back, told him to get settled in, and left without another word. luke dropped his backpack before collapsing on the mattress. it was so thin that he could feel the springs dig into his back.
"you'll get used to it."
luke sat up to see you climbing through the window. 
you had a band-aid stuck on your chin, chipped nail polish the color of blackberries, and leather combat boots that looked way too heavy to be wearing in the heat of summer. 
“the shitty mattress?”
“i meant the whole chaos of cabin 11, and the way things work around here in general. if you can get used to the shitty mattress, all power to you.” 
your tone was friendly enough, playful even. you smiled at him so comfortably it made luke nauseous. 
“good to know.” he tried to smile back at you, but his heart wasn’t in it. “i’m luke, by the way.”
“yeah, i know. i’m —”
“y/n!”
you seemed entirely unfazed as the blond who called your name stormed over to you. you rolled your eyes, something only luke could notice, before turning to her.
“someone stole my candy.”
“i’m very sorry to hear that, maddy. gotta be careful around here.” your voice dripped like poisoned honey, deceptively innocent and sweet.
maddy was not having it. she huffed at you. “it was you, wasn’t it?”
“that depends. did you cheat at poker last night? again?” 
some of the chatter throughout the cabin paused, heads turning to listen in. 
“what? n-no!” 
“then you have your answer, maddy.” you exaggerated a sigh, as though you had already won the fight and were annoyed that she came back for more. “now, if you’ll excuse me, i have a new camper to show around.”
chiron had already given them a tour, but luke didn’t protest when you grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the window with you. your hand was warm in his as you dragged him along to the corner of the cabin where a poorly made ladder waited for you. 
“come on.” you started climbing, and only stopped to look down when you realized luke wasn’t following you. “best view of camp. trust me.”
a shiver passed through luke. trust didn’t come easy to him. he also didn’t particularly want to return to a stuffy cabin where all he would do was count reasons he did not want to be there.
 so, luke followed you. he sat down next to you on the roof and looked out at the sun shining on his new home, but he couldn't help but be slightly bitter. the gods had gotten all of you into this life of endless danger and battles and monsters, and this was all they had to offer in return: a summer camp. 
it just didn't seem fair. 
there was something else he noticed then. what was it that chiron had said? camp half-blood was supposed to be a safe haven for all demigods. 
“i don’t get it. there are only twelve cabins, but aren’t there, like, a million other gods?”
you straightened your posture then, and turned to luke with a newfound interest. 
“camp half-blood only has cabins representing the twelve olympians. apparently, they’re the only ones important enough to have children worth recognizing, and they can’t even do that half the time,” you explained, impertinence laced throughout your words. it seemed like something you could never quite get off your chest. 
every  demigod knew that the gods didn’t appreciate sarcasm. they  didn’t particularly like being called out on their bullshit, either.
you didn’t seem to care; you even rolled your eyes up at the sky, as if challenging zeus himself. 
“anyways, that’s why the hermes cabin is so crowded. it takes in campers who are unclaimed or whose parent doesn’t have a cabin at camp. like me.”
“so, who’s your godly parent?”
you fiddled with the leather cord on your neck. it held a few clay beads like the other campers, but there was one silver charm he noticed only you wore — scales, by the looks of it. you clutched onto it.
luke realized that, despite your own advice, maybe you resented having to get used to the way things worked around here, and having to hide your resentment. maybe that was worse than having to sleep on an uncomfortable bed for the rest of your life.
"nemesis. goddess of revenge."
"that's....hardcore."
you scoffed and moved on to twisting the silver ring on your index finger. "a lot of people take it that way, and i think it scares them a bit.”
“so that’s why you’re extra nice to new campers, huh?” 
“no, i was just in a good mood today.” you smirked.
“guess i was just lucky, then.”
luke couldn’t help but smile at your laugh — sharp, biting. you nudged your boot against his sneaker, which shifted you closer to him, shoulders practically touching. 
“what people don’t understand is that it's more about balance, you know? you do good things, and good things happen to you. at least, they should. you do bad things and….” you pulled out an outrageously big bag of candy, dropped it between you and luke, and winked at him. “you face the consequences.” 
“that makes sense.” luke leaned over to grab a handful of gummy bears. “like karma.”
“yeah. exactly.” 
you bit the head off a red bear, both of you chewing in silence before you added:
“by the way, i’m sorry about your friend.” you swallowed and caught luke’s gaze. 
chiron warned him that word would travel fast around camp about what happened to thalia, and luke had prepared himself for anything — anything but your reaction. there was no pity in your eyes; instead, there was a hint of rage, as though thalia had been your friend, too. 
“she deserved more.” 
luke’s eyes caught the glint of a knife strapped to your belt. he took another handful of the candy you stole, and he thought about the fire and fearlessness behind your words, and, despite everything, it felt right to be with you then and there. 
“yeah,” he finally whispered back. “she did.”
we all do. 
neither of you said those words, but the suggestion was there, and it felt like a promise. 
(ii. you hold on to every stupid, little detail)
“slow down, tiger.” 
your voice echoed throughout the arena, and if luke had been fighting a real opponent, it might have gotten him killed. instead, he just stopped mid-swing, sparing another straw dummy from losing its arm. 
“left hand,” you noted as you walked past him towards a bench. “you, my friend, are in need of a break.”
luke loosened the grip on his sword. the only time luke fought with his non-dominant hand was when he had overworked the other. he must have switched an hour ago, but judging by how heavy his arm felt, it could have very well been two.  
his curls were stuck to his forehead with sweat, his shirt soaked through. he could feel a dull pain behind his eyes, and luke was worried that if he stopped to catch his breath, he would pass out. or, even worse, have to face the reality of the shitty news he’d gotten early that day. 
“come sit with me,” you urged. “you’re exhausted, tiger.” 
luke bristled at your nickname for him. 
sure, luke loved that there was something only you called him, a secret kept between you in plain sight, but it was also a reminder that it was harder to hide behind the hero act when you were around.
everyone else at camp figured the nickname was a playful attempt at calling him strong and charismatic. the truth was that luke once told you that his favorite cereal as a kid was frosted flakes and that he would dream of playing sports as well as tony the tiger. for better or for worse, like most things, you wouldn’t let it go. 
case in point: if it was anybody other than you trying to get him to take a break, luke could have just brushed them off with a charming smile and continued swordfighting until his arms fell off, but in the two years since meeting you, luke had never met anyone as stubborn and convincing. like him, it seemed you were willing to fight and shed blood to get your way. luke was never really in the mood to make you bleed, even when feeling like he could burn the entire world down, so he usually gave in to your demands.  
as soon as he sat down next to you, you handed him an orange flavored energy drink — his favorite. anything other than water was hard to come by at camp without the enchanted goblets in the dining pavilion, or the right connection in the hermes cabin. he ran out of his stash the other day, but you must have noticed and gotten one of the stoll brothers to smuggle more in. 
“thanks,” luke said, ignoring the jolt of electricity that passed through him when your fingers brushed together briefly. 
 the two of you looked out at the sword arena, and all the straw dummies that luke had destroyed. you wait for him to take three big gulps of his drink before speaking again. 
“i guess chiron and your dad decided you weren’t ready for a quest.”
luke exhaled sharply. “how did you —”
“the only time you’d skip out on capture the flag is if something really shitty happened.” you looked down at luke’s clenched fists, and that seemed to be all the confirmation you needed. “you promised annabeth you'd be there, and it's not like you to let her down."
fuck. he had completely forgotten that tonight was annabeth's first time as team captain. this entire week, she had been prepping a winning strategy. it wasn’t like annabeth needed him to win, but luke was her big brother, and he should have been there. you were right — he had let her down. 
the realization made luke’s day go from bad to worse. 
"i told her you were helping a new camper with an emergency. she didn't believe it, but she adjusted her strategy and we still won.”
“well, thank the gods everything worked in the end,” luke grumbled. 
“don’t thank the gods,” you quipped. “thank annabeth chase for her brilliant mind, and me for covering for your sorry ass.”
when luke didn’t indulge in your usual playful banter, you moved closer to him and brushed some curls away from his eyes. your skin warmed his forehead, and the small gesture made him feel better than he had all day.
“look, i’m not going to give you some bullshit inspirational speech about how the gods don’t get to define what a hero is, or how you don’t need a quest to prove that you’re worthy of being one. we’ve each been through that before, and i have a feeling this won’t be our last time, either.”
“then why are you here?” the question came out harsher than luke had intended it to.
“because she’s trying her best to hide it, but annabeth is really hurt that you didn’t show up for the game. i figured the least you could do is suck it up, come to the campfire, and make her those signature luke castellan s’mores. you could probably use one, too, since you haven’t eaten anything since breakfast.” 
you were right, again. luke was exhausted, he was furious, but most of all, he was starving.  
later that night, luke sat next to annabeth and vowed to make her as many s’mores as she wanted. you’d gone to sit with the hephaestus kids, trying to convince beckendorf and nyssa to join your cabin’s post-campfire party at the beach, even though they had to work in the forges early the next morning. 
when chiron made his weekly speech, congratulating the winners of capture the flag and thanking the gods for keeping everyone safe, you and luke caught each other’s gaze from across the fire. you rolled your eyes and luke bit back a smile as you turned back to beckendorf. he noticed your knees were practically touching. did you sit that close to everyone? 
luke was looking at you for so long that the marshmallow he was roasting fell into the fire, despite annabeth’s warnings. she handed him another one. 
"you should tell her how you feel," annabeth said. "stop being a coward." 
whether it was the smell of burnt sugar, the heat of the fire, or annabeth’s comment, luke started to feel dizzy. he did his best to shake it off, asking annabeth for a play-by-play of her strategy earlier that night, but he couldn’t quite get rid of the thought of you. 
(iii. you don't care if your clothes are stained with blood)
“i just….i can’t fucking believe you, luke.”
“i don’t get why you’re so upset — you’ve never cared about quests before.”
luke was hoping to break the news to you after capture the flag. unfortunately for him, word travels fast around camp. 
annabeth had the two of you scouting the east side for the flag, while she and some other athena kids took the west. you hadn’t found anything so far, which meant that you’d spent the better part of an hour bickering over luke’s choice of companions for his quest. a choice that included charles beckendorf and chris rodriguez, and purposefully did not include you, much to your fury.  
before you could continue arguing, luke heard the sound of footsteps approaching. he looked over to you, and you already had your shield and sword at the ready. 
a few red defenders emerged from the trees. one charged at luke, but you stepped in so he could deal with the other two. one of his opponents went down fairly easily, but the other put up much more of a fight. metal clashed behind him as you kept fighting as well. you might not have been as skilled a swordfighter as luke, but he knew that you could hold your own, at least until he was finished with the person in front of him. 
luke parried his opponent’s strike, causing them to take a step closer. he was preparing to disarm them, just as he heard you yelp and stumble to the ground. it only took a millisecond of his attention, but it gave his opponent the opportunity to elbow him in the face. luke felt a crack upon impact, and pain radiated from his nose; he powered through. 
he had to finish this fight, and he had to do it fast. you needed him. 
his ears were ringing as he finally knocked over his opponent, kicking away their sword and keeping his foot on their chest. luke turned around to see you having turned the tides, the blade of your sword dangerously close to your opponent’s neck.
you locked eyes with luke, and you both understood — it was time to go. the two of you ran through the forest, as far away as you could before having to stop and catch your breath.
luke removed his helmet to get some air, and dropped his weapons. you did the same. you looked at him, brows furrowed.
“your nose.”
luke licked his lips, tasting blood. the triumph of winning that last fight overshadowed the ache of his potentially broken nose. in fact, he liked the image of a ruthless warrior emerging from the glory and gore of battle, that even though he did not bleed ichor like a god, he still had power. 
you, on the other hand, didn’t look impressed. instead, you stepped forward and offered the sleeve of your shirt to wipe away the blood. 
“you don’t have to —”
“i know you think you’re a badass walking around all broken and bloody, but you shouldn’t deny your admirers your pretty face,” you teased. 
it was no secret that luke had numerous admirers around camp, a fact you loved to tease him about. he was sure that you relished in how flustered that made him. all you had to call him was pretty boy, and luke could be reduced to a blushing mess. 
it was pathetic how much power you had over him.
“besides, i wouldn’t have gotten out of that last fight if you hadn’t taught me that disarming technique earlier. i owe you. it’s what we do. we take care of each other, right?”
he couldn’t argue with that.
a few moments of silence passed as you cleaned his face. something shifted as you worked, the flirtatious grin fading away. when you pulled away, your sleeve was stained a dark crimson. 
“just tell me honestly,” you finally murmured. “why don't you want me to join your quest?” 
luke was genuinely taken aback by the softness of your voice, now devoid of its usual fire. you wouldn’t meet luke’s eyes, but being that close to you, he noticed they were slightly glazed over.
he had expected you to be angry at his decision. he expected you to yell and argue and try to change his mind. luke hadn’t expected you to be so hurt. so broken. 
he hadn’t planned on it, but luke decided to tell you the truth then.
“look, karma, if you come with me, my heart wouldn’t fully be in the quest. i’d be so caught up in….well, you.”
a pause.
“is that a bad thing?”
“not usually, no.” 
you smirked a little at that, and luke’s heart skipped a beat. it also made his decision even clearer. 
“but i need to be focused for this. i need….” he let out a deep sigh. “i need to prove myself. this is my first real chance, and i can’t fuck it up.”
you met his gaze and smiled brightly at him, your signature spark of confidence returning.  
“you won’t.”
you reached a hand up to play with his necklace. luke hadn’t noticed how close you’d gotten until your fingers started tracing over those four clay beads. it made his entire body burst into flames.
“i’ve been wanting to do something for a while. and, aphrodite save me, it might be really stupid, but —”
luke took a lucky guess as to where you were going, and crashed his lips against yours. aphrodite knows that he'd been wanting to do that for a while, too. 
he often got drunk on the adrenaline of battle, the glory of winning, but nothing was quite like the rush of kissing you for the first time. 
it was messy and urgent, both of you aware that, at any moment, you could be interrupted. your noses were bumping together, teeth clacking against each other. the metallic tang of blood lingered on luke’s tongue, but neither of you seemed to care. you even bit his lip slightly, as if you wanted more. armor sat heavy and cold between your chests, preventing you from getting closer. luke had never loathed the protective gear more. 
he made up for it by lodging one hand underneath your jaw, and snaking the other beneath the celestial bronze, beneath the cotton of your shirt, admiring how your pulse quickened under his thumb when he grazed the soft skin of your stomach. you tangled your hands into his hair, nails scraping against his scalp. he groaned and felt you smirk against his lips. 
luke had kissed a few people before, sure, but never like this: like a knife to the gut, and if you pulled away, luke would surely bleed out and die. 
it wouldn’t be a hero’s death, in the traditional sense, but at least he’d die happy. 
how many heroes could claim that?
when luke ran out of air, feeling like his lungs were burning, he had to pull away. 
you glanced down at luke’s kiss-bitten lips, then back to his eyes. luke flushed under the intensity of your gaze. 
“just promise me something, tiger,” you whispered, voice hoarse. 
“anything.”
“come back alive.”
luke leaned forward and placed another kiss on your lips, this one much gentler than before.
“i promise.”
(iv. you love like a scar that won't fade)
the nightmares were getting worse. 
luke woke up in a cold sweat, taking gulps of air in an attempt to steady his breathing.
“luke.” 
your whisper did little to quell the pit of dread growing in his stomach, but it did enough to bring him back down to reality. 
he was at camp half-blood (fuck the gods of olympus), in the hermes cabin (fuck you, dad), in a bed next to yours (fuck, if he could tell you what — who — was going through his head, he would).
“i’m…i’m fine,” he murmured back, voice catching slightly on the lie. 
like clockwork, you shifted from your bed to his, slipping under the covers. it didn’t matter that it was a hot summer night, and the minute your legs touched his, he could feel himself starting to overheat. 
your thumb brushed over the thick edge of his scar, up his cheekbone to the corner of his eye. it had been a year, living with this reminder. a reminder that he had failed, just as much as his father and the olympians had failed him. 
luke tried to pretend that he didn’t come back from his quest as a shell of who he once was. after all, it was meant to be his shining moment as a demigod, meant to gain him all the glory and father’s praise he once wished for. 
what a fucking joke.
every morning, luke would crawl into a different skin. he welcomed new campers and taught sword-fighting. he laughed with chris and his other siblings and strategized with annabeth for capture the flag. he would be the easy-going, charming, skillful senior counselor who respected the gods and honored them in everything he did. 
again: a fucking joke.
nights were different, though, with you so close to him, you who could always see right through him.
every night, luke was a fourteen-year old boy again, with so much rage and resentment he didn't know what to do with it. 
of course, you were always you - a bleeding heart underneath layers of armor. you didn't care about fate, or the gods, or the titans. you cared about justice, you cared about what was right and fair. 
most of all, you cared about luke.
“you were screaming,” you told him, voice barely cutting through the soft snores and sleeptalkings of your other cabinmates. 
“sorry,” he managed. looking at you in the dull moonlight, luke noticed the deep shadows under your eyes. 
“it’s fine. you just….you scared me, tiger.” 
your hand still rested on his cheek, and for a second, luke hoped you would kiss him, but you didn’t. instead, you told him to try and get some sleep, and sank further into his bed before closing your eyes. 
for the hundredth night in a row, luke hoped you couldn’t hear his heart hammering in his chest as you fell asleep next to him.
since coming back from his quest, luke didn’t have it in him to suggest being anything other than friends, and you didn’t push it. there had been a few....moments between you, sure, but nothing more.
luke thought you might have changed your mind, because who would want to be with a bitter, worthless, wannabe hero? then again, that voice haunting his dreams…. luke could change that. 
but, at what cost?
(v. you protect people as ruthlessly as a starving dog)
luke could hear you talking to percy jackson outside. though he couldn’t quite determine what was being said, as much as he tried.
you entered the bathroom and instantly caught luke’s eyes in the mirror. you were wearing your faded pyjama shorts with cartoon crows, and a flannel shirt that luke had a sneaking suspicion might have been his. you smiled at him before setting up at the counter, one sink between you. 
“what was that about?” luke asked after spitting out a mouthful of minty toothpaste.
“oh, nothing.” you were searching through your toiletry bag for something, and seemed to come up short. “hey, do you have any extra dental floss?”
luke threw some over to you. as you effortlessly caught it, he noticed your knuckles, bruised and bloodied.
“what happened?” 
you finished flossing and briefly examined your hands before pulling out your toothbrush. 
“it’s not a big deal,” you assured. “some ares kids were picking on percy, and then they started pushing him around, like, really pushing him around, so….” 
“....you decided to send them to the infirmary.”
you squeezed some toothpaste on your brush before continuing. “i don’t need you to lecture me about how i shouldn’t be fighting with other campers because i’ve been here longer and i should be a good role model. you know what a good role model does? not let kids beat up other kids and think the worst punishment they’ll get is no dessert for a week.”
luke watched carefully as you jammed the toothbrush in your mouth and brushed with such force, he was worried your teeth might dislodge. he knew that you would shed blood for someone you loved, and that you didn’t particularly care if you had to break rules in doing so, because you believed that what was written was not necessarily what was right. 
in fact, luke loved that about you.
no, it wasn’t the fighting that luke cared about — it was who you were fighting for. 
percy was a good kid, he really was. luke just didn’t want you getting attached. 
“i wasn’t going to lecture you. i’m guessing chiron already did?” 
you nodded and spat out what looked like a combination of toothpaste and blood. you rinsed your mouth until the water lost its pinkish hue. once you were done, luke continued his train of thought.
“i just didn’t realize you cared so much about him.”
“about percy?” 
luke could tell that he didn’t have your full attention. you were packing your stuff back up, accidentally tossing luke’s dental floss into your bag, but he had more pressing matters to deal with.
“yeah. the kid’s only been at camp for three days, and you’re already acting like his guard dog.”
you finally turned to luke and glared at him. 
“maybe. but percy’s sweet and he doesn’t seem like the type to put up with bullshit. he’s been through a lot, and annabeth seems to like him, too. as far as i’m concerned, percy’s one of us, and i’m not going to let anyone push him around.”
luke raised an eyebrow at you. “he’s sweet?”
“yeah. like, just now, he gave me some blue raspberry jelly beans as a thank you. said his mom used to work at a candy store. he also wanted me to apologize to you for him. he feels bad about beating you in sword-fighting earlier.” 
you scoffed, like you resented luke for having to apologize to him on percy’s behalf. you definitely did not appreciate that guard dog comment. luke clenched his jaw, seething over what you had just said. 
satisfied with his reaction, you gave luke that nauseating smile of yours, tilted your head towards the exit. a truce, because you never liked to fight with luke for too long, and a order, because you knew luke would always follow. 
the two of you began walking back to your cabin in the warm mid-june air. 
“i wouldn’t say he beat me,” luke huffed. “it was beginner’s luck.”
“sure, tiger. it was beginner’s luck that disarmed the best swordsman we’ve had in the last 300 years.”
you nudged luke’s shoulder with yours, but he recoiled from your touch. 
“are you trying to make me feel worse?” luke tried his best to avoid snapping at you, keeping his tone measured.
“i’m just saying that maybe the kid has natural talent and that doesn’t make you any less talented. there’s no need to get jealous.”
luke resisted the urge to growl at your suggestion. 
to be clear, he was not jealous. it’s just that luke had spent years of blood, sweat, and tears getting to where he was then, and percy jackson had just gotten to camp. 
and, to be even more clear, luke was not jealous of how you were already defending percy with your whole body and your whole heart, the way you did for him. 
by then, you reached the front of the hermes cabin. luke could already hear the commotion of what he would need to deal with as soon as he walked in. the burden of being head counselor, one he approached with an elastic smile that could snap at any moment. 
you tugged on luke’s sleeve before he could open the door. 
“hey. are we okay?”
luke looked down at your fingers grasping the fabric of a sweatshirt he was just realizing was yours. your nails were painted a dark red, now chipped after a week of wear. you had begged luke to paint his nails then, and once again, he gave in. he even started to like the purple you had chosen just for him, so deep it was almost black. the same color you were wearing the first time you and luke met.
he smiled at the memory — a real smile, no plastic — and then smiled back up at you.
“we’re fine, karma.” and he moved to enter the cabin. luke could hear the threat of an argument bubbling up, what sounded like a petty one over a prank gone wrong.
“wait.” you tugged at his (your) sweatshirt once more. “there’s something i wanted to talk to you about, about tomorrow night—”
“annabeth called a meeting during free time.”
“yeah, i know, it’s just —”
“she’ll run through strategy for capture the flag then.”
“one of the aphrodite senior campers asked me to the campfire,” you blurted it out, and luke decided to ignore the sound of a fight breaking out from behind the wooden door.
what in the name of hades were you talking about?
“they asked you out? like…like a….” luke didn’t even want to speak the word, scared it would make it real.
“a date,” you said casually, as if that one word didn’t rip luke’s heart in a million pieces. “i said yes.” an admission that took all those pieces and set them on fire. 
sure, in the seven years since you and luke met, you’d each talked about boys, about girls, about dating and kissing them and going further. but there was something about this one that felt different. something about the way you told him.
“but, listen, i wanted to let you know it’s not —”
“good for you,” was all luke said through gritted teeth before someone started calling his name again, louder and more urgently, and he had to duck inside.  
(vi. you taste like burning cherries and righteous anger)
your team had won capture the flag, of course. the biggest news of the evening, though: percy jackson was the son of the sea god. 
he was a forbidden child, the hero of the great prophecy. 
everything was falling into place. 
all luke should be thinking about is kronos’ plan, and his role in it, and how a world without the gods of olympus was that much more in reach.  
unfortunately, for the time being, he was so consumed by you. 
you, from across the campfire, sporting cutoff denim shorts and fresh wounds from the game earlier. you, who had wrapped your knuckles in gauze, concealing their bruising, fixed the chips in your nail polish and stacked rings on your fingers. (for the record: luke had gifted you the one on your left thumb.) you, with dark lips that whispered too closely and laughed too loudly with a child of aphrodite— jordan li.
you hadn’t so much as looked at luke since congratulating each other on another win. when chiron announced his weekly gratitude to the gods at the start of that night’s campfire, you didn’t punctuate your resentment with your usual eye-roll or biting remark. you were too busy giggling at something jordan said.
luke wanted to be the one to whisper jokes in your ear. he wanted to be the one you left lipstick stains on later, along his jaw and down his neck. he wanted to be the one who kissed the blade mark on your shoulder and the bruises on your knuckles. 
and yet, hours passed and it seemed that the thought of luke had never so much as crossed your mind. he found himself at an after hours party with a few senior campers on the beach. a lethal recipe: a poorly crafted bonfire, some contraband drinks and you in jordan li’s lap, playing with their hair and pretending luke castellan did not exist. 
meanwhile, luke had katie gardner’s full attention. she was talking to him about the strawberry season, potentially leaning a bit too close into luke’s personal space, definitely flirting with him. 
luke could have done a lot worse than the head counselor of the demeter cabin, who always smelled like fresh lavender, whose eyes were the bright green of spring grass and whose lips tasted like golden honey. 
the problem was that luke only wanted you, and his eyes kept sliding over to where you were kissing jordan’s cheek, and he accidentally called the girl he was kissing by your name, which did not make her happy. 
katie threw her drink in his face, told him to wake the fuck up, and walked away.
a chorus of gasps and chuckles erupted as luke stood there, diet coke and vodka seeping into his shirt. the commotion seemed to capture your attention, because you suddenly appeared next to luke, an empty bottle of cherry soda in your hand.
“rough night, tiger?” your voice, that nickname, made luke sick, his face twisting into a frown. you don’t seem to notice or care. instead, you switched your bottle with luke’s and took a sip.
“looks like you were having a pretty good time,” luke practically sneered. “where’s your date?” 
 “they went to bed.” you swallowed a mouthful of beer, grimacing at its bitterness. “gods, this is terrible. you and i should go on the drink run next time — we have better taste.”
“so, are you and jordan like a thing now?”
you gave luke a smile he didn’t quite understand, but made his stomach churn in ways only you could. “would that be a problem?”
“of course not.” he answered way too quickly for that to be true. 
“let’s get out of here,” you suggested. “i think katie is about this close to strangling you with a tree branch.”
luke glanced over your shoulder to where green eyes glared back at him. 
nowhere could luke find it in him to care. he wasn’t even sorry. he just shrugged, took the bottle back from you, took his first sip all night. luke almost gagged (because of course you were right, and the stoll brothers had better fake ids than they had taste) but he suppressed it. 
“no. i’m good.”
biggest lie he ever said. like there wasn’t anger caught in his throat and jealousy swelling between his ribs.
“go find jordan,” he taunted. “kiss them, show them a good time! isn’t that the reason why you got all pretty?”
you narrowed your eyes at him carefully. your nostrils were slightly flared, and luke took a bit of pride in being able to rile you up.
“look, we haven’t really talked lately, and i think we should.”
“go find jordan,” he mocked once more. “almost all the aphrodite kids are here, and i’m sure you can be quiet enough to sneak into their cabin and if you want a quick fu—”
“luke.” you clipped his name, obviously getting to the limit of your patience with him. “if you want to stay here all night and be an asshole, you’re welcome to. you should know, though, that your happy-go-lucky hero mask is starting to crack and i don’t know if you could deal with the fallout from it shattering completely.”
you leaned in close and whispered that last part, very aware of the chattering that stopped and the eyes that watched the pair of you anxiously. luke was usually good at hiding that part of himself who wanted to burn the world down. 
in ways you didn’t realize, you were right: he couldn’t risk revealing it, not now.
not yet. 
“do whatever you want, castellan,” you spat out his last name, the combination of letters foreign in your mouth.“i’m leaving.”
luke should be proud of himself. he waited a whole two seconds before following you like a stray dog. 
luke didn’t know if he’d ever felt you that enraged by him, and it horrified him. it also made him hungry for more. 
“i’m not sure that jordan would want the two of us alone together at night,” he shouted after you, words echoing into the starless sky.
“gods, enough about jordan!” luke practically ran into you with how fast you turned around to confront him. “i was helping them with that stupid aphrodite tradition!”
“you….” luke faltered, all the snark leaving his body. “what?”
luke remembered silena beauregard once explaining the rite of passage to him: to prove themselves, a child of aphrodite had to make someone fall in love with them, and then break their heart.
“why…why would you agree to do that?”
you had reached the dining area by then, and you sat on one of the steps leading to the pavilion. luke stayed a few feet away, looking at you cautiously. 
“jordan and i are already friends, and they figured a fake relationship would be the way to avoid anyone from actually getting hurt in the process.”
“you seemed so…so into it, though,” luke stammered, the memory of you in jordan’s lap, laughter bubbling from your lips, still fresh.
“it’s called acting, dumbass.” the camp didn’t rely on electricity, but there were enough torches around that luke could see you roll your eyes. “anyways, i was trying to give you a heads-up last night, but you wouldn’t listen.” you took a deep breath. “and, honestly, i didn’t push it because….i figured i should test a hypothesis.”
a hypothesis? you’d known annabeth for too long.
“what hypothesis?”
you hesitated. 
“it doesn’t matter. fuck, this was stupid,” you muttered, and without another word, stormed through the dining pavilion, a short cut to the hermes cabin. your footsteps fell heavy against the marble, and luke’s not far behind. 
“what hypothesis?” he asked again.
nothing but rushed footsteps.
“what hypothesis?” luke finally yelled.
third time was the charm, because you stopped in your tracks and faced luke once again. a fire burned in the bronze brazier, where campers were forced to offer up portions of your food to the gods at every meal. its roaring seemed to captivate you, and the flames danced across your face, illuminating all your curves and edges.
“i’m angry at the gods,” you stated. 
this caught luke off guard. from the day the two of you met, luke knew you shared that feeling. you’d gotten quieter with your rage as you’d gotten older. luke supposed he got better at hiding it himself, as well. 
“i’m angry at the gods for letting bad shit happen even if they can stop it, and for building this world in the fucked up way they did. i’m angry at your dad for the way he’s treated you, but — you, luke castellan.” you finally met luke’s eyes with a gaze so sharp, luke almost felt himself bleed. “i’m also angry at you, and not just for your bullshit tonight.” 
your admission felt like a punch to the stomach, and luke was left with no air to breathe.
did you know?
“you haven’t been the same since your quest,” you continued, words slow and deliberate, the way you spoke when you were worried your voice would shake. “and i’ve come to terms with that in the past few years, but you….you’ve never tried to ice me out before. you’ve been acting distant since december, and it’s been driving me insane. do you realize how much i miss my best …..” you swallowed the word friend. “how much i miss you?”
luke hesitated, because what could he say? i know i’ve been distant, but i’ve been busy trying to start a war between the gods. sorry babe! 
would you hate him, if you knew? 
you had to have known that, despite the distance, luke missed you. for tartarus sake, in the last two days, he’d driven himself mad at you calling a fourteen year old boy sweet, and he was about to combust at the image of you dating someone else, with little care as to the collateral damage. 
"you can't just avoid me, makeout with katie fucking gardner, and then….” you trailed off, hiding your face in your hands. whether it was to hide embarrassment or tears, luke wasn’t sure.
a smirk spread across luke’s face at the revelation that he hadn’t been the only one jealous at the bonfire that night. it lit luke up with the confidence he needed to not completely fall to his knees in front of you, beg for your forgiveness for everything he’s done.
“why do you care if i make out with katie fucking gardner?” 
as he waited for a response, luke walked towards you until your back hit one of the marble columns. 
“why do you care if i’m with jordan fucking li?” you clenched your jaw and looked right through luke. a clear indication that you wanted him to break down first; it wouldn’t be you who yielded this fight.
“because i want to be the one you’re with.” at that point, luke was so close to you that he swore he could hear your heartbeat. he reached out and played with the hem of your shorts. “why do you care if i make out with katie gardner?”
“because.” you drew in a sharp breath when luke’s fingers brushed underneath the denim, across the warm skin of your thigh. you closed your eyes. “don’t make me say it, tiger.” 
the desperation in your voice made luke want to do unholy things with you, to you. luke knew you didn’t think of him as a saint, and you never expected him to be one. the reality was that you weren’t much better, either. what was essentially an altar to the gods burned bright next to you, but it seemed neither of you had ever cared less about it than in that moment. 
luke would watch olympus fall. he would dethrone the gods and watch their glass castle shatter and find glory in a new world. in the grand scheme of things, he was willing to lose this battle.
in fact, he would have rather betrayed the titan lord himself than waste another second not kissing your lips. 
so, he kissed you, and you kissed him back with such force, such hunger, it was ungodly.
no, you certainly weren’t a saint — but you were divine, in the most brutal, intoxicating way. in the way you shuddered when luke lodged a leg between your thighs; in the way you threaded your fingers through the belt loops of his jeans to bring him closer; in the way the metal of your rings burned through the skin of his hip, right to the bone, which made him shudder, and you smile triumphantly against his jaw.
the more he tasted your smirk flavored by cherry soda and the ashes of nearby flames, the more he felt your feral teeth against his neck and your wicked nails digging into his shoulders, the more you tugged on his curls, the more luke thought: maybe. 
maybe you would give into your seething resentment, live up to those eye-rolls and snarky comments that got you in trouble with chiron, on the edge of hot water with the gods. maybe you would join the titan army. maybe, just maybe, this time, you would follow luke.
and yet — maybe wasn’t enough if it meant he could lose this. luke wouldn’t risk it, not until he kissed every battle scar and bruise on your body, and you did the same to his. 
“wait.”
it was the last thing luke wanted to do, but he complied. he took the opportunity to appreciate the chaos he created: your shirt in disarray, your lipstick a mess, your chest heaving and desperate to catch a breath. 
“i promised jordan that we’d keep up our charade for a week, two at the most. do you think we could keep this…” you tightened your fist around the fabric of his shirt. “a secret until then?”
luke responded by pressing his lips to yours once more, because there were definitely worse secrets to keep.
(vii. you wouldn’t hesitate to make him bleed)
luke had just left percy jackson to die.
he should be leaving camp, now, but he needed to see you one last time. 
the universe works in mysterious ways, because you were out on a run through the forest, and you crossed paths before he even had time to wonder where you were.
“hey, tiger.” you smiled as if this was a regular afternoon. the two of you would teach your afternoon activities, sneak away during dinner so luke could kiss you in that spot that made you gasp. “wanna join me? i was just wrapping up, but i could be convinced to go longer.”
for a second, he was tempted to. very tempted. 
“i don’t have much time.”
you seemed to notice luke’s sullen mood and you dropped your playful demeanor. 
luke explained: the messages from kronos in his dreams, him stealing the lightning bolt and helm of darkness to start a war between the gods and framing percy. the plan to destroy olympus that luke had pledged his life to.
percy was surprised at what luke had done, and luke could imagine that the rest of camp would be, too. luke was the golden boy of camp half-blood, everyone’s big brother. 
you, on the other hand, didn’t express any sense of shock. 
“luke.” you said his name like you weren’t quite sure it was poison. “i’m going to give you five seconds to tell me that you’re joking.”
five seconds of silence passed. you took a few steps back from luke.
“i….i should have told you sooner.”
“yeah,” you scoffed. “you should have. but, you didn’t. did it feel good, having the titan king whispering sweet nothings in your ear? all the lies about how this war is the only way to get the glory you so desperately want? it’s fucking delusional.” 
“it’s not delusional—”
“yes, it is!” you glared at him. “you’re on the wrong side of a war you made the mistake of starting.”
luke straightened his posture, thinking about how hypocritical you were being. 
“isn’t this what you’re all about? revenge, karma. your mom will probably join us, too. don’t you want to see the gods finally get what they deserve?”
“not like this. i can’t believe how desperate you are, to believe that kronos is going to make everything right. it’s pathetic,” you spat. “i’m not saying the gods don’t deserve to be taken down a notch. their fucking obsession with power and glory….it’s sick and twisted, but i don’t think your titan king is any better. i don’t think you are any better.” 
“it’s time that the gods fall. this is the only way, even if it isn’t perfect,” luke countered. his voice was firmer now as he absorbed your anger. your mother was the goddess of revenge, but you clearly didn't understand the sacrifices, pain, and blood that was required to make the world a better place.  
luke just needed to convince you.
“we’ve talked about this for years,” he continued. “nothing is balanced! there’s no justice here, for anyone.  we can build a better world where we don’t have to burn our scraps and throw ourselves at monsters to get attention. we can fight together like we always have. y/n, i love—”
“don’t,” you snapped. “don’t you fucking dare. you should have died on your quest.” your voice laced with venom. one hand gripping the knife you always kept on your belt. “that dragon should have fucking sliced through you and saved us all the trouble.”
something pricked in the back of his throat, down to his stomach.
“you don’t mean that.”
“i do,” you promised. “at least you would have died with all of us thinking you’re a hero instead of the traitor you really are.”
you grabbed your knife, took a fighting stance. 
“i’m not going to fight you,” was all luke could say. he noticed your hand tremble, and you tightened the grip on your knife to prevent emotion from slipping through your invisible armor. 
in that moment, you have could slice through luke, and it would hurt less than everything you just said, less than the murderous look you were giving him, like he was just another monster you wouldn’t think twice about sending to tartarus.
luke didn’t even have a chance to unsheathe his sword before you charged at him, but he quickly had you pinned to the ground, the tip of your own knife pointed at you. he hesitated. the blade pressed harder against your cheek than he intended, enough to break the skin and let a few droplets of dark crimson escape. 
“please come with me,” he pleaded. you didn’t answer, but you did seem surprised by the softness of his voice. 
a few moments passed, the celestial bronze still between you. luke waited for you to see his way, to yield to his proposal.
you didn’t. instead, you took advantage of the situation. you wrapped your leg around his and flipped your position. in the process, you regained possession of your knife. without the hesitation that held luke back, you sliced through his cheek, deep. luke bit his lip to suppress a groan, tasting blood. your gaze set his whole body on fire as he waited for your next move. that was when you glanced down at his camp necklace, and the new clay bead added to commemorate this summer.
a turquoise trident.
“percy told me he was on his way to see you,” you realized. “what did you do?”
luke didn’t answer. he knew then that a choice ran through your head. 
and it stung, just a little, watching you sprint away through the trees in a last ditch effort to save percy’s life. 
there was a small, pathetic part of luke that wanted you to choose him, even if it meant you would have plunged the knife into his chest.
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hannieehaee · 2 months
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BITE (teaser)
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18+ / mdi
summary: keeping appearances as an idol was already hard enough, but it becomes even worse upon finding a forlorn jeonghan with need of assistance with the company's faulty security system, instantly becoming endeared with the idol who refused to take no for an answer — not that you'd ever want him to.
content: idol!jeonghan x hybeidol!reader, f2l, meet-cute, very unrealistic schedules for idols lol, jeonghan is a menace, a lot of will they wont they, reader plays hard to get, small age gap implied, afab reader, one mention of the word oppa as a honorific (sorry</3), reader is implied to be international (no specific race, just not born in korea), smut, dry humping, fingering, penetrative sex, etc.
(^ no actual content warnings in the teaser)
wc: 1.9k (teaser); 11.7k (full fic)
RELEASE DATE: september 6th
or you can check it out on my patreon today by subscribing!
a/n: wrote this super quickly so it might be a little messy but i really love idol aus so yeah hope u enjoy<3
masterlist
support me through a one time tip<3
"Hey, is that Yoon Jeonghan from Seventeen?", asked Minji as she patted your shoulder, finger pointing towards your right.
"Who?", you wondered, attempting to make sense of the distressed man standing in front of the main artist elevators in the building, "Oh, yeah, I think that's him," you said once you spotted his face, deeming it impossible to not recognize a face such as his.
"Why is he just standing there?", she wondered, holding onto your arm in the affectionate manner she usually did, "Do you think it's that elevator thing again?" she faced you to ask.
"What elevator thing?"
"Apparently he went on a variety show and complained about the company's security system. It was a whole controversy, but I guess the facial recognition doesn't work for him for some reason," she informed you before chuckling at the sight of Jeonghan sighing in defeat at yet another failed attempt at utilizing the aforementioned system, "I thought it was a bit, but I guess he was for real."
"Huh," you hummed, having been unaware of the issue. The system worked just fine for you and all your members, so you never had any motive to question it. Your senior, however, had clear issues with the system. Within the two minutes you had noticed his presence, he had already attempted the facial recognition three times, getting rejected every single one of them.
"You should help him," your groupmate suggested, "I would, but my manager will be here soon for my shoot. You only have rehearsals today, right? You're heading that way anyway."
"What? No!" you declined, "I always get anxious around our seniors. I've never even met him," you added, far too shy to even face the pretty boy during his predicament.
Disconnecting from you, she grabbed onto your shoulders, scolding you, "Dude, just go help him! This is how you make connections. You give him a hand and then he gives you one back," she said, physically turning you around so you could face his direction, hands still on your shoulders, "Go! My ride's probably already here anyways. Good luck," she encouraged as she pushed you forward, making you absentmindedly begin walking towards the boy.
Taking a breath, you began to walk towards the boy who seemed to grow more and more frustrated at the faulty security system. The closer you got, the more you could hear his whines in complaint. It appeared that he had taken up a phone call during the time you'd been talking to your friend, frustratedly arguing with whoever was on the other line.
"Seokminnie, c'mon! Just come down! I'll buy you soju after practice," he whined, groaning at whatever response his groupmate had given him in return, "My manager already left ... Yeah .... No! Stop! Just come down! I'm your senior and- Wait! Don't hang up!", he groaned at last upon hearing the classic sound of a disconnected line invade his ears.
It was only then that he seemed to notice your presence, widening his eyes momentarily before offering you a brief bow to acknowledge your presence. Moving aside, he gave you enough space to stand in front of the elevator, quietly awaiting for you to utilize the security system, likely assuming you had not heard his prior predicament. He gestured for you to move forward, acting as if he were being a gentleman in allowing you to go first.
You approached the small facial recognition screen, about to scan your face before turning to him, finding the boy staring at you expectantly, "You need me in order to use the elevator, don't you?", you asked him, amused.
"Huh?", he gaped at you, tsk'ing afterward and making an odd 'Eyyy' sound, "I'm just being a gentleman. Go ahead," he gave you a tight yet amused smile.
You chuckled in return, "Liar," you were surprised at how easy it was to be informal with him, but he was immediately likable, "Ask me to help you and maybe I might," you added, giving him a satisfied smile.
"You know, I'm pretty sure I'm your senior — Whatever happened to respect?", he joked, tsk'ing at you once more. He proceeded to walk towards you, pushing his face onto the scanner and ignoring your presence altogether, "I'll do it, see," he practically challenged, attempting the scanner once more.
Unsurprisingly, he was met with a red X and a beeping sound that indicated yet another failure to be recognized by the system. This caused him to stand there in silence for a few seconds before whining 'Yah!' and cursing out the security system.
Clearing his throat, he straightened up again, facing you once more, "Sorry about that. Your turn," he gestured to you to move forward again, stepping out of your way.
Both amused and surprised, you decided to finally utilize the scanner on yourself, smiling at him with a satisfied look when it immediately allowed you in. Turning to him, you nodded at him to get in before you, only for him to gesture for you to go first. Something about 'ladies first.'
"You owe me one," you said once you were both in the elevator again, standing side by side as you faced the closing door.
"Nuh-uh. This was just a coincidence. You needed to head upstairs anyways," he rebutted petulantly.
"Yeah? So you don't need me to help you get to your floor, then, right?", you questioned mockingly, knowing he would also have to work the scanner in order to get the door to open to Seventeen's designated floor. There were far too many steps to get to the artists' floors, but it made sense to you by now.
Upon the realization, he groaned, letting himself throw his head back against the wall behind him as he earned a giggle from you. He frowned in your direction at your laugh, though he joined you with a chuckle just mere seconds later.
"Okay, fine. I owe you," he gave up, still leaning against the wall behind but turning his head to look at you, "What can Yoon Jeonghan do for you?"
You pretended to mull over it for a few seconds, finger on your chin as you thought it over, "I have no idea. I'll let you know," you finally responded, "Okay, so, what floor?", you asked as your finger moved to the buttons on the elevator door.
"13th," he responded, now casually leaning back against the wall.
"Oh? The second highest floor. You're an important man, aren't you?", you teased, pressing his button before moving onto your group's number 9.
"Nine?," he gaped, "Seems I'm higher on the company hierarchy than you, yet you show me no respect," he joked back.
"Shut up. I'm going out of my way for you. Senior or not, you owe me. Those are the rules of all civilized society," you argued back.
"Okay, how about," he began, pressing his hands together as if making a proposition, "I see you downstairs every morning bright and early with a fresh cup of coffee in exchange for your face — y'know, for the scanner. How's that sound?", he proposed, a pleased smile on his face at your agape mouth.
"Every morning? Do you not have any friends?", you asked as the elevator continued to move up.
"Do you see anyone here? They all get here before me. You seem pretty friendless. C'mon. Free coffee, good company. I'll even play one of your group's songs in my next Welive. See? Can't get any better than that," he continued to sell his idea as the elevator came to a stop, now at his floor but demanding yet another facial scan to even exit the elevator.
"God, the security's too much," he groaned upon noticing the prompt on the small screen inside the elevator, "C'mon!", he turned to you, "Try to tell me that's not unnecessary."
You gave up, nodding as you chuckled, though not making a move to scan your face.
"Say yes. Please," he dragged the e for an annoyingly long amount of time, grinning when you rolled your eyes but laughed, "I'll keep going. Just agree. What better way to spend your time than with Yoon Jeonghan?"
"What makes you think I even knew that name before today?", you challenged.
"You do. Don't lie to me, it won't work," he smirked back before going back to being annoying again, "Come on-"
"Fine! I'll meet you downstairs every morning expecting a fresh matcha in hand — I don't drink coffee. But you still owe me," you agreed, extending your hand to him to solidify the agreement.
"No coffee? Ew. But okay, deal," he returned your handshake, holding onto your hand for an annoying amount of time, pretending as if he were unaware of when to let go and waiting for you to pull his hand off yours with another eye roll. He chuckled any time he managed to get a reaction out of you, leading you to realize he must be an absolute menace to every person he comes across. Sadly, he was charmingly entertaining, leaving you with no complaints.
Finally, you scanned your face on the screen, letting him walk in front of you to head out. Before the elevator doors could close and separate again, he held his arm out to stop them, nodding towards you.
"What's your name? I like you," he said plainly, head tilted in curiosity.
"Y/N," you said, "Please don't introduce yourself again-"
"Yoon Jeonghan," he interrupted anyways, "Remember that. We'll be having fun in the near future," were his last words before removing his hand and allowing the elevator doors to separate you, likely heading over to his groupmates upon leaving your line of sight.
Silver doors closed in front of you, now leaving you to your own company. Dumbfounded yet amused by the interaction, you stood there as you waited for the elevator to arrive to your floor, robotically scanning your face on the door once you made it there and exiting the square-shaped room upon arrival. There, you stood with the remnant of a shocked smile on your face, surprised at how easy it had been to put any concept of age or seniority aside when interacting with Yoon Jeonghan. While you always had the tendency of being overly formal with your seniors, you had spoken to Jeonghan like you would any guy your age, disregarding formalities as soon as he'd spoken to you.
You didn't truly need any convincing to agree to see him again. On the contrary, had he not suggested as such, you would've remained with an itch to find a reason for a re-encounter. Like any other junior idol at a company with big names such as BTS and Seventeen, developing a slight crush on your seniors was the normalcy — your groupmates Minji and Lila had crushes on BTS' V and Seventeen's Vernon, respectively — and it appeared that you were now joining them in the list of girls with unrequited crushes.
Jeonghan was, what, maybe five or so years older than you? The age difference alone was enough for you to chalk this up to a mindless crush. That, and the kindergarten teacher voice he had put on while speaking to you — clearly he made a very obvious distinction about your age difference right off the bat.
As of now, all you could do was hope to see him again (which, thankfully, you would) and retain the fun back and forth he'd welcomed you in on. Friendzone was one thing, but junior-zone? At least you now had a story to let your members in on next dance practice.
...
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mysicklove · 11 months
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𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐓 𝐈𝐍 𝐀 𝐅𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐒𝐘
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DAY 31: MASTURBATION
With: Izuku Midoriya
Word Count: 1.5k
Warnings: subish! Izuku, fem/afab reader, izuku masturbates to your voicemail and pretends to fuck you, reader calls him baby, and he calls u hun, needy izuku
A/N: masturbation fics are so fun to write for no reason. anyways, my last kinktober fic. crazy. it doesnt feel this way cause i wrote it halfway through lol.
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Izuku was left alone for too long. On the verge of three weeks to be exact.
He wasn't left completely alone, of course. He was just overseas, on an important mission. He was separated from you, but that to his love-sick brain, meant he was left alone. His sleep schedule is all messed up from the times he stayed up late at night to wish you goodmorning, or the times where he woke up super early to catch you before you ate dinner. 
He missed you, an ungodly amount. When he comes home to his luxury hotel, and flops onto the bed, the only thing he can think about is you. What it would feel like to wraps his arms around you, and melt in your warmth. The way your fingers would run through his hair, and comfort him from all he did that day.
Of course he had those innocent, romantic thoughts most of the time, but somehow one way or another those fantasies began to change. The touches reach lower, your words begin to drip with honey, and your lips seem to be more passionate, desperate even. Until five out of the seven days, he daydreams about fucking you. 
He lays against the bed frame, shirtless, and dick pulled out of his boxers. The trip back to the hotel was long, and he's been thinking about doing this for the past hour now. He prepared everything ahead of time, because if he was doing something as pathetic as this, at least do it right.
The lights were dimmed, and his eyelids are drooping, exhausted from the day. He slowly reaches toward the nightstand and grabs a couple of tissues, setting them down next to him. Then with a sigh, he puts his phone up to his ear, and brings his hand to his cock. 
He gulps when he hears your voice, wishing desperately that you weren't asleep. Its got to be around 5 am by that time, and of course he wished he was patient enough to wait a couple hours for you to talk to him. But, he was desperate, and the voicemail you left him a couple hours earlier did the job.
“Hey baby,” Your voice broadcast, and immediately he seems to melt. His eyes fall shut and his hands begins to move up and down his half hard cock. He hums in reply, not caring if you cant hear him. “I miss you. Saw a kid walk by me with your merch on, made me smile,” You say, your voice slightly muffled from a task you must be doing. 
He huffs a laugh, head falling to the side. “Yeah?” He breathes, thumb rubbing at the tip, and then falling back down to his shaft in a repetitive motion. You continue on about your day, mentioning nothing too important, just how you went grocery shopping and a nice walk after work. “You shouldnt be working. Can take care of you,” Izuku mumbles, eyes peering open just slightly to watch his movements.
His cock was on full display now, the tip a pretty shade of pink, and beginning to leak. You always called it pretty. A strange thing to say about a penis, but he soaked up the praise, taking pride in his cock now. 
The thought made his mind wander. Would you praise him for what he was doing now? He wasnt supposed to touch himself without you, but its been three weeks, you have got to understand. Were you touching yourself thinking about him? The thought sends a thrilling shiver down his spine.
Your voice was now a background noise, just listening to the tone, the sound of it, but nothing of what you were saying. Maybe you were cooing at him. Telling him how good he is doing. Or maybe you were calling him a pervert for doing something so gross without you knowing. He lets out a shaky moan, mewling out and picking up the pace of his hand. 
“I miss you,” He warbles into the phone, on top of your speech. What were you talking about now? A dog you saw? Nothing important. Why weren't you touching yourself to his voice? He would die for an audio of that. Or even an audio of where you give him directions of how to do touch himself correctly.
No Izuku, slow down. Don't hurt yourself, baby. Your voice clouds his mind, and he nods, peering back to his cock and slowing his hand down. Thats it. Tighten your hand, and focus on the tip. He obeys, moving his hand up to the head, and making small pumps there. “S-Sensitive there,” He groans to the empty hotelroom, shaking his head from side to side when his heartbeat begins to pick up.
“Went into Victoria's Secret today,” You hum, and his eyes widen, attention snapping back to your voicemail. He quickly turns up the volume and pressing the phone closer to his ear. “Bought something you’ll love. Red is your favorite, yeah?”
Lewd images flash through his head of dark red lingerie sets and he nods. “Fuck. Please,” He moans, wishing he was there to pick it out with you. His dick twitches, and a glob of precum leaks out. Green eyes flicker to it, and he uses his thumb to swirl it around the head, flinger glazing over the slit. “Wanna see,” Izuku pants, growing hot.
You seem to have heard his reply and it makes him whine. “You don't get to see till you get home. A nice reward for doing so good all this time you are away,” You purr, making a short kissing noise into the mic and laughing.
His eyebrows furrow at the possibilities and his mind drifts off from your voice again. Suddenly he is there with you, his rough hands trailing up and down your body. The dark lingerie looks perfect against your skin tone, and his mouth waters at the sight. Well, look how needy you are Deku. Do you want to fuck me that bad?
He nods his head frantically, hand unconsciously picking up the pace. “Please. Please, beggin’ you,” he chants under his breath, his back slightly arching off the frame. He dully notices that the voicemail has ended, but doesnt pay attention to it, too immersed in the movie playing in his head.
His mind cuts the scene forward, growing too impatient and desperate as his orgasm begins to approach. You are under him, sending scratch marks down his back while moaning out. His thrusts are frantic, and he tries to pretend that his hand is you. Its not the same, but it will do. 
“Am I doing good?” He mumbles, dropping his phone onto the bed and resting the other hand on his thigh. You nod at him, kissing his cheek with redden cheeks, and lazy grin. A view he has seen so many times that he has a perfect mental image of it. 
So good, Izuku. You wanna cum inside?
He moans, louder than he should, considering the thin walls, but he doesnt care at the moment. He never gets to cum inside – this was something he was waiting to hear. “Fuck. Pleaseeee,” He whimpers, eyebrows furrowing and hand frantically moving up and down. His cock is lubed up with pre, and its easier for his hand to move now. 
He climbs closer and closer to his high and now hes hunched slightly over on himself. Suddenly, he hears his phone ringing, cutting him out of his perfect daydream. Just a couple of seconds, he just needs a couple seconds more of fucking you, and then he can take this call. He whines slightly, and peers over at it, not stopping his movements.
When he sees your name his eyes light up, and he grabs the phone and brings it to his ear immediately. His hands makes a lewd squelching noise, but he too fucked out to care if you hear.
A couple of seconds go by, and he breathes into the mic, waiting. And then he hears a groggy, “Hey baby,” and he cums on the spot. Groaning into the phone without a care as cum spills out on his hands and his whole body shakes. 
Another second goes by, as you wait silently on your side, confused on what was happening, but too sleepy to put two and two together. Izuku's chest rises and falls with every breath, and he stares at his cum covered hand, trying not to let out a sound of complaint when he realized he forgot to cum into the tissue.
He blinks a couple times, exhausted but glowing. “Hey hun. Was just thinkin’ bout you,” He hums, grinning at his sticky hand and closing his eyes when he hears your girlish giggle.
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starsinthesky5 · 15 days
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nothing's gonna hurt you baby || joe burrow x reader
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description: the first game of the season doesn't go as planned and it kills you to see joe like this. you can't help but feel deja vu...
a/n: ahem, is this thing on 🎤🎤.  i'm backkkkk… after a much-needed tiny break (not planned just life getting in the way). this is a little something i cooked up! still working on "taste" which is a slow work in progress but that's the main next fic that'll be coming soon!
as always, thanks for reading & showing love :)))) i hope this wasn’t too much yapping and nonsense lol. the smut isnt my best because i wrote it while i was half asleep but i hope you enjoy it. there’s also plenty of song references throughout the fic (biggest one and the inspiration being this CAS song)
warnings: angst, fluff, smut. that's literally the whole fic :)
word count: 12.2 k
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You leaned back against the wall across from the entrance to the locker rooms, anxiously picking at a thumbnail on your finger as you waited for your boyfriend to come out so you two could go home. You were standing in your orange halter crop top with a little '9' embroidered on the bottom left side and matching white jean shorts with the same '9' embroidered in orange on the back right pocket. The '9' on your shorts was a little bigger than the one on your top which Joe loved because according to him ‘everyone knows who your ass belongs to’. His adorable possessive nature was always something you admired and appreciated. He was very secure in your relationship and knew nobody would take you from him, but that didn't stop him from ensuring everyone knew you were his at any chance he got. 
You were also wearing orange stiletto knee-high boots which adds to the overall orange vibe of your game-day outfit. The theme was 'open in orange' so you were wearing as much orange as you could possibly make look cute. Your '9' necklace was the only piece of jewelry you had around your neck, and your wrists were decked out with bracelets given to you by Joe–each one even more polished and expensive than the previous one, and various rings on your fingers. Your favorite one, the beautiful promise ring Joe gave you for your 2nd anniversary, shined brighter than any of the jewelry you had on. It was a ‘secret garden’ inspired ring, one of your favorite books of all time, and also the reason you and Joe met back in college. 
There was a growing pit in your stomach as you stood there gazing at the large ‘B’ on the wall outside the locker room, a slow-burning sensation that started about two minutes into the game, and it was only getting bigger as the minutes passed by. By the end of the game, you were the most on edge you had ever been in your entire life. 
Since this was Joe's first real game back after his wrist injury, your anxiety was already pretty bad by the time you got to the stadium. Your brain was swarmed with 'what-if?' scenarios and it was eating you alive. Joe, however, seemed the exact opposite of you. He was completely calm, normal, and focused like this was any other game. His peaceful temperament wasn't surprising since he had always been like this before every game but it also should've been expected since he worked through most of his emotions with you the night before and didn’t have anything left to get out. You on the other hand did a complete 360; you were so calm with him last night but right now you were on the verge of ripping your eyelashes out. 
Flashback to the night before
You reached over to grab your glass of water, taking a big sip to help wash down the spicy chicken you were eating for dinner. You looked up at Joe as you were swallowing your water, noting how he was playing around with his food on his unusually full plate. You had been eating for almost 15 minutes and by now, his plate should be empty given how much of an animal he was once dinner rolled around. 
“Not hungry?” you broke the unusual silence and asked. 
Joe's eyes glanced up to meet yours, his cheeks burning because you took note of his behavior, which you weren't supposed to. “Uhh, not really,”  he sighed as he placed his fork down and leaned back in his chair, his sweaty hands sliding up and down his thighs out of nervousness. 
“You do know you have a game tomorrow, right?” you chuckled as you placed your fork down and leaned back in your chair like he was. “You need all the protein you can get,”.
“...Y- yeah, I know,” Joe mumbled after a few seconds of uneasy silence. 
You instantly noticed the change in his body language at the mention of the game; the way his eyes fell down to his lap after his mumbling response, the way he started bouncing his left leg, his shoulders tensing up a little bit, the way he was constantly doing something with his hands as if he was uncomfortable, the way he was chewing at his bottom lip. These were all things Joe did when he was feeling anxious. 
But why was he anxious?
“Hey, you okay?” you asked while leaning forward again, his body language making you worry.
“Yeah, I'm fine,” he swallowed, still not meeting your eyes. He knew all it took was for you to get one look at his eyes to figure out he was lying and he really didn't want to burden you with his complicated emotions tonight. 
“He’s lying,” you thought to yourself. The fact that he was avoiding eye contact with you was a dead giveaway. “Joe?” you said while lowering your head to get into his view. 
“Yeah?” he said, his voice slightly trembling as he finally looked into your eyes. 
“Why are you lying to me?” you said as your face dropped at the sight of his tired eyes and shaky voice. 
“I’m not ly-,” he began to say before you interrupted him.
“Yeah, you are,” you interrupted. “I know you, remember. I know you better than you know yourself,” you softly laughed. 
You weren’t wrong there, you did know Joe better than he knew himself and he was the first one to admit it. You knew exactly what he was thinking, exactly how to put his feelings into words even when he couldn’t do so himself, and exactly how to handle him. There was a reason why you were the only person he let into the bubble that he had around himself once football started back up. You were his shelter in the hurricane that became his life once he was back on the field and without you, Joe would be a mess. 
Your response earned no reaction from Joe, he just sat there in silence and continued to bounce his leg up and down as he started to play with the wristbands on his wrist, yet another anxiety-related mannerism. 
You let out a tired breath, “I’m not doing this, I can’t have him shut me out again,” you thought to yourself before scooting your chair back, walking around the dining table, and sitting down on the seat next to him. You turned your chair to face him and grabbed his hands, feeling the thin layer of sweat that coated his palms which made your heart hurt. 
“Joe, it’s just us right now. Nothing’s gonna hurt you baby, talk to me,” you said while giving his hands a soft squeeze. You were feeling deja vu right now, you found yourself in the same situation you found yourself in many times over the early months of the off-season, only then it was 10 times worse than it was right now. 
Joe looked into your eyes, his body feeling heavy as self-doubt, anxiety, and fear crept into his mind. He was nervous about tomorrow’s game. Joe had never been nervous about a game like this and you were sitting in front of him, trying to get him to talk which you shouldn’t need to ‘try’ to do, he should be openly talking to you right now about his feelings. He always let you into the bubble, so why was it so hard for him to do it right now?
He realized that he was shutting down again, just like he had when he first got injured back in November. He didn’t want to go back to that dark place again, especially since coming out of it was a struggle that affected you both very badly. “I’m scared,” he choked out a few seconds later, trying his best to push through the wall he was unknowingly building again.
“Why?” you quietly asked as you felt your heart shatter because of the tone of his voice. You hated seeing him like this, it broke your heart to see him like this. You moved your hand up to cup his neck, the pads of your fingers were softly rubbing his tan skin which was a gentle action that you knew would calm him down. 
“It’s my first game back from injury. An injury that could’ve easily ended my career. It should’ve ended my career,” he said while lifting his hand to wipe a stray tear from his eye.
“But it didn’t,” you smiled. “It didn’t end your career then and it won’t end your career now,”.
“How do you know that? I haven’t played in a real game since November. I haven’t gotten hit yet, I haven’t gotten sacked yet, and I haven’t been putting that much pressure on my hand. Tomorrow could easily be the last game of my career. Just one wrong move and-,”.
“No.” you interrupted. “You’re not doing that. Not on my watch,” you sternly said, trying to prevent him from getting too far inside his head about everything. Overthinking was his worst enemy.
“I’m being realistic, Y/N. Who knows if I’ll be the same Joe I was before,” he said while blinking away a few tears. 
“You don’t need to be the same Joe you were before,” you soothed while continuing to rub his neck. “What you went through was unlike anything anyone has seen before, if people are expecting you to get right back to where you left off then they have no heart or brains. You’ll get to where you need to be, I promise. Things like this take time,” you added. “The Joe you are now is more than enough. You have grown in many ways that you might not have been able to unless you went through what you went through after November. You’ve worked on yourself and become more open, honest, and loose. You’ve put in the work on the field, in the weight room, in training, and even at home. You’re coming out of this a better person and a better player. A better Joe,”. 
“I just don’t want to let anyone down. What if we lose tomorrow? With the slow start narrative getting louder and the aftermath of my wrist injury, this could be really fucked. This year is so important and I just don’t want to let anyone down; the organization, the team, the public, you,” he continued, his grip on your other hand becoming tighter. “I know I have a chip on my shoulder and have a lot to prove this year, but the thought of people not seeing that is killing me,”.
“You won’t let anyone down, Joe. And you could never ever fucking let me down, never say that again,” you said as you continued to rub his neck, seeing that he was getting more loose from your touch. “You’ve worked so so hard the past 10 months to get back to where you want to be and everyone and I mean everyone has seen that. I’ve seen that. Adversity always makes you better, it ignites that fire inside of you. That fire makes you who you are,” you said to him, feeling a little more comfortable yourself after seeing his body relax a bit. “Remember who you are. You’re Joe Burrow. Heisman winner, College Football National Champion, the first overall draft pick, one of the Top 5 quarterbacks in the league, one of the highest-paid quarterbacks, Ohio’s golden boy. You’re all of those things for a reason, Joe. You have it in you. You don’t need to be afraid or doubt yourself because you did all of those things, nobody else, just you,”. 
You moved your hand over and wiped the tears that slowly were sliding down his cheeks before feeling Joe grab your hand and press a wet kiss to your palm. “I love you,” he sniffled. “I genuinely don’t know what I would do without you,”.
“I love you too,” you smiled before you leaned up to kiss his forehead. “Tomorrow is unpredictable, I will admit. But you control the narrative. You control what happens and what doesn’t happen out there. It’s just you and the football like it always has been. I know you and I know you’re going to kill it,”. 
Joe gave you a small nod as he let your words sit inside of his head; you were right and he knew you were right. He did all of this himself, he single-handedly built his reputation and although there was an immense amount of pressure on him to maintain it, he knew that it was his reputation. He had control over his story, not anyone else. He didn’t need to work at anyone else’s speed except for his own. He knows the narrative that the media has been running with since November, that his career has been hindered by continuous injuries and he’s ’injury prone’. He knows what that title has done to the public's opinion on his career and rank as a player, but they don’t get to define him based on what they think. He is defined by everything he does himself. 
It’s not their story, it’s his. 
He reached out and placed his hand on your waist, gently pulling you from your chair and into his lap. You instantly looped your arms around his neck and pushed his head to the crook of your neck, this warm hug from you was the final thing he needed to fully calm his nerves. “You always know what to say to me,” he mumbled against your collarbone as you ran your fingers through his slightly grown-out frosted tips, his hands softly massaging your plush skin. 
“It’s my job,” you chuckled. “I signed up for this when I met you in English class all those years ago and I plan on staying true to what I signed up for as long as I can,” you added before you dropped a kiss on his cheek, your mind calming down once you felt him relax against you.
“You better plan on it. I’m not letting you go anywhere,” he said as he pulled you in tighter. 
“Well it’s a good thing I don’t want to go anywhere,” you giggled in his ear before pressing a kiss to it, then turning back to serious to finish off your little pep-talk. “I’m so proud of you, Joe. More than you’ll ever know. You’re truly the hardest working man I’ve ever met and you continue to amaze me with your dedication and determination every single day. Never think that you’re not good enough and you’re not who everyone thinks you are. You’re Joe Fucking Burrow. Never forget that,”. 
“I won’t,” he sighed contently, finally at peace. “I won’t forget,” he said again before he pulled you closer and closed his eyes, getting lost in your palliative embrace. 
End of flashback 
You were so calm last night and now you were the complete opposite; you couldn’t figure out where and when things went south with your emotions. During the game, your brain was running a mile a minute as you thought of everything that could go wrong: Joe re-aggravating his injury, someone else on the team getting badly injured, and the team not being able to beat the slow start narrative. You were anxious, nervous, and deeply scared once the first quarter of the game started, and your feelings were validated when two minutes into the game Joe got sacked and fumbled the ball. 
You remember your heart stopping once you saw him go down as this was the first time he had been hit since November. 
“No!” you screamed as you shot up from your seat, your hand gripping the necklace around your neck as you looked down on the field and saw a bunch of large behemoths on top of him. “No, No, No,” you panicked as your breaths got shorter, your anxiety getting worse and worse as you saw flashbacks from the Ravens game in November. “Please be okay,” you thought to yourself as you were on the verge of tears. 
Then you remember your heart dropping to your feet once you saw the ball come loose and even though he recovered it, this whole play left a bitter taste in your mouth since it was literally the first few minutes of the game and things were already not going as planned. Luckily, his going down didn’t seem to affect his wrist, but you could only imagine how it affected him mentally. 
You thought that would’ve been the only sack of the game, but once again you were wrong. Each time Joe went down, you felt your heart stop. Each time he ran, your heart stopped again as you got flashbacks from early last year with his calf injury. Each time the camera panned to the sidelines and focused in on him, you felt like crying because you could tell the way the game was going was eating away at him by his facial expressions. 
Every sack, every fumble, every drive that ended without scoring, and every turnover was killing you because the things Joe feared were happening even though you told him they wouldn’t. Seeing him flex his wrist on the sidelines and in between plays was the one thing that really did it for you. You didn’t know if this was just to keep his hand loose because he was feeling some tightness or whether this was because something was actually bothering him, your brain was in panic mode for the rest of the game. 
“I hope he’s okay, that was ugly,” you thought to yourself before you jumped at the sound of the locker room door swinging open and snapping you out of your daze. 
You watched as Joe walked out of the locker room, his eyes exhausted and defeated as he gave you a small ‘reassuring’ smile, however, it wasn’t very reassuring because his eyes gave his true feelings away in an instant. 
You returned his smile with a smile of your own, opening your mouth to ask him if he was okay but before you could he leaned forward and dropped a kiss on your lips. He held it for a few moments as he melted into your touch which was the only relieving feeling he had felt all day before pulling away, entwining your pinkies, and leading you out to the car. 
“That’s not good, he’s never this quiet when I come to meet him after the game,” you thought to yourself. If you didn’t say something first, he almost always did, but he wasn’t saying anything which was concerning. You stayed quiet as he led you out to the garage, your eyes not leaving his weary face for one second. You could tell he wasn’t okay, you could tell he was beating himself up over today’s loss.  
A few moments later, he led you over to the passenger’s side of the car, an unusual move since you always drove the both of you home after a game. “I thought I was driving,” you gently said as you looked up at him. 
“I got it,” he said with no emotion in his voice, dropping your pinky and looking into your eyes with his now cold and emotionless ones. 
“But Joe I-,” you began to say but before you could finish your sentence he turned around and walked to the other side of the car. 
“He definitely heard me,” you thought to yourself as you watched him open the backseat door and roughly throw his bag in, then slammed the door shut with a little more force than usual which startled you. 
You let out a deep breath before opening your door and sliding into the passenger seat, your body stiff and frozen because of the way he was acting. You were scared to say something, scared to do something because you didn’t know what reaction you’d get from him, “He’s not doing this again, right?” you worried. 
10 minutes into the drive home, you started getting agitated. He had yet to say anything to you, not even asking you if you were cold and if he should turn down the AC which he always asked you whenever you were in the car since he knew you got cold easily. His hands were gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were practically turning white and his eyes were so locked in on the road in front of you that he hadn’t even noticed that you started shivering a little bit. 
“Are you okay?” you finally broke the tension and asked, your bottom lip in between your teeth out of nervousness. Joe rarely ever raised his voice at you or got irritated by you saying something to him, but that didn’t stop you from getting nervous around him whenever he was acting like this. 
You saw his jaw clench for a brief moment, your heart skipping a beat as you braced yourself for a potentially explosive reaction, but then you saw him unclench it. “I’m fine,” he said, once again with no emotion in his voice. 
You gave him a small nod and then a few seconds later asked another question since he wasn’t budging, “How’s your wrist?”.
He let out a sigh, one that you could hear from his nose so it was definitely coming from a tired place, “It’s fine,” he said again, not giving you much to work with. 
“He’s not fine, lying yet again. Maybe I could make him laugh? I need to do something to get him to loosen up” you thought to yourself, your brain scrambling to think of something to make him laugh even if it was for a brief moment. 
“At least you guys scored a touchdown this time,” you smiled a few seconds later. “Even though you didn’t win the game, I’d say it was better than week 1 last year against the browns,”. 
You studied his face carefully after you finished your sentence, searching for any tiny muscle movement that resulted in his lips curling up into a smile, but nothing. “Yeah,” he nodded, once again with no emotion. He then reached over to the center console, turning the knob for the volume up so that the once softly playing music was blasting throughout the car. 
You felt your lip quiver and your eyes started to pool with tears as you continued to look at him, praying that he would look at you for even one brief moment, but he didn’t. “He’s doing it again,” you thought to yourself as you fell back into your seat. “He’s fucking doing it again. Just like he did after he got injured. He’s shutting me out,” you thought as you felt a tear slide down your cheek, your head turning away so that you were looking out the window so if Joe did happen to look over at you, he wouldn’t notice your silent tears. 
Joe did look over at you. He was waiting for you to stop looking at him because he couldn’t look into your eyes right now, not when his brain was all over the place and he could regret the things that potentially came out of his mouth. He looked over at you when he saw you turn your head to the window from the corner of his eyes, his eyes softening when he saw your body shaking. You were cold. He always asks you if you’re cold, and this time he didn’t. 
“I fuck everything up,” he muttered under his breath as he reached over to turn the AC down. 
30 minutes later
After a car ride filled with deafening silence, you made it back home a half hour later and were pouring two glasses of water for you and Joe. He was sitting at the kitchen island behind you scrolling on his phone, still quiet as ever. You grabbed his glass and placed it in front of him, getting a peek at what he was looking at on his phone. 
Media reactions. 
Joe never looked at what the internet was saying about a game after it happened, it was one of his ‘blocking outside noise’ methods, so why was he looking at them? 
“You really shouldn’t be looking at all that bullshit,” you said to him as you took a small sip of your water, the cool liquid feeling like a quiet unraveling of tightness within your body.
Joe was so focused on his phone that he didn’t notice that you were talking to him, the only things that he could hear were the voices of reporters talking about the team’s constant slow starts, his poor performance–saying that he played scared, rusty, and didn’t look like himself and that this team is constantly setting itself up for failure. 
A video came up on his phone, an analyst was talking about his performance in today’s game, “We have to talk about Joe Burrow. He said he was ready, he said he felt great, and he said that this team was ready. But did that Cincinnati Bengals team that played against the Patriots today look ready? Absolutely not. Did the Joe Burrow who stepped out onto that field look ready? Absolutely Not. He looked scared, he didn’t look like himself. The lack of Deep Balls, the lack of throwing down the field. That’s not the Joe Burrow we’ve seen in years past. What’s truly going on in Cincinnati? Is there a deeper issue within that we aren’t seeing?”. 
“They see right through me,” Joe thought to himself, feeling his eyes sting from the hot tears that were threatening to come out. He felt like the room was on fire, and there was invisible smoke. Nobody could really see what he was going through, all they saw was the burning room. 
You felt your heart drop as you heard the reporter talk about Joe’s performance in today’s game, knowing that Joe was probably already criticizing himself and this was going to make it worse. “Joe?” you said a little louder, snapping him out of the dark haze he was stuck in.
“Hm?” he hummed as he looked up at you, noticing your pursed lips and worried eyes. 
“Are you okay?” you asked again, feeling uneasy from the look he had on his face.
“...I said I’m fine,” he replied, his voice a little rougher than earlier. 
You shook your head, “I know you’re not fine. Stop lying to me,” you said with a more rigid tone. 
“I’m not lying to you. I said I’m fine. I don’t think it could be more simpler than that,” he rolled his eyes as he picked up his glass of water, taking a big sip. 
“If you are really ‘fine’,” you say, making air quotes around ‘fine’, “Why are you looking at all that bullshit? You never look at any of that because you say it messes with your head,” you say.
“Because I can?” he scoffs, standing up from the barstool and walking around the island to place his water glass in the sink. 
You take a deep breath, trying not to point out his snappy attitude because you know he isn’t in the right headspace right now. “Joe, seriously. I know you’re not fine but it’s just me. You can talk to me,” you gently say as you walk over to him, placing a hand on his shoulder but he quickly turns around and walks back over to where he was sitting to grab his phone which made your hand drop from his shoulder. 
“I know you had a shitty game, I know you’re in your head about it, I get it. Trust me I do, but just let me-,” you begin to say as you walk over to him before he interrupts you. 
“Do you though?” he asks. “Do you really get it? Sweet talking and hugs don’t magically make everything better, Y/N,” he says, his voice a little louder. 
“Ouch.” you thought to yourself. “No. Remember, he’s not in the right headspace, Y/N. He’s not trying to be hurtful,”. 
“I’m not saying that,” you say to him. “I know that doesn’t make everything better but talking to someone about your feelings does. You know that. You spent weeks working on that, remember?” referring to the therapy sessions he had this past off-season to work through the emotional and mental effects of his injury and just overall mental health. 
“I know, but I said I’m fine. I don’t need to talk about anything, especially with you,” he said, his words feeling like a punch to your gut. 
“Okay, what the fuck?” you thought to yourself. “What do you mean ‘especially’ with me?” you asked, your tone switching from gentle to slightly angry. 
Joe stays quiet for a few seconds, his gaze fixed on the concerned look on your face. He knew what he was saying to you was most likely hurting you and you were coming from a place of worry, but he couldn’t control the things that were leaving his mouth right now. “I’m not doing this with you right now,” he shook his head and turned around, walking over to the stairs.
“Doing what?” you said loudly, following him over to the stairs. “I’m just trying to get you to talk to me but you’re making this a bigger deal than it needs to be,”.
“How am I making this a bigger deal?” he grumbles, turning around to look at you. “You’re the one that won’t leave me alone. I’ve said that I’m fine to you like 5 times now,”.
“You’re making this a bigger deal because you’re shutting me out, again,” you say, feeling your cheeks burn with anger, frustration, and sadness. You and Joe hardly fought, and whenever you did, it broke both of you. You felt like absolute shit right now and you couldn’t even imagine how Joe was feeling. 
“No, I’m not. You’re being unbelievable right now,” he rolled his eyes again and started walking up the stairs with you hot on his tail. 
“No, I’m not,” you say, echoing his words. “You are shutting me out just like you did after your wrist injury. What happened to letting me in your bubble? Because right now it feels like I’m being pushed 100 feet from your bubble for no reason,” you said, your voice a little shaky as you tried to hold back your building tears. 
“I’m not shutting you out, Y/N,” he said loudly, his voice even more rougher. “Just because I don’t want to talk to you about how shitty I did today doesn’t mean I’m shutting you out. I just don’t want or feel the need to talk to you about it,”.
“See, you aren’t okay. I knew you weren’t okay. You know you played like shit so you’re clearly not fine,” you huffed as you made it to the top of the stairs.
“Is that all you wanted to hear? That I played like shit? Okay, yeah, I played like absolute shit. You win. Now will you leave me alone?” he said, trying to hold back from shouting at you even though he was dancing on the line that separated shouting from talking loudly. 
“That’s not what I want to hear, Joe. You know that,” you said, your voice cracking once you felt a hot tear slide down your cheek. “I just want you to talk to me about your feelings, especially after our conversation last night. I don’t want you to go through all that again because I know how hard you tried to move past this mentally. You shut me out before and dealt with all of this on your own, and I saw how badly it affected you. I don’t want you to do that again. I can’t see you like that again,” you cried, your body shaking as all of your built-up emotions from the entire day were coming out. 
You wiped your eyes as you followed him down the hallway, both of you walking past your bedroom and heading toward his office. You made it to the door and watched him open it and step inside. You were going to follow him in, but he turned around on the doorstep which blocked you from going inside. “No,” he shook his head.
“But..Joe I-,” you cried harder.
“No. Just please go away,” he said, his jaw clenching again like it was earlier, but this time it stayed clenched. “I can’t deal with you right now,” he said, his words feeling like a stab to your heart now. 
There was nothing behind those eyes now. He had built up that wall again, that wall you tried so hard to prevent from being built because you knew you’d never be able to get over it. The same wall that he had built back in November after his injury. He did it again. After working so hard to be more open and honest about his feelings, thoughts, and emotions, he went straight back to square 1. 
“Joe, please,” you pleaded. “Nothing’s gonna hurt you baby, if you just talk to me,” you cried more forcefully.
Joe stared at you for a few heartbeats, his heart-shattering at the sight of the state he had brought you to. It was all his fault. Everything was his fault; the game and now this argument. Deep down, he knew you were right, but he just couldn’t see it because the wall he had built was too high. 
He was about to open his mouth to say something, trying to listen to you and talk to you about how he was feeling, but he backed down once he saw you start to shake. He saw your distressed face, your red eyes, your trembling lip, your shaking body, and your rapid breathing. He knew this was all his fault. If he unloaded all of his incredibly heavy, intense, and dreadful feelings on you right now, that would be so incredibly selfish of him. 
Joe backed up in the doorway which made you think he was letting you come inside, but just as you were about to come in, he shut the door on your face. 
You stare at the closed door for a few seconds, not processing what just happened. He really wasn’t letting you in. After all that, after everything he went through? After everything you both went through these past 10 months?
“Do you know how scared I was the entire game? Do you know how every time you went down my heart stopped? Do you know that I spent 5 minutes crying in the bathroom during halftime because I saw the look on your face?” you shouted at the door, your sobs getting louder. “I know this is hard for you but I’m here, Joe. I’m always h- here,” you choke out. 
“Just leave me the fuck alone!” Joe shouted through the door, tears sliding down his cheeks as he squeezed his eyes shut because he instantly regretted saying that to you especially with that harshness in his voice that he knew would hurt you. 
You backed up from the door once you heard him shout at you, he never shouted at you, not even when you had arguments worse than this. You looked around the hallway, trying to collect your thoughts but there were none left to collect. You said everything that you could’ve possibly said to get through to him, what more was there left to say?
He wanted you to leave him alone, so you were going to do just that. 
“Okay, I’ll leave you alone,” you whispered to yourself, turning around and walking to your shared bedroom, your sobs echoing throughout the house as you disappeared inside your room. 
On the other side of the office door, Joe was sitting in his office chair, hot tears sliding down his cheeks as he was drowning with regret. He lamented saying those things to you, he doesn’t know what came over him. What was wrong with him? 
“Why did I do that to her? Why the fuck did I do that to…her?” he sniffled. He knows his anxiety and fears are controlling him right now, but there was absolutely no reason for him to take it out on the one person who always is there for him no matter what.  
“I fuck everything up,” he cried as he looked at a photo of the two of you sitting on his desk, a photo his mom took after he got his wrist surgery. 
Flashback to November 27th
“Babe, can we go skydiving?” Joe laughed as he rolled his head against the pillow to look at you. He had just woken up from surgery so he was feeling the effects of the anesthesia, and boy were they funny. The things that were coming out of his mouth were nothing but lighthearted, pure fun. It was good to see him laugh and smile especially since how melancholic his attitude had been since he got injured. 
“Absolutely not,” you said while giving him a serious look. “You are not jumping out of a plane as long as I am on this earth,”. 
“But why not? They have parachutes,” he pouted. “I think it would be sooooo fun,”.
“This is the same man who hates flying. Can you believe it?” Robin laughed as she finished typing up a text to send to family members to let them know the surgery went really well. 
“I know right?” you laughed with her. 
“How long did they say I can’t do stuff with my hand for?” Joe asked you with his adorable wide-eyed stare. 
“I think they said to have it in a sling for at least a month right now until your first follow-up,” you said as you brushed his hair out of his eyes.
“A month?” Joe dramatically gasped, his jaw dropping to the floor.
“Yeah,” you laughed. “Sorry baby, you’re not Deadpool and can’t heal within 5 seconds,” you smiled. 
“Wait, does that mean we can’t have sex for a month?” he gasped again.
“Joe!” you shrieked, your cheeks turning red because his mom was right in front of you both.
“Ah, wait. Loophole, duhh. You can just be on top which I know you love,” he winked while using his finger to point at you for emphasis. 
“Oh my god,” you whined as you hid your face in your sweatshirt sleeves, hearing Joe’s mom break out into a fit of laughter. 
“Hey, don’t hide your pretty face from me,” Joe pouted as he used his good hand to lower your hands that were covering your face. “Ahh, there she is. My beautiful, adorable, sexy-as-hell, fiance,” he said after you uncovered your face.
“Fiance?” you raised an eyebrow and asked. “Is this your way of proposing?” you giggled. 
“No. When I actually do, it’ll be way more grander, sexier, and special than this,” he winked. “Like I’m talking maybe on the top of the Empire State Building, maybe in the middle of the football stadium, maybe at the top of the Eiffel Tower, maybe even while we go skydiving type special proposal. But I know I’m marrying you and I like the word fiance better than girlfriend,” he laughed. 
“You’re insane,” you laughed as you dropped your head to his chest, feeling him cup your head with his good hand and drop a kiss on your head. 
“I love you like a lot,” he giggled. “Like a lot a lot,” he giggled again.
“Ohh, I know,” you cheesed. 
“You definitely don’t. I love you more than words can describe,” he smiled, you craned your head up to look into his sweet eyes before leaning up and pressing a kiss to his lips. “I love you too, Burrow,”. 
After you pulled away you were about to get up from his hospital bed but his mom spoke up, “Wait, stay like that. I’m going to get a picture,” she smiled.  
“Yesss,” Joe nodded. “I loveeeee pictures, especially with my fiance,”. 
“You are really something,” you giggled as you sat up straight.
You moved your hair back and helped Joe scooch up in the bed before turning your head and pressing a kiss to his cheek, placing your hand under his chin as he had a giant grin on his face. His good hand was wrapped around your waist and was holding you as close as possible to his body. 
You two were so happy. For once this past month, you were laughing, you both were smiling. 
“Are you going to be my protector for the next few months?” Joe giggled. “Not let anything bad happen to me and my wrist?”.
“Oh, 100%. I am your nurse, personal bodyguard, and protector. Nobody is hurting my man on my watch,” you grinned again as you smothered his cheeks with kisses. 
You both knew this wasn’t going to be easy, but as long as you were by each other’s side, nothing was going to hurt you. 
End of flashback 
“Nothing’s going to hurt me as long as she’s with me. I can’t keep pushing her away,” Joe whispered to himself as he snapped out of the sweet memory and wiped his tears. 
2 hours later
It had been two hours since your fight with Joe so it had been two hours since you had last seen him. After going into your bedroom earlier, you spent about 10 minutes crying in the bathroom as you tried to change into some comfier clothes. You felt awful about the whole thing. The way you lost your cool a few times, the way he was talking to you, just everything–it was horrible. 
You were currently sitting on the couch, sipping on some water and scrolling through some photos on your phone of the two of you. You let out a small laugh when you came across a silly photo of the two of you at a Hurricane Party you dragged him to at LSU. You remembered he was fully against the idea of going to a party during a hurricane, saying it was ‘batshit crazy’ and a ‘death wish’ but you managed to drag him along with you because you didn’t want him to sit inside and stress about the storm. In the photo, you two were standing on the deck of your friend’s house, the wind blowing so hard against you that Joe’s hat was flying away, and you with the hat you were trying to catch. His hand was tightly gripping onto yours and there were silly, drunk, lovesick smiles on both your faces as you were being soaked from the rain.  
“We’re insane,” you sniffled, realizing how batshit crazy it really was to party during a hurricane. 
As you were looking at other photos, you heard heavy footsteps coming down the stairs. You looked over at the bottom of the staircase, seeing Joe coming down in comfy clothes and wet hair which meant he showered and came out of his office at some point. 
“At least he wasn’t in there for the entirety of these two hours looking at stuff from the game,” you thought to yourself. 
Joe met your eyes as he walked into the room, seeing how red and puffy they were which was yet another thing that made him feel like absolute shit. He turned his head away at the same time you turned yours and walked into the kitchen, pulling out a glass from the cabinet. 
He started pouring you a glass of water, adding a few ice cubes because he knew you loved to chew on ice after you cried. At first, he didn’t understand the correlation, but then you explained to him that the ice has this cooling effect that can reduce heat and swelling around the face that happens after crying for a while. 
He grabbed the glass from the counter and slowly walked over to the couch, standing in front of you and holding the glass out. “Here,” he softly said, his voice just as heavy as yours which told you that he was crying too.
You slowly looked up at him, noticing that his eyes were also red and puffy. He definitely was crying too. 
“Thanks,” you quietly say as you take the glass from him, taking a big sip and letting the ice cube float into your mouth. 
“At least he remembered the ice,” you thought to yourself, appreciating the fact that he added them. 
You start to chew on the ice as you see Joe plop down on the couch next to you, your body freezing up because you remember everything he said to you earlier. You knew he was coming from a place of anger and guilt, but it still hurt. Joe noticed you tense up next to him, because of him, and that felt like a knife to his heart.
You both stayed quiet, staring at the random re-run of an episode of Friends that was playing on TV, but your minds weren’t focused on what was happening in the show. They were focused on each other. 
Joe felt his bottom lip start to quiver as his eyes once again pooled with tears, all of his emotions were coming out again. He fucked things up with you so bad tonight that he didn’t even know how to fix it. He hurt you. You were just trying to help him for his own good and he shut down on you. He shut you out. The one and only person that he let into his bubble. The one person he needed in his bubble. 
His brain was already crowded with anxiety and fear regarding football, but this was the worst thing out of everything. He didn’t want to go back to that dark place again, he didn’t want to deal with this on his own.
You heard soft sniffles come from beside you so you looked over, your heart shattering again as you saw Joe on the verge of tears, his eyes so red and his lip trembling like he was trying to hold it together. 
He didn’t need to hold it together, not around you. You knew that. You needed to make sure he knew that. “Come here,” you whispered to him as you put your arm around his shoulder and pulled him into your chest.
Joe immediately snaked his arm around your waist and rested his cheek against your chest, letting his tears fall from his eyes onto your pink tank top. You wriggled your hand into his frosted tip hair, scratching his scalp and pressing kisses to his head as he cried harder into your chest. 
You hated seeing him cry, but you knew he was feeling a lot right now and he needed to get his feelings out and this was the best way for him to do it. “It’s okay,” you soothed as you rubbed his back. “I’m here,”.
“I’m sorry, Y/N. I’m s- so fucking sorry,” he cried harder. “I didn’t mean to yell at you, I didn’t mean to say all of that horrible shit to you. You don’t deserve any of that, you were just trying to help,”.  
“I know, baby, I know,” you said, blinking away a few of your own tears. “It’s okay,”,
“No, it’s not okay,” he said. “This is all so fucked up. I fucked everything up,” he sobbed. 
“No, you didn’t,” you said to him as you continued to rub his back. “You didn’t fuck anything up, Joe. Everything’s fine,”.  
“I did. I fucked up in the game and then I fucked up things with you. Nothing’s fine,” he sniffled. 
“Listen, Nothing's gonna hurt you, baby. As long as you're with me, you'll be just fine,” you said to him before pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Like I said earlier, I’m right here. Just talk to me,”.
“...You’re right,” he sniffled, breaking through the mental wall he had built. “You belong in my bubble, I can’t keep you out of it,”.
“So don’t,” you said, pulling him in tighter. 
“I’m scared,” he breathed out a few seconds later. “I feel guilty about everything. This game was supposed to be different. I was supposed to be different. I feel like all of this was my fault because I wasn’t as ready as I thought I was. This was my first game back and I played like absolute shit out there,”.
“Oh, Joe,” you said as your face dropped as well as your heart. 
“I disappointed everyone. Most importantly, I disappointed you. Even after everything you told me last night, I couldn’t do it. Everything that could’ve gone wrong went wrong and I didn’t do anything to fix it,” he said as a few more tears fell from his eyes.
“You didn’t disappoint anyone, Joe. Nobody expected you to go out there and play like you had a completely normal year. You went through so much with this injury, obviously things weren’t going to go back to normal in one game,” you gently said. “And you could never disappoint me. I told you, I know you. The public doesn’t know you like I do so they’re going to run with whatever bullshit they want as an explanation for why the game went the way it did. I know why things went the way they did, I’m not disappointed in you at all. I’m proud of you for going out there and doing what you did today,” you said as you pressed another kiss on his forehead and moved your hand back up to his soft hair. 
“I just feel like I had the shinest wheels, you know? There was so much hype and fire around me when I first got drafted, but ever since then, I’ve just disappointed everyone. It feels like the wheels are rusting. I know what everyone’s been saying, and I get it. I would say the same thing if I was in their shoes. It’s been 5 years of nothing but injuries, slow starts, and coming up short. I feel like I’m falling behind everyone, everyone keeps getting better and I feel stuck. Right now, all of my cages are mental and that’s why I’m scared. If I keep doing this, I’m wasting my potential. I’m stuck as the ‘injury prone’ and ‘wasted potential’ quarterback,” he said, the vulnerability in his voice comforting you because it meant he was letting you in.
“I haven’t done what I promised to do when I got drafted, so why should people believe me when I say that I’m built for this? Why should they believe me when I say that this year will be different? And you know what? They don’t believe me, at least not anymore and I saw that today. They see right through me. Even I see right through me,” he said.
“Can you see right through me?” he asked you, looking up into your soft eyes. 
“Yes,” you nodded, his brows furrowing at your response. “Not in that way though,” you added. “I see right through you because I know you. That’s why I knew you weren’t fine the second you walked out of the locker room. Remember, the media, the fans, and the public don’t see through you, they only see the surface level because they don’t know you. They don’t truly know how hard you work, how strong you are, how much passion you really have for this. They’re going to spew whatever bullshit they want because that’s what they do. If they were in your shoes, then they would know why these things happen and the reality of the situation. They can’t see through you, I promise. And as for the not getting better, you’re crazy if you think that. I saw you in practice, your throws have never looked better. You have never looked better, all this muscle and beefiness is a part of getting better. And like I told you yesterday, you control the narrative. You don’t have to be the ‘injury-prone’ quarterback, you can change it. Deep down, you know who you are. Don’t let these trolls and interlopers define you,”. 
Joe nodded as he felt his breaths steady out and his tears start to dry up. “I played scared yesterday, and I don’t know why? I thought I was ready, you know? We weren’t supposed to lose that game,”.
“I know,” you sighed. “But you’ve gone through so much these past 5 years, it’s completely normal to be hesitant and nobody should be blaming you for this. Yesterday’s loss wasn’t just on you. You’re on a team, Joe. They didn’t play perfectly either and the blame shouldn’t only fall on you. You’re a piece to the puzzle, a big piece, but not the only piece. The media always wants to pin everything on one person. One thing that I admire about you is how easily you block out the outside noise, don’t change that. Block it out like you always do,”. 
“This is game 1 out of 17. Don’t let this define you and don’t let the noise get to you,” you said as you used your thumb to rub the skin underneath his eye, wiping away the wet tear trails.
Joe nodded again, taking in all of the words you were saying to him. You were right, about all of it. He was so in his head about everything and so panicked that he couldn’t use logic and sense to think clearly. This was just one bump in the road as you explained. He had 16 more games to play and 16 more opportunities to show everyone what he’s made of. 
“You’re right,” he nodded. “This was one game. I can take this, learn from my mistakes, and get better,”.
“That’s exactly what I like to hear,” you smiled after hearing him work through his complicated feelings. “You’re going to get better. The team is going to get better. If you want to fix the blaring issues, do it with a calm, collected, and cool mind. You’re called ‘Joe Cool’ for a reason. Live up to that name,” you giggled. “Don’t lose your cool, don’t lose your composure over shit like this. I know you feel awful about how things went today, but one bad game doesn’t define a player and doesn’t define the entire season. Things were rough, but you always, no, you will bounce back,”.
“Thank you,” he sniffled against your chest, his brain feeling like it had just been given a nice comfy king-sized bed and cloud-like blanket to sleep in for the night. You were the only person that could make him turn his brain off and he couldn’t thank you enough. “I think I just got panicked after seeing everyone’s reactions and seeing how things looked out on the field plus everything I was feeling yesterday made it worse,”.
“Of course,” you smiled as you gave his head another kiss before holding him tighter against you. “And I get it. Sometimes it feels like the walls are caving in but that’s why it’s always important to talk to someone when you feel that way. Bottling up those feelings only makes it worse,”.  
“You're 100% right, Y/N. I’m sorry about earlier,” he said while looking up into your eyes again. “That was so fucking uncalled for. And I’m sorry for raising my voice, I was a dick to you the entire night,”. 
“It’s okay,” you smiled. “You were a dick, I agree,” you began to say, earning a laugh from Joe which made your heart smile, “But you’re my dick and I know how to handle you,” you smiled, then quickly furrowed your brows. 
“Wait, that doesn’t sound right at all,” you slapped your hand against your mouth after realizing what that sounded like, another laugh coming from Joe’s mouth. 
“I know what you mean,” he smiled. “But seriously, everything I said was straight bullshit. You mean the world to me and without you, I really think I would end up in an insane asylum. You’re the single most important thing in my life and I appreciate everything you do for me. Don’t ever leave me alone if I ask you to. Like please, I can’t live without you. Chain yourself to my wrist if you need to,”.
“Noted,” you smiled. “Just don’t freak out on me like that again, okay? You worked so hard this past year to get out of that zone, break free from that dark cloud, and I don’t want to see you back there,”. 
“I promise I won’t go back there and if I ever feel like I am, you’ll be the first person I come to. I’m never going to keep you out of the bubble again,” he said as he pressed a kiss to your chest. “I love you,” he said with another kiss to your chest.
“I love you too,” you smiled down at him. “I love you like a lot a lot,” you giggled, echoing what he said to you after his wrist surgery. 
“You know, sweet talking and hugs do make everything better,” he laughed as he looked up at you with his child-like smile you loved to see. 
“Oh, I know,” you winked. “But you still feel pretty stiff right now. Are you sure you’re 100% okay?”. 
“I think it’s just all the tension that I didn’t get to release out on the field. And I guess everything that happened after made it worse,” he grimaced. 
“Ah, that makes sense,” you nod, trying to think of a way to help him get his tension out because you knew if he didn’t, he’d be whiny all night about it. “How about some hot, post-loss sex to make you feel better?” you wiggled your eyebrows and asked. 
Joe’s eyes jumped up to meet yours as he was a bit taken aback by your straightforwardness. “For real?” he asked as he got up from your chest. 
“Mhm, the perfect way to get the tension and aggression out,” you said while licking your lips and giving him a sultry smile. 
“I love you, so fucking much,” he growled in your ears before shooting up from the couch, snaking his arms under you, lifting you up, and leading you up to the bedroom bridal style.
“At least the wrist seems to be just fine,” you giggled as he quickly ran up the stairs with you. 
Not even 5 minutes later, you two were mostly naked, on the bed, and attached to each other’s lips as if you had never kissed each other before. His lips moved against yours hungrily, signaling that he was feeling that way tonight and that you should brace yourself for what was to come.
You felt him pull away from your lips and start pressing wet, sloppy kisses down your body. “I thought we were getting right to it?” you asked him as you felt his gentle lips on your belly. 
“Mmm, I gotta make it up to you first, then we can get to it,” he smiled up at you. 
“But I said I-,”.
“Nope. I have to make you feel good first, you deserve it,” he winked before he continued to kiss down your body. You felt him attach his lips to the skin of your inner thigh, rhythmically sucking and biting which would surely leave a mark while his hands crept up to the waistband of your lace panties. He then moved his lips to press a kiss to your clothed core before pulling your underwear down, tossing it to the side, and then flashing you a devilish grin since he saw how you were squirming around on the bed because of the undeniable ache between your thighs. 
The next few minutes passed by like a blur and the next thing you knew, Joe’s head was buried deep in between your thighs and your back was arching off the bed. “Joe,” you moaned as you felt him push you back down, the expert swirl of his tongue sending jolts of pleasure throughout your body. “J- Joe,” you whispered, your head falling to the side as your eyes fluttered shut. 
Joe couldn’t help but smile into you as he continued to eat you out like a starved man, the beautiful sounds coming from your mouth making his heart happy but also, his dick.
“Mmm, fuck..,” you whimpered as you gripped the silk sheets, tossing your leg over his shoulder and lightly gliding your foot along his muscular back. The sudden touch made Joe groan into your core which sent vibrations throughout your body, your heated touch feeling like fire against his cold frame.  
He continued to lap at your drenched folds, all while his hands were tightly gripping your hips and massaging your plush skin. “You’re so fucking good at this,” you whispered with another loud moan following after as you felt his perfect ski-slope nose rubbing against your aching clit.
You placed a hand into his hair, softly pulling on the strands as you pushed him closer to your core and yet another moan came from your mouth. Joe lifted his head out from in between your thighs and looked up at you, “You’re extra vocal tonight,” he smirked, his lips and chin coated with your wetness. 
“Shut up,” you whined before you pushed his head back down, a smile appearing on your lips when you felt him attach his lips to your bundle of nerves and flick your clit with his warm tongue. You felt yourself fading away, getting lost in the sensual supernova that was happening down below.
“...Oh my god,” you whined a few seconds later, feeling him thrust a finger into your core which pushed you closer to your orgasm even faster than before. “Don’t stop,” you said while pulling on his hair, your leg lightly wrapping around the back of his neck. 
You felt him move his other hand down, his thumb resting on your clit as he rubbed slow circles around the bundle of nerves–this movement made you see stars. The combination of his thumb rubbing your clit, his finger thrusting in and out of your slick core, and his mouth going unhinged was making the imaginary band in your stomach tighten harder than it ever had before. 
“I’m close,” you whimpered, your hips gently bucking at the jolt of pleasure moving through your body. “I’m..s- so…c- close,” you whimpered, this time a little louder because his thumb started moving faster around your clit. You then feel him add another finger into your core, your hips grinding against the bed as you search for any form of relief, but the only thing that could relieve you was taking his sweet time. 
“Baby, please,” you begged, your eyes fluttering shut as your back arched off the bed again, his fingers rapidly thrusting in and out of your core while you felt a more extreme feeling begging to be released from inside of you. “Oh, fuck,” you moaned, the feeling about to break through in just a few seconds.
Joe curled his fingers inside of your core and moved his mouth back up to your clit, roughly attaching his mouth to the bud and sucking you in a way that he knew drove you crazy. And then just a few seconds later you dropped back down to the bed as you felt yourself tip over the edge, his name falling from your lips like some seductive chant while you came undone. “Joe!” you screamed, tightly closing your eyes and feeling your entire body shake with the force of your orgasm. 
Joe looked up through his eyelashes, watching you restlessly move around and hearing breathy moans leaving your beautiful mouth as he lapped at the juices of your intense–still going–orgasm. He was slowly getting more and more worked up as he watched you come apart, knowing he was the only man who had ever seen you this vulnerable and raw and was the only man who was going to see this. 
A minute later you open your eyes, your chest heaving as you recover from the intense high that washed over you, “Holy fuck,” you panted as you saw Joe smiling at you, his lips and chin completely covered in your release, his face showing that he somehow enjoyed this just as much as you did. 
“Did I just-,” you asked, feeling the soaked sheets below you, as you caught your breath. Your eyebrows shoot up in amusement as you watch Joe wipe his chin with his fingers before using his tongue to lick them clean. 
“Yeah,” he chuckled, “You did,”. 
“Oh my god,” you said, hiding your face with your hands out of embarrassment. 
Joe let out a throaty laugh before kneeling on the bed again and hovering over you, then moving your hands off of your face, “Why are you hiding,” he smiled.
“Because I just…,” you said while biting your lip, his bedroom eyes making you want to pounce on him right that second even though you also wanted to run and hide for some reason.
“What?” he said while trying to hold back his cocky smile. “Squirted?” he asked while moving your hair out of your face.
“You don’t have to say it like that…,” you said while hiding your face again. 
After all this time, you still felt shy around him. He’d seen your most embarrassing moments, your best and your worst. He’d seen it all. The fact that you felt embarrassed about this little thing was adorable and another reminder that you were the most precious girl he had ever met. 
“Don’t feel embarrassed, babe. It’s not the first time and it’s definitely not the last time,” he softly said while leaning down to kiss your forehead. “I think it was super hot and super sexy,”. 
“Really?” you asked while peeking out at him through your fingers.
“Mhmmm. Besides, I’ve seen way worse than this. Can’t forget the time I walked in on you fingering yourself while I was away at practice,” he grinned from ear to ear, as if he was proud that he made you so worked up even when he was away from you.
“Joseph Lee,” you screamed while playfully slapping his bare chest.
“Hey, it was a great show,” he shrugged. “I can still remember the sounds,” he said while clearing his throat. “Oooh, Joe. Ohhh Joe, fuck. Joe, ah… Joey!” he moaned as he mimicked you, all while laughing because he couldn’t be serious about it. 
“You know, I don’t have to offer an outlet for you to release your tension,” you shrugged as you started to get up from the bed but felt yourself being caged in by your large boyfriend. 
“Ahem, I don’t think that’s how this works, baby,” he shook his head. “Once you put something on the table, you can’t take it off,”.
“Oh yeah?” you teased. “What if I do?”.
“You don’t wanna know,” he whispered in your ear before slamming his thick cock into your dripping entrance with no warning. 
“Joe,” you gasped, the sudden feeling of him stretching you out and filling you up so extreme and lively. 
“That’s it, baby,” he groaned as he threw his head back, his cock moving at an instantaneous pace. “That’s it…,” he said again but a little quieter while he dropped his head to the crook of your neck, the feeling of your warm walls wrapping around him so intense and special. 
“Joe, fuck,” you whimpered as you felt his cock repeatedly slam into your cervix, his body moving against yours recklessly and roughly. His thrusts quickened as he moved deeper and deeper inside you, the sounds of your breathy moans getting louder with each snap of his skilled hips. He sported a euphoric look on his once-tired face, a sign that he felt relaxed and it was all to your credit. 
The next few minutes were hot, steamy, and messy as he whispered filthy praise into your ear which matched the pure vulgarity that was happening between you two on the bed right now. His hard thrusts made it difficult for you to hold it together, your nails clawing at his tan back as you bit down on his shoulder and got lost under his touch. “You’re so good to me,” he moaned in your ear, his hand moving up and wrapping around your throat. 
“Joe,” you struggled to moan, feeling his grip around your throat becoming a little tighter as the pleasure inside of you was rapidly building.
“Ah, fuck,” he panted as he picked his head up and cupped the back of your leg, and lifted it over his shoulder; this new position opened you up even more and made it easier for him to hit all the right spots inside of you. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he whimpered, the sight of his lip in between his teeth and his thick body moving against you making your eyes roll to the back of your head. 
“I’m close,” you moaned as you looked down, moaning again at the sight of his shaft rapidly moving in and out of your slick heat.
“Fuck, me…too,” he groaned, his pace getting rougher and rougher as sounds of your skin slapping against each other echoed throughout the room. “I love you,” he moaned loudly once he felt his cock start to twitch inside of you. 
“Joe, fuck…please, I need to come,” you whined, his grip on your leg getting tighter. 
“I know baby, I know,” he whimpered, “I’m almost there,” he added as he dropped your leg and moved his hand to the headboard, gripping it tightly as he used it as leverage to slam into you even harder. All the tension, all the aggression, it was all coming out in the most fruitful way possible. He was getting away from himself, and it was all thanks to you. 
“Ah, fuck,” you screamed, feeling yourself on the brink of pleasure, stars filling your eyes as his pace remained rough and hard. 
A few seconds later, you felt him shoot endless ropes of cum into your wet heat which were accompanied by another loud moan from him. “Fuck. Oh fuck,” he panted as he slowed his thrusts into you, making sure that his release stayed inside of you and that you reached your high.
“Joe, please,” you pleaded, needing to feel your high right this second. 
“I’ve got you,” he said while giving you a lazy smile, his hand moving down to your clit and rubbing rapid circles around the sensitive bud as he slowed his thrusts even more.  A few seconds later, you clamped down on his cock, arched your body up into him, and felt yourself let go for the second time tonight. “Oh my god,” you moaned before you felt him press gentle kisses all along your neck and eventually your face, your lips meeting in a sloppy kiss as your highs washed over you. 
A few minutes later, you were both lying against the messy sheets, your head tucked into his chest as he played with your hair and once again apologized to you for how he acted earlier tonight. 
“Joe, I promise, It’s okay,” you giggled. “You’ve made it up to me in more ways than one. The fact that I can’t walk right now is an apology enough,”. 
“Okay, I’ll stop now,” he smiled. “Thank you for everything though. This and for everything you said earlier,”. 
“No need to thank me, baby. I told you, this is my job. We’re in this together and I promise that nothing’s going to hurt you as long as you’re with me. Like I said to you back in November, I’m your protector,” you grinned. 
“That you are,” he laughed, his body feeling loose and light under you for the first time all day. 
“Thank god he feels better," you smiled to yourself. Joe was the most important thing in your life, having him relaxed, focused, and calm was all you wanted. He deserved all the happiness, success, and love in the world and you needed to make sure he knew that. Moments like this were going to happen all throughout his career, but they were controllable and you were a big reason as to why they were. He wasn't kidding when he said he needed you inside his bubble or he'd end up in the insane asylum. You were his safe haven, his place of tranquility, his calm in the storm.
“I love you more than anything, Joe. Everything's going to be alright, I promise,” you smiled up at him, then leaned in for another kiss before you felt him pull the sheets over you both. 
“I love you too, Y/N,” he smiled as he nuzzled his nose against yours and leaned in for another kiss. 
–The End–
388 notes · View notes
c0llisiion · 9 months
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NUMB TO THE FEELING — j.jk
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♡pairing : jjk + fem!reader
♡: not proof read, exs, idol!jungkook x idol!reader , fwb kinda? , smut , mutual masturbation - lmk if i missed any!
W/C : 1,162
Pt.2 , Pt.3
A/N : SORRY 4 DISAPPEARING AGAINNNNN! i js got too busy guys 😣😣😣😣 rqs are open! Send in your rqs and prompts ily <33 anyways here is a jk fic i wrote instead of finishing my other jk fic :3
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ MDNI. Please refrain from reading if the topics make you uncomfortable. ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
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2 months. Its been 2 months since you broke it off with jungkook. It was all over the news, a hot topic for the k media. ‘BTS’s Jungkook and Y/G/N’s y/n ends 4 year relationship’, was still trending on naver. It happened so quickly. Knets are already placing the blame on you for the breakup, as they view you as a mean rebel idol who breaks hearts and messes around. A face of disgust was plastered on your face as you scroll through the endless amounts of hate comments knets put under the articles.
“Wow I always knew she was a bitch”
“She definitely cheated on him with another idol lol”
“What do you expect when you date a wh*re? Jungkook should have never dated her”
“She ruined his image”
Back and forth, people were calling you degrading names and putting Jungkook in a good light. They said all of this while not knowing a single thing about how your breakup unfolded. It was mutual. You both started getting busy with schedules. That simple. Maybe a few disagreements here and there. Maybe a few trust issues but the main point was it was mutual and you both broke up because of schedules. You got tired of the same comments and decided to turn off your phone but you got a new notification.
baby star candy 🤍
Hey
Tf is he doing at this hour?
Y/n
???
baby star candy 🤍
Is it okay if i come over?
Classic jungkook. Getting straight to the point. You stared at the text for a while not realising that you were leaving him on seen.
My baby star candy 🤍
Helloooooo?????
Its fine if you dont want me to
Y/n
Yes. Quick.
You sent your reply before his second text got to properly load. And there you were. Your phone turned off, biting your nails as you waited for jungkook.
It didn't take him a lot of time. Reaching your place in under 7 minutes and 13 seconds. You heard your doorbell and you immediately rushed to the door. You stood at the door for some time, avoiding the impression that you were eagerly anticipating his arrival.
You opened the door and see the tall bulky black haired man with his calvin klein hoodie and grey shorts. You stared at him before he brought you back to reality by snapping his fingers. You let him in before locking the door. You grabbed him by his wrists and took him upstairs to your room.
He quickly settled in your bed letting out a deep sigh, Relaxing and stretching his limbs out onto the bed. His arm was tucked behind his head as he patted the empty space next to him with half lidded eyes. You rolled your eyes before snuggling with him. Your tv was on and playing a random tv show you put almost an hour ago, forgetting to it turn off. You sighed and relaxed into his arm. The silence was comfortable. Jungkook was playing with the hems of shorts and you with the drawstrings of his shorts. You knew where this would lead to.
His hands started slowly massaging your thighs and ass in a comforting way. Its like he knew you were sad. And he did. “Im sorry” he spoke up. You looked up at him. His eyes were focused on the tv infront. “Im sorry about those comments. I should have said somethin’.” He said finally looking down at you. You shook your head and nuzzled into him closer “dont be. Its not your fault. Tbh i really dont gaf.” He chuckled at your attitude. He always liked your idgaf attitude. That’s what made him ask you out. “So you are not sad?” He asked his hands trailing up your shirt, cold fingers resting under your tits. “Hmm i was but then there is no reason for me to be. Maybe we should upload one of our sextapes to show those bitchy knets and completely appall them..” you giggled thinking about their reaction. Jungkook sighed and chuckled. “Yeah? Which one? Our old ones or the one we are gonna make rn?” His cold fingers squeezed your bare tits and tugged on your hard nipples. You hissed at the feeling. He grabbed your hand using his other hand and started using yours to rub himself through his shorts. He let out a soft groan throwing his head back. You bit your lip as you felt his hand lower into your shorts, quickly taking your sensitive bud in between his fingers, tugging it gently. You gasped and held onto his wrists as he continued abusing your bud. He was growing harder and harder because of your hands and the unholy sounds you let out every time he flicked your clit. You put your hands into his shorts and wrapped your fingers around his dick. Your movements were restricted by his shorts which opted you to pull his dick completely out. You stared at it. Oh how much you missed that monster. “Quit staring baby..” you felt yourself melt as he inserts two fingers into your sopping hole. A loud squelch was heard when he started fingering you. Your hands lazily worked up and down his shaft. Small spurts of precum already leaking out of his red tip. You picked up your pace and so did he. You twisted your wrists around his tip. You knew how sensitive he was there and continued. His eyes were squeezed shut as soft moans left his mouth. He started choking on them as he felt your hands squeeze around his length. God the way you had this man under your control with Just your hands was insane. He was quick to return the favour as two more fingers were added. His thumb rested on your clit rubbing it in circles furiously as he fucked your cunt with his long fingers. Loud noises accompanied by yours and his moans were the only sounds heard in the room. Your vision went white as you finally reached your end. Squirting all over his hands and wetting your shorts as well as your sheets. You let out choked out moans and your back arched off of the bed.
“Attagirl…” jungkook said with furrowed eyebrows as he kept finger fucking you. Your hand movements got sloppy which prompted jungkook to thrust into your hands. You picked up pace which made jungkook stiffen. You knew his orgasm was close from the his facial expressions and his voice. You stared at his face as you watch your ex boyfriend come undone under your grasp. He let out a final gasp before cumming all over your hands. You slowed down your movements finally letting go of his softening cock before bringing your fingers to your mouth, licking all his salty cum clean, staring deeply into his brown eyes.
Only you had him like this. No other woman will never come to your level ever.
A/n : HEHEHE sex tape part 2? 🤭🤭🤭🤭 ALSO SORRY FOR THE USAGE OF BABY STAR CANDYAJJEKAJWJA I JS HAD TOOOOOO
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maggotzombie · 1 year
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the day/night we met ; henry cavill
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PAIRING — Henry Cavill x Reader (fem) SUMMARY — On your wedding day, your Maid of Honor prepares a special gift to which you and Henry have distinct responses. WORDS — 1,8k TW — nothing really just a lot of fluff, emotions (I cried a bit writing it), Henry in a suit 😈. A/N — Hi! I'm not dead, just quit the most toxic job ever so I'm getting back here lol Here's a short but very dear fic to me that I wrote last year but never posted. I'm so happy to finally post this! This story has been in my head for two years now and it came out better than I thought.
Song insp.: Eu Me Lembro by Clarice Falcão feat. Silva
— 𝕸𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖙
“ALRIGHT,” YOUR MAID OF HONOR smiles, carefully wiping her tears with a napkin. “After making you cry and potentially ruining some makeup,” The room laughs. “I’ve prepared something different to end this on a high note.”
This is one of the dearest moments of your life: your wedding. You’re marrying your soulmate. Your heart could burst with love and happiness whenever.
Everything’s perfect, from your dress to the lights of the venue. Henry – your newly proclaimed spouse – has an arm around you as you listen to your family and friends' speeches about you and your love.
You found it strange when your Maid of Honor wasn’t the first to speak, but it seems she has a reason for it. Immediately, you feel anxious, but in a good way.
“When these two told me they were getting married, I knew I wanted to do something special for them,” Your best friend starts. “I just didn’t know what, but I knew it had to be something remarkable, something for them to look back and have a good laugh,” She looks at the both of you with tears in her eyes, chuckling.
You also wipe tears off your eyes, smiling back at her, and Henry tightens his embrace around you.
“So I sat down with these two, separately, and started to ask a few questions,” She smiles and wiggles her eyebrows, which is an expression you know very well.
‘Oh my,’ You think. ‘What is she up to?’
“Things started to get really interesting from the start, and I decided to make a video out of it,” Your best friend winks at you. “Without further ado, enjoy it.”
With a pleasant smile, she sits down. The attention turns to the screens set around the venue.
You remember sitting with your Maid of Honor to chat about your relationship. You didn’t really understand why she wanted to do that. However, it always has been effortless talking about Henry, and you brushed it off as having something to do with the wedding.
You recall having a great time answering her questions – drinks might have been involved beforehand, but the whole process was surprisingly professional.
Your friend’s face pops up on the screen as she introduces herself. “In this little video, I wanted to talk about our lovely couple’s amazing and fun story, especially the day they met,” She explains. “Newlyweds, I love you very much, and I hope you like this little something I put together for you.”
She blows a kiss and waves. Then in fancy lettering, “A love story” is scribbled on the top-left corner of the screen, and “A story of love” on the bottom right corner. You wonder why both phrases – which convey the same thing – are on the video, but the thought quickly slips your mind when your smiling face appears on the screen.
“State your name and occupation, please,” Your friend prompts on the video, but she’s out of the shot.
You roll your eyes amusedly. “What’s this, a trial? I’m innocent, your honor!” You giggle, making everybody at the venue laugh.
You answer the question anyway, and your name also appears written on the video.
“For the purpose of… this, I’m the bride?” It sounds like a question, and you make a face, unsure of yourself.
She never explained what the video was for, in your defense.
Right after you, Henry appears. “I’m Henry, and I am the lucky groom,” He smiles brightly, looking as handsome as always.
“So, tell me, how did you meet Henry?” Your friend asks, and your smile is instant as you remember that exact day as if it was yesterday. “How did you meet Y/N?” She asks him in the next scene, and his reaction is the same.
“I was hosting a brunch,” You start, your eyes unfocused as the vivid memory plays in your mind. “And it was morning when Henry arrived.”
When he reapers, you can tell it’ll cut back and forth between you. “I was throwing a party, and she was the one that came around. I think it was three in the afternoon,” Henry replies, quite differently from you.
You scoff mockingly, looking at him by your side. He chuckles, brushing it off with a shoulder tic before you turn back to the screen.
“And I said: ‘Hi, come on in, make yourself at home,’ You know, something of the sorts,” You shrug off.
Your betrothed chuckles in the video, scratching his chin in thought. “I was the one that said hello, but she didn’t hear.”
His comment makes the venue erupt in laughter. You meet Henry’s loving gaze again and squeeze his hand, making him bring yours up to press a kiss on your knuckles.
If your shared story had different and entertaining versions until now, it’d just get better!
After being asked about first impressions of one another, he replies: “She thought I was hilarious,” He says with such confidence that is endearing.
In your turn, you laugh and cover your mouth as if what you are about to say it’s an embarrassing secret.
“Oh my god, he wouldn’t stop talking! Like a lot!” You emphasize. “And I pretended to laugh the entire time,” You say very sheepishly before throwing your head back in laughter again. “That’s terrible. I feel like I need to apologize,” You add after your fit.
“Oh, I just remembered something,” He suddenly announces, and his smile is wide as the memory toy around in his head. “Her blouse was inside out,” He chuckles, eyes focused on a spot. “She’s so adorable and such a goof, isn’t she?” He looks back at the camera.
“He loved the way I was dressed,” You giggle, visibly shivering as you physically remember the feeling of him truly looking at you for the first time.
Your friend asks another question, changing the subject slightly, but Henry shakes his head.
“Yeah, the party was great! Everybody was having a good time, but I only remember searching for her when she wasn’t near me. Trying to get another look, you know?” He says.
In turn, you scoff. “No one was dancing! I don’t remember who was taking care of the music, but it was terrible!” Your genuine response makes the room fills with laughter another time. “At least everyone had a drink in hand and ate something.”
“Oh, yes. The food was wonderful. Everything homemade,” Your partner assures with a proud nod naively.
“I bought everything off Tesco,” You rushedly confess, throwing your head back in laughter again.
Back to the present moment, you’re wiping the new tears from the corners of your eyes due to laughter. You love the good energy around the room as your guests and yourself enjoy the video your Maid of Honor made.
Now you understand both phases in the beginning, and although you and Henry have very distinct versions of the day you met, you love both of them and the feelings they bring you.
However, something changes in the next second of the video. For the first time, on a split-screen, you two appear together.
“When I saw him, I knew it (When I saw her, I knew it),” You both say simultaneously. “She (He) was the person I’d spend the rest of my life with,” You continue.
Glancing at him, you’re surprised to see he’s already looking at you. Then you exchange a knowing look. It seems like you got on the same page in this part of the video.
“And that’s how I realized that life put him (her) in my life,” You say in unison. “On that Tuesday (Thursday) of September (December),” Your responses overlap with each other, drawing amused reactions from people.
“That’s why I remember everything, of every second,” Both of you state, which is downright ironic at this point. “Ask me anything that I remember.”
“I remember,” You proudly declare with a grin but, this time, by yourself.
And so does Henry. “I remember,” He nods with a beam.
The video ends there, and the room erupts in applause, whistles, and hollered praises.
Words couldn’t describe the dazzling feelings you’re experiencing if you wanted to. You can’t be more grateful to your friend for this treat either. And, of course, the man you now get to call your husband.
The spotlight of attention returns to you as you’re exchanging the most enamored gaze ever. Henry leans in and presses his lips to your forehead, making you close your eyes. Slowly, you allow all those remarkable sensations to wash over you.
When you reopen your eyes, you smile at him before looking at your Maid of Honor. “Thank you so much for this extremely thoughtful gift. We both loved it a lot.”
Henry confirms with a head gesture.
“Words won’t do justice to how much you’re special to me. I’m just so grateful I get to share such a special and meaningful moment of my life, like this one, with you,” Your voice cracks at the end, and you smile, trying to hold your tears at bay as you can see she’s doing the same. “So I can’t thank you enough.”
As the room gets loud with another round of applause and cheers, she smiles, mouthing an “I love you too” to you. Wiping your tears carefully one more time, you chuckle.
“Although, I only have one question,” You announce, making the room pipe down. “Was my blouse really inside out?” You giggle as you look back at Henry.
Your husband starts to laugh. “Yeah,” He confirms bashfully. “Yeah, it was,” He nods as your guests join you in laughter.
“Oh, God. I can’t believe it,” You shake your head in embarrassment. “I also would like to point out that my husband clearly has a lot of experience with interviews,” You remark, addressing the room. “I feel kinda bad after saying I was pretending to laugh at his jokes when he’s all loving and caring,” You rejoin your friends and family in fun.
“I do tell bad jokes,” Henry concedes in your defense. “I love how genuine you are, and you’re loving and caring to me, too,” You nearly melt at his famous Hollywood-star smile.
The sound of ‘aww’s’ fills the room. “You see what I’m dealing with?” You joke, making everybody chuckle.
You give him a chaste but affectionate peck on the lips. Your wedding coordinator decides it’s time for the first dance to open the floor to make your guests burn some energy after the buffet.
And so, feeling the most secure and happy while pressed against your husband’s chest with his arms around you, you swing slowly. By sharing the same air, the same space, and the same feelings, you can’t think of anything better.
It all started on a Tuesday morning in September for you. But for him, it was a Thursday afternoon in December. Now, it is a Saturday evening in November that you’ll never forget.
You will remember. Everything. Of every second.
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vamphrrr · 8 months
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Hi!! i loved your tough love fanfic of clarisse! so i decided to ask if you can make a clarisse la rue , (aphrodite child) reader, but she’s not some normal teenager… she’s a princess if you get what im saying??? lets say that aphrodite dated a princess and had a child with him before she left, and so that’s where reader grew up, no one knew that the reader was a princess u til she told clarisse, she was really worried clarisse was gonna hate her but clarisse is like “Woah me mad at you? no way” and clarisse supports her! (Including some kissing, flirting, it would be super nice if the reader was shorter the clarisse probably up to her chest like in the tough love fanfic!)
notes ; omgggg this is so cute!! i’m so glad u liked my last fic i was nervous about posting 😭. also i’ll be making clarisse call reader princess too now knowing SHE IS ONE! they’re already dating in this. i used the same banner bc i’m too lazy to create new ones based on plot LMAO. i wrote this so soon but sometimes if anyone requests it might take me a couple of days bc of school and stuff! think i went a little overboard with this one. i should probably start counting how much i write lol.
%% are you mad?
in which your super attractive girlfriend finds out the secret you’ve been hiding from her for so long. also, she accidentally meets your dad.
— clarisse la rue x f!aphrodite!reader
warnings ; reader has doubts, tall & buff clarisse / short reader (again), flirty!clarisse flirty!clarisse, a little angst?, kissing, two swear words, flustered reader (oh how the turned tables), ooc clarisse? (i’m never sure if i write her right), one suggestive thought in the first paragraph (nothing happened tho!). a little too much background i think… too much father, did my daddy issues come out? made reader’s dad a king bc plot reasons, maybe more emotional than requested srry😭
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You couldn’t believe you were doing this. Sneaking off from your girlfriend’s warm bed in the middle of the night. For a minute, you wondered how’d that look to anyone watching. A girl hastily running from a cabin that she very obviously did not belong in, a long shirt —it was Clarisse’s— accompanied by small shorts, (which were not visible might you add). Oh and how could you forget, you were barefoot. Who’s bright idea was that? Oh, yeah, yours. Why?
Gods were you cold. Should’ve brought a jacket, you thought.
The bottom of your feet hurt, stepping on rocks and sticks and who knows what else would do that to you. Next time, you would definitely bring hiking boots or something. And a jacket. In the forest, you were far away from anybody that might disturb you. Pulling Clarisse’s shirt up until your shorts were visible, you dug your hand inside the pocket, meeting with a drachma. You approached the round well, splashing water mist being met with sunlight from below, creating a rainbow.
How? It was the middle of the night. Why was the sun inside? You decided not to think about it.
This well was old, dirty from not being used much. See, not many people knew about it. Apparently, it was for those that needed to talk to somebody reallyyyy privately, that’s why it was hidden in the forest, only appearing at night. You weren’t sure how that worked, but you stumbled upon it a couple of years back when you were being chased by wood nymphs for being out at night. They found you, obviously. Punishment was not escapable and you ended up having to clean the stables the day after you got your nails done. Yuck.
Now here you were again, this being the only place where you could speak to your father without anyone finding you. It’s not that you were embarrassed of him per say, it was that you really didn’t want anyone to know that you were a royal. I mean, how ironic was that? A daughter of Aphrodite, a Princess? Forget it. You’d get made fun of for the rest of your life. You especially didn’t want Clarisse to know. She was your girlfriend yes, and this was something very important that you needed to tell her about, but you weren’t sure how’d she react. You knew she wouldn’t make fun of you like others would, but you didn’t know if dating a literal Princess was too much of a deal breaker for her.
Being with a royal was too stressful, there was so much that they’d get criticized for and so little people that they’d be accepted by. Your dad was a King with many past lovers, Aphrodite included. The people loved her, I mean, who wouldn’t? But then she was gone, disappearing the same night she gave birth to you. Your dad knew of her, of this. He knew she’d be gone by the time the sun rose. Yet, he did nothing. Who was he, than just a mortal man? He could not stop a goddess from leaving.
He got with others after that, your dad had a lot of love to give. Maybe that was something that attracted your mother to him. Public lovers were not taken well, the people respected the King, sure, they just didn’t respect his partners. Constant judging, constant eyes following their every move, constant hatred being thrown, constant stress on their shoulders. In the end, they could never take it. Running away or completely disappearing seemed to be something they all had in common. Your father had to give up on love, small secret romances blossomed for a while, but never enough for it to go public.
That is why you were so scared to tell Clarisse of your status. She was smart, she’d realize being with you would not be worth the hassle. She’d leave you just like everyone else left your father. Clarisse was the love of your life, you don’t think you’d be able to handle it if she left.
You threw the drachma in, calling for the rainbow goddess to let you see your father.
“Dad,” you said, once the back of his head was visible.
He jumped, turning around. “Oh! My dearest daughter, you scared me.” He laughed a bit, looking at you with such soft eyes it almost made you cry. “Why are you Iris messaging me at this hour? Isn’t it time for you to be resting?”
You swallowed, a sudden knot appearing in your throat. “I just needed someone to talk to.” Playing with the ring around your finger that Clarisse gave you for your one year anniversary, you choked out. “I have this amazing girlfriend, she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me here at camp and—” You stopped talking, taking a small breath, not noticing the familiar figure of Clarisse standing a couple of feet behind you. “—and I’m scared to tell her that I’m not who she thinks I am. That I’m not this girl that just so happens to be a daughter of Aphrodite. I love her so much and I want to tell her about you. I want to bring her to you in person because I want the two people I love the most to meet. But how do I do that when I haven’t even told her I’m a Princess and that the only way you two could meet is if I took her to our royal palace?”
Your father widened his eyes, not expecting his little girl to burst out her feelings just like that. He sighed, glancing behind your shoulder. “If this girl you love so much really loves you like you do her, she wouldn’t care about your status.” Staring at who he assumed was your girlfriend behind you, he continued. “She wouldn’t care that you hid this from her. Instead, she’d try to see it from your point of view.” Moving his eyes away from Clarisse, he looked at you, eyes squinting in light mischief. “You should tell her, she’ll understand. I love you.” Is all he said, before he was gone.
You’re left staring at a rainbow, your dad nowhere in sight. Suddenly, a branch broke from behind you. Turning around quickly, heart beating rapidly, you’re met with the eyes of your girlfriend. You immediately let out a gasp, not knowing she was there.
Clarisse speaks up. “You’re a Princess?”
You felt your mouth dry up. With wide eyes, you respond. “Please don’t hate me! I didn’t know how to tell you!” Walking closer to her, you reached your hands out, grabbing one of her own with both of yours. “Please, you have to understand. I didn’t want this to ruin us.”
She stayed silent.
Silence was haunting, especially coming from Clarisse, someone who was always provoking people and boasting loudly everywhere. You gulped, with lips shaking you asked, “A-are you mad?”
She lets out a huff. Was something funny? Was she annoyed? Angry? Did she not care at all? Those were the questions running through your mind. You’d find out the answers soon enough.
“Woah,” she shook her head, letting you see the slight amused smile on her face. “Me? Mad at you? No fucking way.” She reached her free hand towards your face, moving away the strand of hair that fell slightly over your eye. “It just… surprised me s’ all.”
You let out a breath, relaxing and putting your head against her chest. “Thank the gods, I thought you were going to break up with me or something.”
Reaching out again, she placed her forefinger below your chin, raising your head to meet her eyes. “How could I ever break up with someone so beautiful?” She leaned down, your lips grazing against each other’s. “Why would I leave when I can now be your knight in shining armor?” Closing the distance, your eyes fluttered shut. Butterflies were in your stomach just like the first time you two ever kissed. Without your lips separating, she put one arm around your waist, the other grabbing below your thighs, hoisting you up.
“Ah!” you screamed, separating your lips, not expecting it.
Clarisse smirked, seeing you get flustered. “You don’t have any shoes on.” You pouted, putting your arms around her neck so you wouldn’t fall while she walked back (not that she would let you fall off in the first place). “Didn’t think I’d notice, did you, princess?” Teasingly, she used the pet name, now knowing how much truth was behind it.
You whined, pressing your face against her neck. “You’re so unfair. I’m supposed to be the one flustering you.”
“Awe, the princess is mad,” she cooed, letting her lips touch the tip of your ear. “You want me to get on one knee and apologize?”
Clarisse laughed when you let out a loud groan, hitting her lightly on the chest. Smiling, she knew the only way she’d ever leave you was if she was six feet under. And even then, she’d find a way to get back to the land of the living just to be by your side.
The only things heard in the dead of night were the grasshoppers, chirping their little melodies into the darkness. That was until you muttered sleepily, letting out a yawn. “I love you.”
Clarisse repeated after you. “I love you.” Feeling your eyes fluttered close, she followed it with an almost silent “goodnight.”
Now that you were asleep, she felt panic slowly rise, steps quickening to reach the Ares cabin faster. She could only think about two things now.
Holy shit, she’s a Princess. Oh my gods, I met her dad.
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hollowed-theory-hall · 6 months
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what's the one harry potter pairing u like that u mentioned in the tags of your hinny post?
Anonymous: Can I ask who that minor character you ship with Harry is? For some absurd reason my mind jumped to Stan Shunpike lol but it's probably not him.... Or is it?
Okay, so this is kind of a funny story. Like, my pipeline through hp pairings was a weird one. Like, I used to read a lot of Harry pairings, still do on occasion (some make more sense than others). None of them were ones I would point at and say: "that should've happened in the books"
One day, I was innocently writing a fic (canon divergence of GoF), and it was just for me, for funnsies, never posted it anywhere and not planning to. And I planned to pair Harry with someone there (honestly, I don't remember who because I didn't write the plan down) but when writing, Harry ended up with a different character. And it was so strange to me because that never happened.
Like, how do you write a ship accidentally?
But I did. I wrote Harry into a ship by accident. So I went back to the books to try and figure out why the hell would my subconscious decide that's the way to go.
I'll also preface it by all this being my subjective opinion and I do read other Harry ships in fics, this one just quickly became my favorite to write (and the only one I write). Also, I don't actually think this is a pairing that should've happened in the books, it's place is in fic and that's where I like it.
So, the character I accidentally shipped with Harry is... *drumroll*
Stan Shunpike!
Not really, it's:
Theodore Nott
Now, you might look at the name and go: "Who the fuck is that?"
And you'll be correct. Theo has 0 speaking lines in the entire book series. His name appears twice. He, himself, as a person, only appeared on page, like, 3 times in the background. The scene that gives the most information about him is other characters talking about him. He isn't even present.
That being said, I'm very good at extrapolating a lot of information from very little evidence. So allow me, to walk you through who is Theodore Nott and why I ship him with Harry.
Basic Information
So, let's start with the most basic overview before I pull out the quotes and go any deeper.
We know Theo is a Slytherin student in Harry's year. So he likely shares a dorm with Draco, Blaise, Crabbe, and Goyle.
Theo's father is both at the graveyard at the end of GoF and in the Department of Mysteries at the end of OotP, so we know he is a Death Eater. We also know Thoe's father was one of the first and closest Death Eaters to Voldemort, who waited for him during his interview with Dumbledore in 1967:
“Then if I were to go to the Hog’s Head tonight, I would not find a group of them — Nott, Rosier, Mulciber, Dolohov — awaiting your return? Devoted friends indeed...”
(HBP, page 444)
We also know the Nott family is "as pure-blooded as the Malfoys" according to JKR in an interview. We also know Theo's great-grandfather (maybe? the family relation isn't clear), Cantankerus Nott, is suspected to be the one who wrote the Pure-Blood Dictionary, the book that coined the term "Sacred 28" and made that list (which the Nott family are on).
The name Nott is potentially to be derived from the name Nótt, which is the personification of the night in Norse Mythology. So it has been theorized the Nott family have a Nordic origin. Possible, but it doesn't really matter for this post.
What does, is that he comes from a dark, Death Eater, blood-purist family similar to the Malfoys. Even so, Theo never took the Dark Mark and never joined Voldemort in the books.
Now, that we have the basic information out of the way, let's look at Theodore as a person.
All the details I could gather from the books
Alright, now we get to the fun part. That is, me going through all the relevant scenes that mention Theodore Nott and actually creating a character psychoanalysis out of basically nothing.
So, the quotes aren't organized in a particular order. I'm just going to explain Theo and then explain why all this makes me ship him with Harry.
“Well, I pity Slughorn’s taste. Maybe he’s going a bit senile. Shame, my father always said he was a good wizard in his day. My father used to be a bit of a favorite of his. Slughorn probably hasn’t heard I’m on the train, or —” “I wouldn’t bank on an invitation,” said Zabini. “He asked me about Nott’s father when I first arrived. They used to be old friends, apparently, but when he heard he’d been caught at the Ministry he didn’t look happy, and Nott didn’t get an invitation, did he? I don’t think Slughorn’s interested in Death Eaters.” Malfoy looked angry, but forced out a singularly humorless laugh.
(HBP, page 150)
This is a part of the conversation between Draco, Pansy, and Blaise, Harry overhears when he is hiding in their compartment at the beginning of HBP. I have a few things to note regarding this scene.
Firstly, throughout this conversation, Pansy, Blaise, and Draco all call each other by their first name. This shows closeness, they are all friendly and familiar enough to use their first names with each other. Theo, though, is referred to as "Nott" by all three in the compartment.
He doesn't actually sit in their compartment which is in itself a sign about how he isn't really friendly with Draco's group. Considering the group is most of his year from his house, Theo is likely very lonely, and it will be apparent from other scenes I bring up later.
Secondly, Theo's father is in Azkaban. We know Draco is bothered about his own father's predicament. He mentions it to Harry and bothers him over it, Theo doesn't though. Theo doesn't seem to be bothered by Harry or his father's incarceration.
The only conclusion I can draw from this is that the relationship between Theo and his father is not a good one.
(I know some fics like to have Lucius be abusive towards Draco, for some reason. But the books really don't back this up. Lucius loves Draco and Draco adores his father)
Theo, though, Theo seems to be the one with a very strained relationship with his father. Strained enough that he isn't bothered the man is in Azkaban. What I'm saying is that Theo's father likely abuses or mistreats him in some capacity.
If anything more was needed to complete Harry’s happiness, it was Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle’s reactions. He saw them with their heads together later that afternoon in the library, together with a weedy-looking boy Hermione whispered was called Theodore Nott. They looked around at Harry as he browsed the shelves for the book he needed on Partial Vanishment, and Goyle cracked his knuckles threateningly and Malfoy whispered something undoubtedly malevolent to Crabbe. Harry knew perfectly well why they were acting like this: He had named all of their fathers as Death Eaters
(OotP, page 583)
This is a scene at the end of OotP after Draco, Crabbe, Goyle and Theo's fathers were caught at the ministry and sent to Azkaban because they are Death Eaters. There are a few important notes about this scene.
The first, Hermione knows Theo, while Harry and Ron don't really. This means she likely knows him from the classes she takes and Harry and Ron don't — Arithmancy and/or Ancient Runes.
The second, he is sitting with other Death Eater children, but I don't think it's by choice. I mentioned in the previous quote how he isn't close to Draco and his crew. He sits with them here mostly because he doesn't have another choice. Theo doesn't seem to really have any friends, so he sits with the closest people he has to friends — kids he has known since he was young because their fathers were in the same circle.
The other note about this is that Crabbe, Goyle, and Draco are all mentioned as being threatening and malicious towards Harry because they don't like that their fathers are in Azkaban. Theo, though, Theo doesn't threaten Harry, he isn't part of their whisperings. As I mentioned above, he's likely happy his father is in Azkaban.
A pair of blank, white, shining eyes were growing larger through the gloom and a moment later the dragonish face, neck, and then skeletal body of a great, black, winged horse emerged from the darkness. It looked around at the class for a few seconds, swishing its long black tail, then bowed its head and began to tear flesh from the dead cow with its pointed fangs. A great wave of relief broke over Harry. Here at last was proof that he had not imagined these creatures, that they were real: Hagrid knew about them too. He looked eagerly at Ron, but Ron was still staring around into the trees and after a few seconds he whispered, “Why doesn’t Hagrid call again?” Most of the rest of the class were wearing expressions as confused and nervously expectant as Ron’s and were still gazing everywhere but at the horse standing feet from them. There were only two other people who seemed to be able to see them: a stringy Slytherin boy standing just behind Goyle was watching the horse eating with an expression of great distaste on his face, and Neville, whose eyes were following the swishing progress of the long black tail.
(OotP, page 445)
“The only people who can see thestrals,” she said, “are people who have seen death.”
(OotP, page 446)
The stringy Slytherin boy mentioned here is Theo. This scene proves that:
He takes Care of Magical Creatures
He saw someone die
Let's explore the second one for a moment. The fact Theo can see Thestrals means he watched someone die and was old enough to comprehend what he was seeing. We also know Theo's mother is dead. So it's likely the person he watched die was his mother.
I also want to draw attention to Theo's distaste towards Thestrals. He could likely see them carrying the carriages every year since 2nd year, it's not his first time seeing them. But it doesn't stop his displeasure with their sight from showing. Which says something about him. It means he likely recalls his mother and her death whenever he looks at the Thestrals. and these are memories Theo rather not experience.
We don't know how his mother died, but I'd hazard a guess it wasn't natural. After all, wizards have long life spans, they are more durable to illness and injury, and don't usually die from accidents unless very extreme or magical. And there was no epidemic of dragonpox (a disease that does tend to kill wizards) in the time since 1980 and the books. So, she was more likely killed at some point between 1985(ish) and 1991.
“No, I don’t think so, sir. I’m Muggle-born, you see.” Harry saw Malfoy lean close to Nott and whisper something; both of them sniggered, but Slughorn showed no dismay; on the contrary, he beamed and looked from Hermione to Harry, who was sitting next to her.
(HBP, pages 185-186)
First, Theo is an O student in potions since he is in the potions NEWT class, and was probably meant to be there even if Snape was the teacher.
Second, again, Theo doesn't really have friends. He sits next to Draco as the only other Slytherin in the class. Also, they share the circumstances of being sons of Death Eaters currently in Azkaban. Although both of them seem to deal with it quite differently.
Third, Theo joins Draco in making fun of Hermione's blood status, but he does not initiate it. Considering the environment he was raised in and is in, it makes sense he would make fun of it. Whether he's a blood-purist or not, he would want to keep his image considering he doesn't have many allies. Hanging out with Draco is survival, not friendship. They aren't even on a first-name basis with each other.
“Amortentia doesn’t really create love, of course. It is impossible to manufacture or imitate love. No, this will simply cause a powerful infatuation or obsession. It is probably the most dangerous and powerful potion in this room — oh yes,” he said, nodding gravely at Malfoy and Nott, both of whom were smirking skeptically. “When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love. . . .
(HBP, page 186)
The final quote I have about Theo is from the same potions class as above. Both he and Draco are portrayed here as underestimating amortentia and its potential damage. It makes sense for their upbringing in the Wizarding World, which has no real laws or regulations regarding love potions that are seen as harmless fun more often than not.
I'll add Theo likely didn't witness a healthy romantic relationship. Considering his father is a Death Eater who is likely abusive and may or may not have killed his mother. With this as his reference to a marriage, it's clear why he'd look down on love and love potions.
Why I think Theo and Harry have potential
Okay, so now that we know who Theodore Nott is, let's talk about why I ship him with Harry.
I think Harry, in general, would get along best with a clever partner with the ability to be ruthless (Slytherins or Ron fall into this category). Because Harry isn't some golden savior; he casts unforgivables, and is very willing to poison Umbridge or Crocio Snape if he could get away with it. He needs a partner that won't be horrified by these thoughts.
Also, Theo literally never speaks on page. Even when spoken to, his reactions are silent. I think this quiet and no need to talk, the ability to be comfortable in silence, is something that would be comfortable for Harry. Harry in the books finds himself annoyed with Ron and Hermione's constant banter on occasion, so I think it fits well.
Theo would also be comfortable around Harry without a need to play a certain part. Because Harry wouldn't care about that. He would honestly rather Theo forgo the pure-blood Slytherin act.
I feel like Harry and Theo, have a good potential to understand each other. Theo lost his mother and likely experiences abuse from his father. It makes them very likely to trauma bond over their crap life and shared experience. Two out of three only ones who could see the Thestrals in the entire class.
The other thing I feel they could connect over is being lonely. Harry spent all his childhood until Hogwarts basically being on his own. Theo stayed on his own. Draco at least has his parents, he has other students he's closer to, not that he shares everything with them, but he has some support network. Theo has none. And this is something Harry knows well.
Theo, I think, wouldn't expect anything specific from Harry. He doesn't even interact with him, not to mock him, and not to idolize him, he doesn't care at all. And we know how much Harry appreciates being thought of as Harry and not as the Boy-Who-Lived. Theo would allow Harry to be himself without some mold he wants him to fit in.
The fact Theo never becomes a Death Eater, even though he was in Draco's year and his father was a Death Eater before Lucius (and in better standing than Lucius with Voldemort) is so interesting. It's somewhat surprising Theo wasn't marked. It means he didn't want to be. It means that Theo Nott didn't want to torture and kill muggleborns or blood traitors, or anyone really. And he didn't want to swear his allegiance to Voldemort. This is just a fascinating fact to me and something I enjoy considering. What life experience made him come to that conclusion? Was it just his dislike of his father that pushed him away? Could he have been another Sirius Black (Gryffindor in a Slytherin family) under slightly different circumstances? I mean, Voldemort likely wouldn't force him to become a Death Eater, but would his father? I don't know what at all went down there, but I like that potential story.
We also know he wasn't part of Umbridge's Inquisitorial Squad, even though some minor Slytherins were mentioned to be part of it. He just seems to be an actually decent guy (I don't care what Cursed Child says about him, I know he's there but I avoided almost anything to do with Cursed Child so I barely know the plot).
Finally, this is a character Harry doesn't have as much drama to get over with. Yes, sometimes I want to read overcoming drama between characters before it becomes a romance, but sometimes I want something chiller than that. And Theo is a really chill, safe, Slytherin option for Harry.
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letsmyy · 5 months
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i have a request!!! you should write a daughter of apollo x leo valdez fic but based on espresso by sabrina carpenter (idk i feel like that song gives children of apollo vibes!) it'd be leo obsessed with the apollo girl (like him being absolutely obsessed with her, having the biggest crush on her possible, he constantly thinks about her, him being an absolute loser bf) and finally getting the courage to ask her out on a date or something like that.
“she’s like a shot of espresso…”
leo valdez x duaghter of apollo!reader
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warnings: use of yn! english isn’t my first language so it might be some errors!!
thank you so much for your request, it made me so happy!! idk if what i wrote it’s exactly what you want but i hope you like it 🤕 this is my first timing writing a real fic and I think it really shows lol, but i promise I’ll try to improve in the next one, I’m so sorry if it’s that bad, and this is really short too? omg im really bad at this lol, but anyways, ly anon tell me your opinions (honestly) abt this later, kisses to uuu!! 🫶💗 (btw anon, please request other things I feel like I didn’t did you justice with this one)
words: 850
“is it that sweet? I guess so…..”
✦ .  ⁺   . ✦ .  ⁺   . ✦ - ✦ .  ⁺   . ✦ .  ⁺   . ✦
Leo was sure he was going crazy.
He always had a pretty big amount of silly crushes on girls, but with you? It was getting way too serious. Of course, you're beautiful, incredibly kind, and too generous for your own good, and you treated him well, but that isn't enough reason to make him lose sleep; at least that's what he thought.
And he was extremely wrong. Being in your presence was the equivalent of being bathed in the sunlight, and gods, he felt like a prisoner who hadn't seen the sun in years.
He's completely obsessed with you; he just needs the courage to verbalize that, but being honest, Leo felt like a coward at the moment.
While being lost in his thoughts (the thoughts being the pretty daughter of Apollo that never leaves his mind), the boy finally falls asleep.
Leo doesn't mind waking up if that means spending the day with the people he loves, so after getting ready for the day, he searches for you.
And he found you, talking with a much younger camper, helping him. You're smiling like it's the best day of your life, and Leo could swear that you're almost glowing.
The boy makes its way to you the same moment you finish talking to the kid, now having your full attention on Hephaestus' son.
"Leo! Good morning!" Your voice to him had the same effect as listening to his favorite music, it made him happy in ways he couldn't explain, even if his life depended on it. 
"Yn! Good morning!" He mimics you, not in a bad way, just a teasing one. You roll your eyes in fake annoyance.
"Sooo, did you sleep well, Valdez?" You ask, seeming really interested in the answer, but he knows that you're like that for everything, being extremely kind.
"Not really, would be better if I dreamed about you," you laugh amusingly.
"You say that every day, y'know?"
"I know, I say because it's true. " You can't help but blush a little. You're used to Leo flirting with you, but it never gets past that, so you just learned to joke back.
"Hilarious, Valdez... fortunately, I slept very well today, and I'm more excited than normal! I think it's because it's so sunny today, that's awesome, was thinking about going to the lake later. I can't waste such a pretty day like this one painting inside my cabin..."
"Unfortunately, I'll be in the bunker today, I have lots of things to do."
"What? No! You're coming with me, you can't waste this wonderful day either!" You grab his hands, walking toward the lake.
Leo could swear he would pass out at that moment. He couldn't even think about denying your offer, he would prefer dying to doing that.
After a few seconds, you guys get to the lake.
"Look how pretty it is! You have to go swimming with me, it’s a need.”
"Look, sunshine, water and fire don't get along so well, so I might skip that one" he says, apologetic. You frown, thinking.
"We don't need to go swimming, we can just talk, i really don't care." You smile lovingly at him.
"I don't want to ruin your day! There are many people that can go with you, you'll find someone better to do that." He's so oblivious that it's getting concerning.
"I want to spend time with you, Valdez. I don't mind if it's swimming or just talking, I want to, you know..be with you."
"Oh." He's acting like a loser, he can't think straight anymore and is blushing like crazy, but who cares?
"Oh?" You tease him, smiling.
"Yeah, we can. Just talk, I'm happy with that. " His smile was so genuine that made your heart melt.
That's when you realize you're still holding his hand, and you don't want to change that. You can feel he notices too.
Something just snapped in his head, now it’s the time, now or never, right?
"Yn? Can I tell you something?" He says it in a quiet tone, and you just nod.
"When I'm around you, it's like constantly drinking a shot of espresso, it's like being bathed in sunlight, you're incredibly energetic and enthusiastic, and i just can't get enough of you, you're my sunrise and daylight....all I'm saying is, gods, I very much love you more than just friends" You're surprised, really surprised, so surprised that you can't even speak for a moment, which just makes Leo even more nervous.
"Please say something...like, anything, a no it's better than silence because it’s less-“ Before he yaps again, you interrupt him:
"I like you too." The boy almost squeals of pure excitement.
"Seriously? Oh gods, oh gods. What?" He's so happy, it's so sincere, so soft, it's amazing, you can feel your heart beating so fast, and you don't even care; seeing him like this because of you is the best feeling you ever felt.
Then you see that one look, meant just for you, it's like time has frozen, and you're both thinking the same thing. Then, like all the stars aligned, you kissed him
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erinwantstowrite · 3 months
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Let me just quickly say, cross-overs can sometimes get REALLY difficult to map out and write in a cohesive way but you have absolutely NAILED IT!! I absolutely ADORE LoF!!! I usually don’t even bother reading fics with the ‘Richard Grayson is Richard Parker’ premise cause I felt like they were super confusing and overcomplicated but this fic?? SUPERB. ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE. OH MY GOD I ADORE IT. Everyone’s characterizations are so nice and wonderful aaaaaaah!!!! <33333
Ok ok I did actually have a question as well: would you be willing to share what your writing process looks like in terms of a chapter you’ve already posted? I was just wondering since I’m also currently working on my own fic (it’s been a few years but I managed to get fixated on an idea and it grew legs lol) and I’m currently fighting the organization of it haha.
How do you keep track of the plot points and/or foreshadowing you want to get a ‘lightbulb!’ moment for later? Do you have any tips?
Thank you so much! I absolutely adore your writing AND your art is so gorgeous omg it adds so much to the incredible story :DDD I hope you have a good day!!
I have a secret: I actually didn't like "Richard Grayson is Richard Parker' tag for a while for the same reason. Sometimes they felt like they missed the mark or it's just. A thing that's there? I almost didn't include it for LoF, but I'm glad I did because it changed the direction in such a big way.
Another secret: this made me incredibly happy because I have read so many wikis and scoured the internet to make sure that I had enough info on both fandoms so LoF could make sense to anyone who's reading it, whether they know Spider-Man, Batfam, or neither at all. Sometimes I worry a lot before I post that I'll miss a mark and will confuse people.
As for the question: I definitely am willing to share what my writing process looks like!
Be prepared for under the cut, I love to yap. It's in my blood to yap. And that's why it took a minute to get to this ask haha
(Spoilers for Leap of Faith!! Everything mentioned has already been published ((Chapters 1-11))
I had to go and find out which chapter I wanted to use as an example and I think we're gonna go with Chapter 5 for the most part :)
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My writing process is, as described by alighterwood:
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I think the description fits because while I'm all over the place, I have to be very detail oriented and I store everything in one spot.
Starting with the overall process, what I find is most helpful for me, when organizing, is having a notebook rather than doing it all digitally. I've been using a 70 sheet notebook that I had lying around waiting to be used, and as of yesterday, I officially filled the entire thing front to back. It's been an incredible help, for a lot of reasons, but mostly because it's a lot easier to remember something I physically wrote down than it is to remember something I typed. I'm now on to my second notebook for LoF, and I might even have to get a third.
In another ask, startupkat asked me this:
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And I shared a little about my outline process there, but I'll try to go into a little more depth here. Emphasis on little because this is so long.
I write a truly insane amount of outlines in this notebook.
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This is just what I can show you, but a good chunk of the notebook is just outlines. Over and over and over again. That's because they're always changing/adapting based on so many different factors. Sometimes I get to a chapter I thought I had fully planned out and then realize it just doesn't work anymore. Other times, I get to the chapter and realize I don't want to write that anymore/isn't as interesting as I thought it would be. A few times I got halfway through a POV of a scene I was struggling on and decided to switch POV's, which will change up the outline for a chapter every now and then.
Which is why I don't write incredibly detailed outlines and try to keep it vague until I actually get to that chapter. It's a lot less daunting to rewrite a chapter outline than it is to rewrite the entire outline.
Fic outlines and Chapter outlines look a lot alike.
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This is what I said in the other ask, but I didn't elaborate on it all the way.
I make a list just like that, and then I try to put it in chronological order/in an order that makes sense. I keep the Fic outline vague by writing down "Goals" for a chapter rather than scenes. But I also keep notes to myself if I really think something is important. The more important I think a scene needs to be, the more details I write down to make sure my future self recalls what I had in mind when I thought it up.
Really simple example:
Chap 1 Goal: Peter gets to Gotham and meets Babs while running around. Meet Nightwing too? Get shelter.
Chapter 2 Goal: Bats are like "???" about Peter. Batfam dynamic important... Peter stalking Batfam back? Peter meet Batman >:)
When I get to a chapter, that's when I make a far more detailed list of wants/needs/goals. It's the Step 2 from the Step 1. Here are some examples from Chapter 5:
Needed to have:
More POV's from universe 1299 (Peter's home universe)
Tony's POV more specifically, how he's doing/feeling, what he's figured out
What they've figured out on 1299 side vs what's going on in 1300 (Gotham)
Explaining more about Peter's trauma/his past
Dick learning more about Peter, and vise versa
Wanted to have:
Ned being a more central character
Natasha :)
Loki being a little shit
Tony and Cap bickering
Peter talking to Nightwing again
The last name Grayson
Gymnastics!!
(This is the shortened list, because the chapters are so long)
When I looked at this list before writing my outline, I had to figure out how I could incorporate everything. If I needed more 1299 POV's, and I wanted Ned, Natasha, and Loki, there's one scene accounted for. I had to get their side of things and wanted that trio together. I needed a Tony POV, and I wanted Tony and Cap bickering, so those went together, plus I got 1299's POV of Ohnn and his plans explained.
I needed to have Peter explaining more about his trauma, and Dick and Peter to talk/get closer. I wanted a Nightwing POV, to have Peter say his last name, and them doing gymnastics. I knew Peter wouldn't willingly talk about that, so I had him have a nightmare. Not only did it give readers perspective but it made Peter more susceptible to talking to Nightwing because he was more emotionally vulnerable/lonely, and that's how that scene came together.
That's when I would write down the chronological order of these events by writing out "Scene Blocks." (This is what I wrote down but my handwriting was so bad I can't subject y'all to it):
scene 1- Ned talking to Loki. Natasha should be nearby and observing Loki's behavior. They are not on friendly terms. Ned is more worried about Peter than he is as to what Loki could be up to, so Natasha takes on that role.
scene 2- Tony is freaking out about Peter being in an alt dimension. He should attack Ohnn when he's not prepared for it. Beat his ass? Beat his ass. Cap there too.
scene 3- Peter's nightmare. "Ben, where do you go when you die?" "Where do you think?" "With you. Where you went."
scene 4- Nightwing and Peter.
Of course, things come to attention when writing. Like originally, Tony and Cap were arguing in the Tower. But it was a little too much like his and Natasha's argument, and I kept in mind that Tony is smart. Sometimes I forget that the characters are smarter than I am, so I have to account for what they would figure out. So Tony would have picked up the puzzle pieces and come to more conclusions than I originally thought about, and I figured he'd be way more proactive about it than just. Being in the Tower and waiting.
Which means that that scene ended up being as listed above: having a squabble with Cap, learning more about Peter's dynamic with the Avengers in this universe, and seeing how Tony is reacting to it by throwing himself head first into trying to capture Ohnn.
I'll realize I need something else to be mentioned or put in and I'll have to shimmy things around, but that's basically how it goes.
As for other forms of organization:
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Keeping a timeline is so important because it tells you a lot about the environment your characters are in. It's also important to remember what a character has on them, what money they've spent, who they've met/who you have mentioned, every alias that is being used, to read your work and write down edits you want to make before you make them, to write down ideas beforehand of situations you can use, and, most importantly: MAKE A MAP!! This has saved me so many times. Sometimes your brain WILL trick you or make it harder on you to envision a scene. Make a map of where your characters are physically!! It will save you too!!
As for foreshadowing and plot points, I'll let you in on yet another secret:
Your subconscious is doing a lot more than you think it is.
Sometimes when I foreshadow something, I didn't even know I was until I got to it. I very often go back to read chapters that came before this to see what I've mentioned and what I haven't, and when I do, I'll see something and go "I have to bring this back" or "I almost forgot about that!"
Other times, I am very aware of what I'm foreshadowing, and that's because I follow a mystery plot formula. You have to keep in mind everyone's intentions, all the time. How are they feeling? What are their motivations? And: what are they doing right now, while this character is doing this?
Like Beck and Ohnn. From the very beginning, I knew I had to make sure that it was obvious Ohnn wasn't working alone. From there, I had to weave through the story and slowly build him up as someone who's working behind the scenes. Even from Ned's first POV, I made sure to mention that this person knows Tony and is tech savvy.
My biggest tip is to make sure you reread your work or at least skip through it, because sometimes you don't even know that you placed something there.
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And sometimes, it's very purposeful. :)
I hope this helped! I really tried to keep it short but I am insane and the process is sooooo long. It sounds complicated but it really is simple when you're actually doing it I swear
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haruchuiyo · 1 year
Text
Everlasting love
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being a princess means select people for you to fall in love with, but what if you love the man who’s sworn to protect you?
content: royal au + princess x bodyguard + fluff + kind of poetic (i hope so lmfao) + more fluff + established friendship + requited love + even more fluff + slight angst + fem!reader + kisses + slightly suggestive + jing yuan’s so incredibly desperately in love with you
word count: a little over 6k (this fic had no reason to be so long but it’s a fast read I promise!!)
this fic is very self indulgent so I wrote whatever I felt like so lots of stuff isn’t gonna make sense lol
It feels silly to do what you’re doing, hiking up a grassy hill while holding onto your dress so you don’t trip, all the while your white haired bodyguard is trailing silently behind you a few steps away. The grass was cut evenly and was muddy from the rain earlier this morning.
You weren’t actually allowed to go out but time to time, rules gets disobeyed by you and you do what you want to do. Although your bodyguard hesitated in stopping you when he saw you put on your walking boots. But who was he to say no? You were the princess of the kingdom after all and he is just a mere bodyguard assigned to guard your well-being. At all times.
The first time you saw him was through your window in your bedroom at night. You heard the horses neighing, the carriages stopping in their strides and distinct deep voices speaking. As curious as you were, you look down from your window and see the king’s guards in their uniform. A particular figure caught your attention with his interesting long white hair. Feeling as though he was being watched, he looks up and your eyes meet. Your eyes slightly widen in surprise when he sends you a smile your way. And you hastily hide yourself away from view.
The first time you met him, he had a gentle neutral expression on his pretty face. He was tall, had long strides when he walked, and he gently held your hand while kissing your knuckles when greeting you. When he spoke up and called you ‘your highness’, and introduced himself as Jing Yuan and your new bodyguard, you felt puzzled with the way your heart pounded against your chest. This was the first time you properly met the behemoth of a man in front of you. And all you wanted to do was leave. Bodyguards are tiresome and they’re on your beck and call every moment of the day without fail. It’s tiresome. Definitely why you felt puzzled because of your increased heartbeat.
Standing atop the hill, the wind was cold but you felt warm below your garments. You look behind you, sure to say jing yuan was behind you.
“It feels nice doesn’t it?” He was looking at you away from the scenery in front. He smiles gently and slightly nods. “It sure does, my lady.” He replies and you smile at him back.
“It is very nice actually, this is my favorite spot did you know?” You ask again while looking at the scenery, taking in the view with a smile on your face.
“It’s my first time hearing of it actually but I keep that in mind, princess.” You giggle at the name he called you.
“And it’s my first time hearing you call me something else aside from ‘my lady’” you retort, lightly mimicking jing yuan at how he says ‘my lady’.
You see his eyes slightly widen in surprise before he took steps in front of you with lowering his head.
“I apologize, my lady, i didn’t know I was out of line.” He hastily speaks up and you chuckle at that.
“It’s because you aren’t out of line, jing yuan.” You gently say before speaking up. “It’s quite nice to be called something else than my lady although it’s the title of my current status.” You lightly giggle at your own words as you kneel down to pluck a flower from the grass.
You see how it’s a pink bluebell, which surprises you because there aren't a lot of them on this hill. You were gonna speak up about it when you realized you were looking down at the flower too long, and also the fact that Jing yuan was quiet. You look up at him and see how he’s looking at you.
The look in his eyes was gentle, thoughtful and of something else that you can’t quite put a name on. And then he flashes you his usual gentle smile. “I keep that in mind as well.” He speaks up, before adding with a glint in his eyes. “Princess.” And you giggle at that which makes him smile even more. His smile has you momentarily glance at the pink bluebell before looking back at him. Your hearts pounding faster against your ribcage.
“Let’s go horseback riding today as activities, shall we?” You speak up at the dinner table, directing your words towards jing yuan. Your father is looking at you with a questionable face as if he couldn’t believe your words. Jing yuan was surprised himself but was better at hiding it.
“Surely you can take the carriage?” He asks and you shake your head while cutting into your food. “Take the carriage where? Horseback riding it is.” You say with a tone that your decision is final. You look up from your food at Jing yuan, who’s standing at a corner close to you. And when your eyes meets, you send him a big smile his way and he reacted with a slight smile as well along with a small bow to his head.
And here you are standing in front of a horse like it’s the first time you’re seeing the creature.
“Is everything alright, my lady?” You hear jing yuan’s familiar voice from behind you.
“I don’t know how to ride a horse.” You simply say and jing yuan turns quiet. You look behind you and see how he’s getting down from his own horse.
“A moment, please.” He says before walking away with his horse. Coming back a few moments later alone.
“It’s been decided I ride with you.” He simply says.
“On the same horse?” You ask.
“On the same horse.” He repeats finally.
And he helps you up on the saddle, your dress puffs up in front of you which you grin at because it simply looks so silly. And then you lightly squeal when you feel jing yuan hopping up on the saddle behind you. You feel his arms go around your body and your heart pounds faster. Your body feels hotter when you feel his firm chest pressed up against your back.
“Hold onto this tightly, princess.” He says by your ear and you turn loss of words and simply nod your head. His voice was soothingly deep and it almost sent your brain into shambles. You hold the reins and you feel warmer inside when you see how Jing yuan’s holding the reins as well along with you.
“It’s a bit cramped.” You blurt out and jing yuan chuckles. “Nothing to do about that now, is there?” At his words you chuckle before you squeal again when the horse starts walking.
“This surprised me.” You say after calming down. “Feels quite nice actually. You’re a good rider.” You add in.
“Been riding since I could walk.” He simply says and you giggle. “You merely jest, I’m sure I couldn’t even talk when I took my first steps.” And at that, jing yuan laughs and you decide you like the sound of it.
“Alright princess, wanna go a little faster?” He asks and you widen your eyes in excitement. “Who am I to say no? Of course I want to.” You chimed and jing yuan nudges the horse with his heels and the horse’s speed increases.
That makes you laugh in delight, at the speed and how good it makes you feel and excited. You look up at the sky, feeling the breeze on your face and breathe in the fresh air with your eyes closed, not realizing you leaned your head back against Jing Yuan’s shoulder.
“This feels so nice.” You say happily, opening your eyes and getting a closer view of Jing Yuan’s face. He quickly tilts his head to meet yours and your faces was inches apart.
“Eyes on the road, princess.” He announces, looking at you and you giggle. “You’re the one who’s controlling the reins of the horse.” And at that, he grins at you. “Touché.” He simply says, still grinning while looking away at you.
Only now did you properly process how close your faces were and how it made you feel. Nervous, curious, especially at things you shouldn’t feel curious about your own bodyguard. And also over the moon, because it also felt nice to have him this close in this proximity.
Little did you know the man himself felt the same. How he wishes to actually properly hold you. Infuriating how he could only put his arms around your frame to hold the reins, but not your body to his. His heart beats faster when you laugh at his jests, when you show him your pretty smiles, smiles he sleeps and wakes thinking of. How your eyes seem to glisten in happiness when he steps into your view. No matter what side of the bed he wakes up on, whatever emotions he’s feeling, as soon as he sees you his entire day is made for the better.
He feels satisfied and content at how your head is still on his shoulder and he signals the horse to slow down and the horse starts to walk calmly.
“I didn’t like you at the beginning.” He hears you speak up. He raises his brow but his hearts is racing and his minds jumping to conclusions.
“What do you mean by that, my lady?”
“I simply did not like you because you were a bodyguard. Mine especially. Didn’t like anyone being just steps away from me all the time, every moment of the day. It felt suffocating.” You admit to him, tilting your head to the side of his neck, Jing yuan swears he could feel your lips brushing his neck and it’s taking every restraint in him to not react and move.
“I see why you didn’t like me.”
“I do like you now.” At your simple bold words, his bloods rushed and his heart rates piqued. He unknowingly made the horse stop in its tracks hastily, which had you almost falling back on the ground before jing yuan caught you with his arm.
For the second time of the day, your faces are inches apart and your eyes are widened in surprise.
“I mean I do like you.” You repeat. And jing yuan eyes widens at your second confession. Or was it really a confession.
“Princess, I’m not sure I understand the meaning behind your words.” He sounds breathless. He watches how your lips open and closes, unsure of what to say.
“I didn’t mean it like that way.” You blurt out. “And of what way do you speak of?” He asks again.
“I’m not sure I can speak of what I actually mean, I’m so confused myself.” You tell him and he hears how your voice wavers. And I’m sure his eyes are as hectic as yours, looking all over each others face.
“I apologize, my lady.”
“Why do you always go back and forth between calling me ‘my lady’ and ‘princess’?”
You ask him. And now it’s his turn to be loss of words. “And stop apologizing when you haven’t done anything wrong.” You remark gently but sternly.
“I apologize. A force of habit, princess.”
“And there you go again.” You say and he smiles lightly.
“What can I say?”
“A force habit that as well?”
“You might be right.”
And you haven’t spoken of what transpired that day. Yet.
“I’m not interested in being wed to the prince, father.”
Your father, the king, sighs as he rubs his temples at your defying attitude. You merely send him an angry look his way and when your eyes meet jing yuan’s, you simply wanted to cry your heart out at the frustration you felt. Of being wed, to not have your own choice of who you want to marry and the feeling of your freedom slipping away, slowly by slowly.
“You are to simply get to know him, not to be wed.” Your father stated and you let out a dry chuckle.
“And at the end of the day, you’re gonna have me wed to a man I do not want nor love.” You retort back before walking away, ignoring your father calling for you. You continue to walk, knowing jing yuan is on your path behind you.
“My lady.” You hear him call for you when you arrive at the doors of your suite. You stand still and turn to look at him. “Yes?” You answer, pretending to look fine but failing miserably. You see how jing yuan’s eyes look dismayed at your apparent displeasure.
“Do you wanna go to your spot?” He asks and you feel a little of your displeasure slowly lift off your mind.
“I’d love to.”
The moment you arrived your favorite hill with jing yuan, your heart felt light and content. Emotions surges over you when you see pink bluebells once more. Why they grow on this hill, you have no idea but you’re not complaining.
“That flower is beautiful.” You hear jing yuan say and you look up at him with a smile. You pluck the pink bluebell and raise it in the air, placing the flower beside jing yuan’s head. You close one eye as if to observe him from a binocular.
“What are you doing?” Jing yuan chuckles at your antics.
“Just observing how beautiful the flower are, of course.” You say with a big smile and jing yuan feels his heart skip. He thought of the day he asked for the meaning of the flower from the royal gardener. And what you just did now, he feels his blood rush and lovely feelings come over him.
The day the prince from the neighbouring kingdom arrived, you detested him right away. He wasn’t kind to the servants, simply looking you up and down before showing you a pretend happy smile. You felt revulsion when he grabbed your hand to greet you with a kiss to your knuckles.
While he was doing that, you looked at jing yuan who was standing beside you and you simply did a face to show your annoyance. He merely replied with a smile before glancing at the prince and back at you, you took that as a signal to look away from jingyuan to the prince.
The days after that, every walk after breakfast and luncheon, you had to take it with the prince. You dreaded those walks every day and would rather have them with the wall of your bedroom, than with the prince who only seemed to be interested in himself.
On a sunny day, fortunately, the prince didn’t come along as he complained of an apparent headache. You were able to take a walk alone with Jing yuan.
While walking in front of you, you suddenly slowed down, making jing yuan bump into you from behind. You giggle when you hear him slightly gasp.
“Are you alright, princess?” He asks worriedly as if a slight bump to your body will damage you. You giggle again. “Couldn’t be more alright.” You answer and you see how his shoulder seems to relax.
“Take a walk beside me, will you? I quite missed our time alone.” You confess honestly and jing yuan’s face shows evident surprise at the sound of your words before he nods. “Always at your request, my princess.”
After walking for a quite a moment, you glance at the man beside you, whos silently holding onto his sword at his hip in his holster, face looking straight ahead of him, his hair fluttering along with the wind. You kept looking even if he turned to look at you. As he does that, you smile at him.
Jing yuan felt his body warm up at your smile and the way you were looking at him. He wished he could take this walk with you closer without a single distance, while holding your hands and not as your bodyguard but something more. But that is something he could only dream and think of.
“The other day, I was being honest.” He hears you speak up, still smiling but looking straight in front of you as you walked. “About liking you.” You softly add in. Jing Yuan holds his sword holster a tad too hard.
“I’m your bodyguard princess, I’m afraid we can’t be anything more.” He detests himself for saying that, but it’s only the truth. Even if the truth hurts. He sees you smiling sadly at the ground before looking up at him, widening your smile. But he knew it wasn’t genuine by how your eyes seemed to glisten in tears.
“Even so, I’m not saying I don’t feel the same way.” And now it was your turn to get surprised. And he sees how your eyes wavers in shock and dejection at the same time. Because as he mentioned before, you two can’t be anything more than a princess and her bodyguard.
“It’s frustrating.” You admit ruefully as you try not to let your tears fall. You smile sadly at him while holding back your tears. You see how Jing yuan steps closer to you, hesitating to make a move only to not do it. You were gonna speak up before you hear footsteps behind you, and there is the prince you don’t wanna marry.
You give the man you love one last smile before putting on a false happy front for the prince.
Ever since that day, everything felt normal but wasn’t the same.
Jing Yuan feels his heart ache each and every time he sees the prince from the neighbouring kingdom gets close to you, gets to stand next to you. His legs wants to walk and stand beside you, hands itches to touch you and his heart wants to be with you every moment of the day.
Today was a small ball your father hosted for only nearest relatives.
Your beauty is infinite and you’re indescribably pretty in your ball gown. And jing yuan couldn’t take his eyes off you at any moment. At some moment of when you were dancing with the prince, your eyes met and he sees you do a shy smile and he swear he felt his cheeks and body heat up.
You swear you saw jing yuan fidget in the spot he was standing at when you smiled at him. And your heart flutters at the thought of the effect you have on the man who’s sworn to protect your life.
The dance was over and you feel a presence behind you. Turning around as you let go off the prince, you see Jing Yuan.
“May I have the pleasure of your next dance, princess?” His voice was of a gentle tone, mellifluous to your ears. He gives you a soft smile as you nod your head. “You may.” You accept his offer with a mix of a shy and delighted tone. You don’t miss how the prince eyes the both of you. So you turn to look at him.
“I had a lovely dance, your highness.” You state smoothly and the prince does a slight bow. “As did I, princess.” He simply says before walking away, not before eyeing jing yuan down as if he was a threat to your presence.
The orchestra starts a new melody and you feel Jing Yuan’s hand on your waist and his other holding your hand. You place your unoccupied hand at his shoulder.
Your fingers touches the nape of his neck and you feel your body get pulled closer into his. You smile as you waltz the floor with him. Jing Yuan closes his eyes when he feels you softly massage his nape and you resisted in your entire body to not place your cheek on his sternum.
A moment into the waltz, you feel his hand at your waist slightly hold you tighter and you look up at him. Your eyes meet and his eyes were mesmerising. And you give out a subtle gasp when you feel his hand slip lower down your waist. You see the decisions from on jing yuan’s face and you wanted to stop him before he did what he did.
“Thank you for the dance, my lady. Have a lovely evening.” He shortly says before leaving you alone on the dance floor. Him leaving has you thinking you should look at your father and you did.
His face showed he knew it all.
That same night, jing yuan got to his suite and took his suit off. He loosens his bow tie and rolls up his sleeves. He looks around his room in frustration while gripping his hair. Frustrated at the fact he ruined your moment too early, he shouldn’t have touched you so intimately without your consent about it. He saw how your eyes looked frantic before he was about to excuse himself. And the way your expression fell when he did excuse himself. But something about the touch felt so right and for him. You felt right to him and with him.
Feeling like he needs to take a walk to settle down, he grabs his suit jacket and opens the door, almost walking into you.
When he sees you there hiding under a large mantle, your face hidden by the hood. Your eyes met him and jing yuan doesn’t waste a second to pull you into his room before anyone sees you.
“My lady, you shouldn’t be here.” He mentally hit himself for that statement. He just pulled you inside. “I know.” You simply say, pulling down your hood.
This close proximity with you has his mind and body in shambles. You’re alone with him in his bedroom. Alone. Whatever could happen and if it does, he won’t stop it. He won’t excuse himself again and leave you dejected and disappointed.
“You should leave.” He says and you take a step forward.
“Would it be different between us if I were not a princess?” You ask softly, standing in front of him.
“No, not any closer. I beg you, have mercy on me.” He says while ignoring your question, almost begging and your heart aches.
“I apologize, I shouldn’t have crossed your boundaries.” His own heart aches at the tone of dejection in your voice.
You understand his reluctance to be close to you. Maybe you shouldn’t have decided to come here. You’re putting jing yuan in trouble if anyone saw you at his door. You wouldn’t be able to forgive yourself if something were to happen to him. You look behind him and see his window, there is a cup of water with pink bluebells resting in it. Your heart aches for him. You turn around and were facing the front door in jing yuan’s room and was about to pull the hood over your face, before your entire body gets turned around.
His hands holds your face, he looks at you momentarily before his lips presses down against your own. Your eyes welled up in tears. This felt right. Your arms wrap around his torso, gripping the back of his clothes and you feel his other hand trail down your spine before drawing your body closer to his.
Your breasts flattens against his chest and you wrap your arms around his torso tighter. Your lips move leisurely against each other. He pulls away slightly.
“I’d still follow you around even if you were not a princess. Because I wanted to, not because I’m your bodyguard on duty.” He confesses as he brushes his lips against your jaw, moving up to softly peck the tip of your nose. You hum in content at his kisses while your heart increases its beat at his words. At his answer to your question from before.
He leans in closer again, kissing you. An unhurried kiss, with wants and longings for you, as if the time of the world is in your palms.
Jing Yuan’s lips were soft and smooth against yours. Lips working leisurely against your lips before he angles his head to deepen the kiss. You feel him guide your hands around his neck before he holds your own, for more deeper kisses.
A sweet little noise leaves your mouth when you feel him swipe his tongue over your lips to stroke yours, as if your mouth is molded for him and his kisses. He softly strokes the pulse point below your jaw, the pace of the kiss is slow yet agonizing. You want more of this man.
You feel his hands lift off from your neck, trailing down your spine before gently grasping the back of your thighs through your mantle. As if reflexively, your legs circle around his waist when he lifts you off the ground, pinning you against his front door.
You’re breathless when he pulls away, so is he but he isn’t stopping anytime soon. He presses soft chaste kisses down your jaw, to your pulse point and throat while you go catch your breath.
It is when you feel him lick your shoulder blade that everything comes back to you. He continues to nibble having you softly moaning, before he bites down gently, leaving a slight mark.
“Jing yuan.” The way you call out his name so desperately and so beautifully, he knows you have his entire body and soul bewitched and in the grasp of your palm.
“I love you, I can’t imagine a day not seeing your beautiful smile and ever making you feel sad. I hate myself for it everytime I see you so dejected. When you're in pain, it hurts my heart.” He presses kisses on your throat desperately. You softly whine out his name.
“I love you dearly, my heart. Infinitely.”
You’ve been fidgeting the entire day, ever since you saw that there’s another soldier to guard you instead of jing yuan. You pace back and forth in your room before you decide to do something and find him.
Your first thought was to go to the royal court room, your father is usually in there. And when you get there, your fathers guard announces your arrival.
“Father, what happened to—“ you cut yourself off when you see your father looking down at jing yuan. Who was kneeling on one knee in front of your father. Your hearts racing in fear at the sight of man you love in such a vulnerable position in front of your father, the king.
“What is the meaning of this?” You hear your voice waver.
“Do you swear on what you said, son?” Son? Why is your father calling jing yuan that way? Your mind in tatters and you don’t know what to make off the scene in front of you.
“Yes sir, I do.” Jing Yuan answers as he bows his head. And the moment you see the king pull out his sword from his holster, your hearts a mess and you immediately run in front of jing yuan.
“What is the meaning of this?” You repeat your question, your tone belligerent and glaring at your father this time. You grip onto jing yuan from behind you with your left hand, while your other fist clenched by your right side.
“It is alright, my heart.” You hear jing yuan say from behind you, you look away and turn away from your father. “It is alright.” He repeats gently, his eyes are looking all over you with soft glint to them. You shake your head as you kneel in front of jing yuan, holding his face.
“I cant let him hurt you, you didn’t do anything wrong.” There’s tears forming in your eyes and you see jing yuan smile at you, before chuckling a little. He reaches his hands out and gently holds your face as well.
“He won’t hurt me, in fact you just interrupted something, my heart.” He slightly grins at you while stroking your cheeks with each of his thumb. There’s confusion evident on your face and when you look up at your father.
“You have indeed interrupted something, my sweet daughter.” Your father says, his tone has a lighthearted tone to it. You furrow your brows and your father laughs.
“If you don’t mind, please do step away.” He says and you hesitantly step away but not before you give a kiss on jing yuan’s lips. His eyes widens in surprise and when you look at your father again, he seems surprised too at your boldness.
“Don’t hurt him.” Your words are final. And your father seemed to understand it. “I’ve got no intention to do so.” He says before looking at jing yuan again.
“Jing Yuan, soldier of the king's guard. Do you swear to protect the kingdom in case of emergency and war?” Your fathers voice was booming. Your heart races faster when you hear Jing Yuan say he swear and your father taps his sword on his right shoulder. Jing Yuan swears once more at your fathers words and the next thing he says, you clutch the front of your dress and you see Jing Yuan smile as he looks down at the ground.
“And lastly, do you swear to love my daughter, princess of the kingdom, through life and death, every moment of your life?”
“I swear.” You don’t know what you feel aside from relief at the fact jing yuan is not hurt and the way your heart seemed to surge with love for him.
The moment the sword finishes tapping his shoulder, you hastily run up to jing yuan and he hastily holds you into his embrace, his arms tightly wrapped around your body and yours around his neck. He burrows his face in the crook of your neck as you grip onto his hair, as if he’s gonna disappear any moment.
“I love you.” You hear him say. “I can't see spending a single day without you beside me. You’ve seized my entire heart and soul in your bare hands and I wish to never get it back.” Tears fall from your eyes as you nod your head.
You pull away as you nod again, your face full with tears. “Only if you never give back mine.” You say as jing yuan bursts into a slight laughter. “At your request, my heart. I will never.” He voices and you giggle.
He sees your tear stricken but happy face, your lips shaped into your beautiful smile he thinks of every second of the day and you are beautiful. He feels his eyes water, his heart pounds against his chest at the thought of you protecting him when you thought he was in danger. The roles were reversed that moment and he can’t stop loving you. And when you press your lips against his, he feels fulfilled. Fulfilled having you in his arms, where you should be, and being the man you love.
You pull away slightly and he gently kisses your tears away from your face, your eyes closes in content and there’s a smile on your lips. He can’t believe he’s finally your and you’re his.
You place your cheek on jing yuan’s chest and make eye contact with your father. Who’s looking sadly at you two. You pull away from jing yuan and take your father in your arms.
“Thank you, father. You have no idea how happy I am for you to do this.” Your fathers arms wraps around your body. “That’s why I did it, because it makes you happy and that’s all I wanted for my daughter.” His words have you tearing up again.
“I’m having my king's guards after you if you ever hurt her.” Your father says nonchalantly and you swat his chest while he laughs. “I swear on my life I will never.” Jing yuan says with a grin to his face.
You flatten out the blanket on the grass on the hill when jing yuan lightly taps your nose, making you lightly giggle resulting in jing yuan flashing you a gentle smile.
“I have something for you.” He simply says and you sit up excitedly. “And it is?” You ask giddily, jing yuan smiles at your excitement in receiving gifts, grand or simple, you love it.
When he reveals your gift, his heart is racing a lot anticipating your reaction. He sees how your eyes widened in surprise, how you look back and forth between him and the gift.
It’s a flower crown made with only pink bluebells and it’s beautiful.
“I tried my best, although it isn’t the best sight to the eye I still hope you like it.” Jing yuan confesses shyly and you giggle. “I love it so much.” You say as you lean in to press a quick grateful kiss on his lips and he hums in content.
“May I, my princess?” He asks and you nod your head. He places the flower crown on your head and views you with gentle eyes.
“You are beautiful, my heart. Never seen anyone more beautiful than you.” He utters with a content sigh and you giggle. “You flatter me too much, my love.” You softly swat his chest and he chuckles.
He reaches his arms out and immediately envelopes you in a hug making you laugh at how quick he was to grab and hold you. He falls back on the blanket with you on top of him, his arms around your waist and your hands on his chest.
You lean down to peck his lips and Jing yuan meets your kiss halfway. When you begin to pull away he makes a discontented noise, and you smile when he lets out a content sound when your lips are on top of his again. You feel his hands trail up your spine to softly hold you by the neck as he softly deepens the kiss. You clutch his clothing on his chest.
After a few more kisses, you pull away to catch your breath and when you look down at Jing yuan below you, he is breathtaking as the sun rays caresses his skin, enhancing his golden eyes and the pink bluebells on the hill is swarming his head like a halo.
You feel his fingers brush the back of your thighs through your dress, tugging on the clothing, urging you to lay on top of him properly. Caging his body in between your thighs and when you do, a love struck smile crosses his face and he looks happy. He gently strokes your thigh and you smile at him.
You have no idea how in the world you started to fall in love with the man beneath you. Along the way from your first meeting, he caught your heart and you’re glad it was him.
“How did you end up in the royal court room with my father?” You ask curiously as jing yuan continues to stroke your thighs.
“He called for me into the royal court room and simply wanted to speak to me about you.” Jing yuan says and you roll your eyes teasingly. “Simply speak to you about me? Whatever for?” You ask again and you see how jing yuan is now hovering over you, caging you in with his thighs, his thighs brushing against your own.
“He found out after the ball and wanted clarification.” Jing yuan answers and you nod in understanding. Then you chuckle and you see how there’s confusion on Jing Yuan's face.
“I’d be lying if I said we were discreet that day.” You tell him and a smile is on his face, amusement dancing in his eyes. “We were the most discreet people showing our love for each other.” He delivers it lightheartedly in a sarcastic manner while brushing his nose against yours, making you giggle.
In actuality, jing yuan had a crush on you the moment he saw you from the window watching him from your bedroom. His heart pulled and developed into love for you. But he repressed them as best as he could because of the status of your current situation. Cupping a hand against your cheek, he leans down to meet you in a soft kiss, and he feels you smile into the kiss and he gently squeezes the back of your thigh with his other hand.
And then his hands were atop your hips. He pulls himself in closer against your body and deepens the kiss while squeezing your hips gently. There’s so much ardor and deep affection laced into the kiss, a heat spread across your face and body. Jing Yuan tastes just like the herbal tea he drank and honey cookies.
Suddenly feel a gentle breeze but it’s almost knocking your flower crown off your head and you hastily pull away, laughing as you hold onto your crown while jing yuan holds you by the hips, laughing along with you.
He sits up, bringing you with him and he lifts you up onto his lap by grasping your thighs. You are still holding onto your crown. “You will always have my body and soul, my heart.” He whispers languidly by your ear before pecking your mouth. You cozy yourself closer into jing yuan’s embrace, burying your face into his chest as a love struck smile flashes across your face at his lovely words.
“And you’ll always have mine, my love.”
in case you wonder, pink bluebell flowers is the meaning of conveying your feelings of everlasting love :)
if you’ve come this far, a like and a reblog would soo much appreciated hehe <3
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