#also can’t wait for the fandom to pick this game apart for the next ten years

[illjustpretend]

I just think um i um he uh

[chicgeekgirl89]

The Runaway

Fandom: 911

Characters: Eddie Diaz, Christopher Diaz, Evan Buckley

Summary: Eddie picks Christopher up from Buck’s after the events of 4.08 “Breaking Point.”

                                      XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Eddie knew fear. He’d survived shootouts, bombings, five alarm fires, near drowning, and the death of his wife. He knew fear. But all of that paled in comparison to how he’d felt when he’d seen Christopher’s empty bed.

It was God or karma or sheer luck that he didn’t get pulled over on the way to Buck’s because he made the twenty minute trip in less than ten, ignoring several stop signs on quieter streets and speeding through questionably yellow lights. He needed to be with his kid now. 

The elevator ride up to Buck’s floor almost killed him. He stood right next to the door, one hand braced on the paneling, the other punching the button repeatedly as if that would make the machinery move faster. 

Buck was waiting for him in the hallway, his face serious. “Eddie, wait a second,” he said, holding out a placating hand.

“Buck, let me in,” Eddie said through gritted teeth.

“Just listen,” Buck said. “If you go in there yelling it’s not going to fix anything. He’s upset—“

“I know he’s upset!” Eddie snapped. “I’m upset too! How do you think I felt, opening his door and finding him gone? Knowing that it’s my fault? That he’d rather come talk to you than me?”

Buck stayed calm despite the jabs. “He’s just a kid Eddie. He’s confused.”

Eddie shook his head. “Buck I swear to god if you start trying to lecture me on raising my kid right now—”

“I’m not, I promise I’m not,” Buck said. “I just…I know what it’s like to feel like you don’t have anyone to talk to. And I don’t want you to make a mistake you can’t come back from.”

“Buck.” Eddie blew out a breath, his already thin patience having reached the breaking point. “Just let me in.”

Buck eyed him for a half second longer, then stepped back. Eddie pushed past him, striding quickly into the apartment. Words like ‘grounded’ and ‘no TV’ were at the forefront of his mind, but they died on his tongue the second he saw Christopher sitting on the couch. He was here. He was safe. He wasn’t kidnapped or lying on the side of the road or wandering the streets by himself, all scenarios that had run through Eddie’s mind in the last half hour. 

“Christopher.” He breathed out his son’s name and dropped to his knees, pulling him into a fierce hug. “Oh my god Christopher. You scared me.” 

“I’m sorry Dad,” Christopher said, his voice muffled against Eddie’s shirt. 

Eddie’s tears were closer to the surface than he’d realized, pricking at his eyes and making his throat grow tight. “I’m sorry too.”

Christopher pulled back and looked up at him, worry pinching his face.“Are you mad at me?”

Eddie sucked in a deep breath, struggling to find the right words. There were clearly some things they needed to talk about. As much as he hated to admit it, Christopher wasn’t a baby anymore. 

“I’m upset,” he finally said. “I’m glad you felt like you could come talk to Buck; that you chose a safe place to go. But it really scared me to find you gone like that.”

“I was just really mad at you,” Christopher said, shifting back and forth restlessly. “You didn’t tell me you had a girlfriend.”

“I know,” Eddie said, guilt chewing at his gut. “But relationships are a complicated thing. And I didn’t want to talk to you until I was…more sure about everything.”

“You lied to me.” Christopher said it accusingly.

“I did,” Eddie admitted. “And that was the wrong choice. I’m sorry. I will try to be more honest with you from now on. But I also need you to understand that sometimes I need time to figure things out before I talk to you.”

“Because you’re a grown up?”

“Yes. Because I’m a grown up. And grown up stuff is complicated sometimes.”

Christopher mulled this over for a moment and sighed. “That’s what Buck said too.”

“Yeah?” Eddie glanced toward the doorway but Buck had disappeared, apparently giving them some privacy, although with the loft’s open floor plan he had no doubt that his friend could hear every word. “What else did he say?”

“That it was okay for you to have a girlfriend and it was okay for me to be upset about it. And that it doesn’t mean you love Mom any less.”

Eddie’s heart squeezed. “Christopher, is that what you think? That if I see someone new I don’t love your mom anymore?”

“I don’t know,” Christopher said with a sniff.

Eddie could tell he was close to tears and he squeezed his son’s knee comfortingly. “I will always love your mom. Just like I will always love you. But I have room in my heart for somebody new. And I think if you try, you just might too.”

Christopher was quiet for a moment. “I think I could do that.”

Eddie felt a wave of relief crash over him. “I know you could. You are one of the kindest, most loving kids in the whole world.”

Christopher looked up at him from under his glasses. “Does that mean I’m not in trouble?”

“Oh no, you’re definitely in trouble,” Eddie said, amusement trickling through him in spite of the situation. “Grounded. For a week. No phone. No TV. No video games.”

“But Dad!”

“Uh uh, don’t even try,” Eddie said. “Choices have consequences kiddo.” He softened his voice. “Chris, the next time you get mad I want you to come and talk to me. But if you ever feel like there’s something we can’t talk about, you can tell me that you want to come to Buck’s and I’ll bring you. Please don’t ever run away like that again.”

“I won’t,” Christopher said. “I promise.”

“Good. Come on,” Eddie said. “It’s a school night. Let’s get home.”

“Can we say goodbye to Buck?”

“Of course.”

Buck reappeared at the sound of his name. “Hey time to go already?” he asked.

“Dad says we have to,” Christopher said. He walked forward and wrapped his arms around Buck’s waist. “Thanks Buck.”

“Anytime buddy,” Buck said fondly, ruffling his hair. 

“Hey Christopher, can you go wait in the hall for just a second?” Eddie asked. “I’ll be right out.”

Christopher eyed them both. “More grown up stuff?”

“Yes,” Eddie said pointedly. “Go please.”

“Fine.” Christopher turned with a sigh of long suffering and headed out the door.

Eddie stuck his hands in his back pockets and shifted his weight uncomfortably. “Hey, look, I’m sorry I came in here like that. That stuff I said…I know you were just trying to help.”

“It’s okay,” Buck said. “I get it. He scared the shit out of you. Heck he scared the shit out of me just showing up on my doorstep.”

Eddie shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m doing here Buck. He’s growing up. He’s almost a teenager. Sometimes it’s like I don’t even know him anymore.”

“Hey, you’re a good dad,” Buck said. “He knows that. He just…needed a minute.”

“Well thank you for being here. For both of us,” Eddie said. “I really—it means a lot to me that he feels like he has someone he can talk to.”

Buck put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Always.”

Christopher fell asleep on the drive home, which Eddie took at a significantly slower pace than his frantic journey to Buck’s. When they arrived Eddie gathered him up in his arms and carried him inside, heart squeezing painfully in his chest. How much longer until he couldn’t do this anymore? Until Christopher grew too tall or too embarrassed to let him help this way? He wasn’t ready to let childhood go. But the last two years had changed them both, and it was time Eddie stopped pretending Christopher was going to be a kid forever and started preparing to help him grow up. 

He laid Christopher on his bed and slipped off his shoes before pulling up a blanket and tucking it around him. He pressed a kiss to his son’s hair and then gently removed his glasses, placing them on the nightstand. He turned off the light intending to slip from the room and fall into his own bed. 

“Daddy?”

Eddie turned back to find Christopher’s eyes open, peeking up at him from under the blanket. “Yeah buddy?”

“What if your new girlfriend goes away too? Like Mom did?”

God, was his kid trying to kill him? Eddie was not prepared for this tonight. “I don’t think that will happen. But if it does, then we’ll be sad. And we’ll try to remember the good times we had together. Just like we do with your mom.”

“What if you break up?”

“That’s a possibility. You know sometimes things just don’t work out. That’s what dating is for. To see if you want to be with somebody forever.”

“If you break up, what if she doesn’t want to see me anymore?”

Eddie sat down on the bed. This was the crux of why he’d avoided this issue; he didn’t want to cause Christopher anymore heartbreak. “I don’t think there’s a single person in this world who would ever want to stop seeing you,” he said. “And I would never ask you to stop being friends with someone just because it didn’t work out between me and her.”

Christopher was quiet for a moment. “Can you stay with me until I fall asleep?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “Yeah buddy, of course.”

He nestled into the bed and Christopher snuggled close into his side. “I love you,” Eddie said. 

“Love you too,” Christopher mumbled.

Within minutes his breathing evened out and Eddie knew he’d fallen asleep. But Eddie didn’t move. Not yet. He wanted to hold onto childhood for just a little bit longer.

[1-800-roflmao]

Wash Day Delight Pt. 2

Fandom: Undertale (Video Game)

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Warnings Apply

Relationships: Papyrus (Undertale)/Reader, Papyrus (Undertale) & Reader

Characters: Papyrus (Undertale), Reader, Original Characters, Original Female Character(s), Mentions of other AU Papyri and Sans

Additional Tags: Reader Is Not Frisk (Undertale), Reader Is Not Chara (Undertale), reader is poc, reader is mixed, Reader has curly hair, Undertale Monsters on the Surface, Friendship, Wholesome, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, I’m Bad At Summaries, Not Beta Read

*Anyone else have that one curl that is your favorite?  Like you just can’t stop messing with it?  Also, promise the other skeletons will be joining in soon.  For now, enjoy some fluff. 

PREVIOUS || NEXT

As soon as she heard the bell above her door ring and the door settle closed with a click, she was rushing around her office tidying up and filing paperwork.  She knew Papyrus would not waste any time if he could help it.  She only hoped he took it easy on the little old woman.  She had a feeling Mrs. Ida was tougher than she looked, but considering this was only their first meeting, she couldn’t help thinking she looked as fragile as a porcelain doll.  “Please don’t break my client, Papi,” she pleaded, shutting and locking the last drawer on her desk for the day. 

Her business was still small so she didn’t have any need for filing cabinets just yet, but it had been picking up.  Most of her clients were elderly, which was to be expected when one dealt with wills, funerals, and burials.  She wished more young people thought of wills.  A properly notarised and established will could ease the mind, not only because it dictated what happens to your earthly possessions after death.  No, a will could make sure your body and memory is honored how you wished despite you no longer being there.  She had witnessed one too many funerals that were practically an insult; honestly, some it would have been less offensive to simply spit on the dead’s grave.  

Just as she felt her brows pinching, she huffed and closed her eyes as she took in a few calming breaths.  It does no one any good getting mad on her own.  A little snort escaped her at that thought.  Her getting “mad on her own” was the catalyst for her to start her own business.  “ANGER IS NOT INHERENTLY BAD.  IT IS JUST HOW YOU DIRECT IT!”  She made a mental note to thank a certain tall, pointy skeleton in her life for those words.  She sent a mental thank you to his therapist as well. 

 As her mind jumped from one subject to the next, her hands and feet had stayed moving.  By the time she zoned back in, she had finished tidying up and sanitizing the office.   “Bad habit there,” she muttered, tossing the soiled paper towel into the bin tucked underneath her desk.  A quick peek inside determined it wasn’t nearly full enough to toss and nothing in the bin would smell or pose a hazard.  It could go another day.  

Peeking at the clock as she locked the windows and pulled the curtains closed, she noted it had been only a couple minutes.  Papyrus wasn’t back yet, surprisingly.  She should be thankful as that means he didn’t rush and possibly her client wouldn’t be recovering from whiplash.  She swears that skeleton could give a cheetah a run for its money.  What’s terrifying is he is not even the fastest of the monsters she has met.  Monsters were something else.

A couple minutes later and she had finished all her closing tasks: office locked up, hall and waiting area swept and wiped down, the last of the windows curtained, and furniture and often touched places sanitized.  She’d even given the guest bathroom a quick clean up and gathered the dirty mugs and empty plate from the little refreshment corner she provided for clients waiting.  Slipping her phone from her pocket, she checked the time with a quick double tap.  Goodness, had Mrs. Ida parked that far down?  Maybe she didn’t like parallel parking on these streets and instead parked in one of the hidden lots just off teh main road?  Or had the two gotten lost?  

A bubble of anxious energy caught in her throat as her mind jumped to the possibility that they were in trouble.  She forced herself to take a breath and simply breathe.  No, this was a safer area.  She’d moved and chosen to place her business here for that reason.  It did little to comfort.  She was not ignorant to the fact that no matter how “safe” a place is, it is not completely immune to danger and the unfairness of life.  Plus, Papyrus was a monster.  And sadly, the portion of humanity that didn’t like change, didn’t like different, turned their prejudices to them or just broadened their spectrum of hate.  What was even sadder was that some people of color, people who should know better and know how it feels to be treated as subhuman, hopped on the bandwagon; they were just happy it wasn’t directed at them anymore.  

The pinch and strain in her forehead told her she needed to calm down.  She breathed in slowly, deeply, and held it, counting down from ten as she rolled her shoulders back and let them drop.  Once she hit zero, she let the air held in her lungs out in one long, even breath.  She could feel the tension melting off, the bubble gone, and overall she felt lighter.  Mal would be proud.  She almost missed the munchkin flicking her forehead any time he saw her frowning.   It reminded her of her mother telling her to “fix her face.”  

Moving on, she saw she had a few notifications, but none were messages from her friend.  She wished he sent something if it was going to take time for him to get back.  She peeked out the front door and squinted down the street, both ways, trying to locate the two.  She couldn’t see either, but she did see Papyrus’s red sports car parked just in front.  

The area she lived in was considered the downtown area.  It was mostly small businesses, shops, restaurants, a couple bars further over, and if you traveled just a few minutes further, you would hit the residential area. Well, the official residential area, anyway.  And in the opposite direction was the main center of Ebott.  Most business owners in downtown lived above their work space and some even rented out rooms.  Her little office was on the quieter of the two main streets that had mostly offices, a little cafe, and a couple shops.  This was Eighth Street.  If you wanted to party, go to Sixth Street.  That was where all the bars, clubs, taverns, and odd little gems were.  She enjoyed going to hunt down her favorite food vendor.

Stepping outside, she sighed as the cool night air kissed at her cheeks and the exposed skin of her arms, causing goosebumps to rise.  She was tempted to wait outside for him, but he expected her ready to go once he got back.  One more glance at the clock on her phone and she decided to wait for him inside.  He was an adult.  She needed to have faith he could take care of himself.  Plus, she had no clue which way they had gone and it would do no good to possibly wander in the wrong direction searching for them.  She muttered a quick little wish for their safety before turning around and going back inside.  

Like others on this street, she lived above her office space on the second floor.  It felt nice to know her mortgage payments went to owning both her home and place of business one day.  It also just felt good to have a space all to herself.  She loved her mother and siblings, but she had been ready to go.  Scooping up the dirty dishes on her way back to the little hallway, she balanced the tray in one hand and fished out her keys with the other.  She could thank those years of waitressing and retail for two things: multitasking skills and patience.  Keys secured, she found the right one, and unlocked the doorway to her haven.  She left the door unlocked and just slightly ajar to let Papyrus know where she was and to let himself in.

It was clever how the building was set up.  The ground floor had an office space, waiting area, guest bathroom, and small hallway connecting all three.  The extra door in the hallway just looked like it would lead to a broom closet.  It tickled her inner child each time she had to slide the false wall away and reveal the stairs that led up into her second story home.  Stepping up the first few steps, she slid the wall back into place, then flicked a switch to turn on the lights in the stairwell before she quickly ascended the rest of the stairs.  

On the landing, she tapped a foot on a nearby standing lamp and it filled the living room with gentle, warm light.  She prefered using lamps over built in lighting.  Most lighting in apartments were bright white and blue toned, while she had grown up with warmer, off white bulbs.  She also was simply used to a dimmer environment back in her mother’s house.  They didn’t keep lights running all day long.  Only time the lights were on was at night for a bit and if you needed to look for something.  She liked to consider her home cozy and welcoming despite the low lighting.

This space was enough.   It felt bigger than it was since it was just her living here.  It was hers, and it felt amazing every time she walked around her home how she wished, cooked what she wanted to eat, placed things where she wanted, and one day, she’d maybe get a pet.  Removing her shoes at the landing, she slipped on a pair of slippers and padded across the vinyl flooring.  While it was nice not having an inch of permanent carpet in her home, she had learned these sorts of floors could be chilly and it was a habit not worth breaking to wear house slippers or slides inside.  

She beelined for her bedroom after dropping off the dishes in the sink to take care of later and tossing her mask into the trashcan.  Now, she needed to get changed and do something about this hair.  The “previous arrangements” Papyrus had spoken of was their weekly workout session.  Usually, he would pop in after she had closed up and the two of them would take a jog or walk around the block, then hit the local gym.  Her hair being down during a workout was just asking for frizz, tangles, and possibly it getting in the equipment at the gym.  Plus, it was just hot as hell to keep it down while moving that much.  

While she just wanted to toss off her clothes and bra without a care and face plant on her bed, maybe veg out on the couch, she knew she couldn’t cancel on Papyrus.  Her drip for today was a four piece pantsuit gifted to her by Black and Edge for her birthday not long ago.  Something about her needing to look powerful as a business woman and “none of her current attire was up to their standards.”  The two had amazing taste though, so she couldn’t get too mad at them dissing her wardrobe.  The blouse was made from a soft fabric in her favorite color.  A black corset style vest with an honestly beautiful work of art of the back comprised of hand stitched embroidery and silk fabric, with matching silk lacing.  The pants were custom fit--how they knew her measurements was still a mystery, but she suspected Wine had something to with it-- and also black.  The long trenchcoat that matched with it that she hadn’t worn today was made of a heavy fabric in her favorite color with that same patterned silk lining the inside.  It was hanging in her closet.  She carefully removed the peices she wore before laying them on her bed neatly to avoid unnecessary wrinkles.  She was pretty sure this suit was the most expensive thing in her home.     

Digging through drawers, she picked out a pair of athletic tights, a sports bra, and a  t-shirt the pun lovers of the skeleton family had given her.  While it didn’t have a pun on it, it made for a lot of fun interaction when she wore it.  Across the chest was written “Bet you Can’t Read the Back of This Shirt” and on the back “Bet You Can’t Read the Front of This Shirt.”   The amount of people who try to slyly look at the other side after reading one then slinking away after realized they had been tricked was always amusing.  

It took less than a second for her to unclasp her current bra and throw it into her hamper.  It took a bit more time to slip on and clasp her sports bra.  She took a moment to debate using the the j-hook before deciding it couldn’t hurt to have a little more stability.  She froze as she heard movement in her house, something sliding, and then footsteps.  She only began moving again after hearing Papyrus annouce his presence.  She practically ripped her tights up her legs as she was very aware of the sound of his now bare feet clicking across her living room and getting closer.  Her shirt was tugged over her head and arms slid through her shirt sleeves just as he poked his skull through her bedroom door, which she had apparently left open in her haste.  Whoops.  

Once Papyrus was sure he wouldn’t look like a nightlight bobbing along on his way back to his friend’s home, he finally left the cover of the bus stop and back onto the sidewalk.  His mind was running over everything that had happened that evening.  He wondered what possibly led the elderly human to assume he and his friend would be… canoodling, canoodling was a word he could handle to describe what she was hinting at.  He preferred his magic to stay put right now.  An exasperated sigh fell from his parted teeth as he considered the possibility that he was just overthinking and overanalyzing.  The elderly human was probably just pulling a dirty jape on him.  The next time they met, he would have to return the favor.  Of course with a more classy, sophisticated jape, but a jape none the less.

“Papi!” she greeted with a little wave, blowing at her now mussed up hair from rushing to get dressed.  She eventually had to push it out her face as it simply kept falling back.  She was sure she looked a right mess at the moment.  

∆∆∆

His sockets took in just how dark it was getting.  How long had he been out?  Did it really take that long to pretty much jog to the bus stop?  Or had he taken that long to recover?  A glance at the sky revealed the stars were in full view now, but the moon was still low.  He focused on his hearing, but didn’t hear the usual ruckus from Sixth Street; so, it couldn’t have taken too long.  

“NO SENSE IN WASTING ANYMORE TIME STANDING HERE!” he declared with a little stomp of his foot.  “AND NOW I HAVE NOTHING HOLDING ME BACK!!” he practically cackled as he launched into a sprint, tearing down the sidewalk.  She had better be prepared, especially considering all the extra time she had been given unintentionally.  He refused to fail in his duties as her best and greatest friend.  One such duty was pushing and supporting her goals.  He had been ecstatic when she had told him she wanted his help with improving her health and getting in shape that first time.  Not only had she come to HIM out of everyone, but now he could hang out with her even more.  

Papyrus didn’t stop running until he had to hit the brakes infront of her front door.  He noted that the lights had been turned off downstairs, but he could see warm light filtering through the second story window.  Making his way inside, he closed and locked the front door, sliding the bolt at the top of door to secure it.  There was two ways in and out of her home, this front door and the “back door.”  The back door actually led to a side patio that wrapped around back to connect to a second staircase outside.  He locked the doorway in the hall as well before practically bounding up the stairwell. 

He made sure to call out your name once he reached the landing, “READY OR NOT, I HAVE RETURNED!!!” he added with his best impression of Edge’s cackle for humor.  As he removed his shoes and set them on the rack against the wall, he could hear shuffling and little thumps from across the small, cozy home.  His toes lightly clicked against the floor as he made his way to her room.  As he got closer, he could hear the shuffling get more urgent and a little curse here and there.  

“HUMAN, ARE YOU ALRIGHT IN HERE?” he didn’t know what he had expected when he peeked into her room, but his teeth clicked shut audibly as he tried to stifle a snort and keep himself from grinning.  The human had apparrently been hurrying to finish dressing and had just pulled her shirt down.  He had peeked in just as her head finally popped through her collar, or rather all he could see was an adorable fluffball.  Her curls which had been relatively neat and orderly before was now... well, everywhere.  He could see her lips which were now pouting after a failed attampt at blowing her hair out of her face.  Her nose crinkling cutely in aggravation as she brings a hand up to shove the errant curls back.  

His sockets focused on her fingers which had been all but swallowed up by her hair.  The digits sinking in and he couldn’t help wondering how it would feel to tangle his own digits into her tresses.  Was it as soft as it looked?  Or would it be coarse?  It wasn’t his first time wondering such things.  She had a habit of playing with this one particular curl at her nape.  He would often catch her twisting, pulling, and twirling that one lock of hair endlessly.  That one curl now sticks out cutely anytime she wears her hair down and his phalanges itch to play with it like she does anytime he sees it.  

“Papi?” 

The skeleton jolted as he refocused on the present as her voice, so much closer than before, and a fleshy palm passing his vision.  He blinked as her face came into view, looking up at him with a warm flush to her face.  Well, what of her face he could see as she had released her hair and some had fallen back in her face again.  

“I know my hair’s a mess right now, but I didn’t think it was so bad to leave you speechless,” she muttered, looking away as her hand came up to play with THAT curl again.  He tore his sockets from her fingers deftly twisting the curl and brought a hand to catch hers, moving it away.  She released the curl with little resistance, but still refused to look at him.  That little curl snapped back and while he wished he could appreciate and marvel at how it did that, he had a friend to comfort.  

“WHILE YOUR HAIR, YES, IS A MESS RIGHT NOW,” he held back a wince as her shoulders hunched a bit, “I DON’T THINK THAT’S A BAD THING!” he added with a bright smile.  He could see her chancing a peek up at him from the corner of her eye.  If she didn’t like people touching her face suddenly, he would have simply turned her head himself.   Good- NO, GREAT friends respect boundaries.  “IN FACT, I THINK IT’S VERY… OH, WHAT IS IT YOU HUMAN’S SAY?” he paused, pretending to think for a moment before snapping his phalanges, “CHIC!!!  NO, FIERCE!!  YES, I LIKE THAT ONE MUCH BETTER!”  Was his volume control out the window at this point?  Yes.  Did he care? No.  Because now she was looking at him fully, head tilted back and forcing curls to fall away.  Her flush seemed to have worsened though.  

Papyrus watched her as she took a minute to suck in a deep breath and exhale, closing her eyes briefly.  The shock had apparently worn off as she now looked up at him bashfully from under her lashes.  “Papi, has anyone told you you’re too much sometimes?” she asked with a little shake of her head as she seemed to be fighting back a smile.

Leave it to Papyrus to bring her mood back up in mere moments and hype her up to a point she might consider leaving the house like this.  If only her hair didn’t pose a safety hazard at the gym and didn’t trap heat like a lion’s mane in the savanna.  “Thanks, Papi,” she wiped a tear that had gathered in her eyes and took another moment to calm down and catch her breath.  

He knew it was probably one of those questions that humans didn’t expect answers to, but he just grinned wider and answered anyway.  “NOPE!  AFTERALL, THE KEY TO POPULARITY IS LEAVING THEM WANTING MORE! NYEH HEHEH!!”  And now his evening was even better as her laughter rang in his skull and she was smiling again, genuine and joyful.  

∆∆∆

“ANYTIME FOR MY FAVORITE FLUFFY HUMAN!” her skeleton friend boasted.  She just quirked a brow at the affectionate descriptor.  She couldn’t say anything about it though, since half the skeleton household had nicknamed her as such.  She couldn’t even argue that it didn’t fit.  It was better than “Curly” atleast, or the various food and drink related nicknames Sugar and Oak had tried on her.  

Sighing, she loosed her hand from her friend’s grip and stepped back.  “Come on, let’s get out of the door.  Can’t be good for your back and neck,” she ushered him in with a gentle tug to his hand.  He stepped inside with little urging and almost immediately he was rolling his shoulders and stretching.  He must not have realized how long they had been in the doorway.  Thankfully, her home had higher ceilings than normal, but sadly the doorways were still made for average sized humans so anytime the Papyri or Oak visited, they had to duck through the doorways.  She was saving up for renovations for atleast the first floor to be more monster accommodating one day.  

Letting go of his hand, she padded across her room and into her private bath.  While her bathroom wasn’t extravagant, it atleast was nicer and bigger than any bathroom she had used before now.  Correction, it was the nicest before she visited the skeletons’ house.  She could have lived in that tub.  The water pressure in the shower had been amazing as well.  Stepping up to the sink and vanity, her eyes scanned the counter top for a particular item.  “There you are,” she mumbled as she picked up the spray bottle.  It was filled with water and detangler, just the miracle she needed to help her tame this mane and hopefully get it pulled back into atleast a ponytail.  Maybe she should go with a pineapple puff?  No, too many loose ends to get caught on equipment.  A bun then?  Or a braid?  After checking how easy her hair would cooperate, she settled on two thick french plaits.

She hadn’t even gotten to pull the trigger once before she heard Papyrus in the doorway as he ducked through and stared at her with curious empty sockets.  Even without eyelights, she could feel where his focus was.  It was on her hand poised with a spray bottle aimed at her hair.  Rather than saying anything or asking what he wanted, she pulled the trigger and started the process of dampening her hair.  It wasn’t until her curls started to get weighed down with moisture that Papyrus finally spoke up.  

“HUMAN, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”  Her gaze locked with his visage in the mirror as he had moved closer.  His gaze wasn’t on the spray bottle anymore and rather on the top of her head.  What was so interesting that he had to move closer?  While this bathroom was on the bigger side, it wasn’t quite big enough to not feel cramped with a towering skeleton monster sharing the space as well.

“Taming this hair down,” she stated simply and she could see his teeth part to ask another question, most likely “why” she was doing this after his encouragement.  “Papi, you do remember where we’re going tonight right?” She didn’t continue speaking until he nodded, “Sorry to tell you, but this FIERCE hair is a little too much for the gym.  It gets caught on a shit around here, rather not think of what it could get caught on at a place with heavy weights, equipment, and the occasional fool who can’t keep his or her or their hands to themselves.”  She’d started off wanting to play it off lightly with a joke, but some frustration had leaked into her voice as she remembered there were still people who didn’t understand you couldn’t treat others like a petting zoo. 

It’s not like touching her hair is completely off limits.  Just ask first, most times she’s fine with it so long as they don’t over do it.  Plus, she worked to hard to ensure the health and texture of her hair for it go unappeciated by not only herself, but those close to her.  Strangely, none of her skeleton friends, except one, had recently tried or asked to touch it.  Only one had tried and she had gotten on him about consent.  That had been Cash, back when they had first met, but now he was pest about it and she had taken to telling him no just to spite him.

Papyrus had originally ducked into the bathroom to ask if he could get himself a glass of water while he waited, but had been struck with curiosity as he saw his human friend aiming a spray bottle at her head, more specifically her hair.  It was similar to the spray bottle they had used to discipline the cats back home at one point.  He was aware that humans had various products--thousands he had discovered--for their hair.  Especially the women of the species, but the men weren’t exempt either.  It had been overwhelming the first time he had stepped into a store on the surface.  They just had an overwhelming amount of choices for pretty much everything.                   

Zoning back in, she noticed Papyrus’s teeth had just closed, “Sorry, did you say something? Fraid I missed it,” she piped up apologetically as she started wetting her hair again.  Maybe it would have been easier to just duck her head under the shower at this point.  “Papi?” she called as he didn’t answer, peeking up at him again in mirror, but he ssemed to be lost in his thoughts again.  Sighing, she left him to it and picked up a wide tooth comb and began working out knots gently as she could.   

∆∆∆

  He wandered closer for a better look as she began spritzing her hair.  He could smell that the bottle didn’t just contain water.  It didn’t smell bad though.  No, it smelled warm and comforting, just like her.  His sockets locked onto how the water seemed to bead and run down her hair, reminding him of how water would just roll off a duck’s back.  Some of the beads got caught on the kinks and turns her hair would make, but her fingers helped to gently coax the water to absorb until her hair started to lay down with the excess moisture. He’d asked what she was doing, but much to his shame, he was hardly focusing on her answer. 

   He nodded to her question.  Of course he knew where they were going, but wasn’t quite understanding why the place mattered?  Then again, now that he thinks about it, he had never seen her wear her hair down when they went to the gym or on runs.  He’d simply assumed it was her preferred look for those moments and he enjoyed seeing all the different updos she could manipulate her hair into.  He wasn’t afraid to admit he didn’t want her to “tame” her hair as she had put it right now.  

He more heard her explanation, rather than actively listening, but understood what she saying.  It made sense.  It was practical reasoning.  He kept quiet as the last bit registered with him and held in a dejected sigh.  He had hoped Cash was pulling everyone’s legs about her not liking others touching her hair.  His alternate was almost also pulling pranks and getting lectured for it.  “Of All Things For Cash to Be Serious About…” he muttered, not caring if he was pouting.  

He let himself get lost in the practiced movements of her hands.  She hadn’t shooed him away so he guessed he was permitted to stay and watch.  He took note of how she worked a comb through her hair, the teeth were wider than the gag comb Sans carried in his hoodie pocket and she gently worked out knots starting at the ends and moving up.  Once she deemed her hair knot free, she had grabbed an even funnier looking comb.  This one had thinly spaced teeth, but had a long piece extending from the relatively small comb part.  She used the long tapered part to part her hair down the middle then in what seemed effortless, she twisted one side of her hair and stuck the long bit through it like a hair pin.  To his surprise, it stayed in place and didn’t unravel. Was she going to do this to the other side as well?  Combs were an odd accessory, but he wasn't judging.

His head tilted as it almost looked like she getting her fingers tangled, but he finally figured out what she doing once she started moving.  He watched in muted amazement as she braided with practiced ease, fingers gathering new hair to work in as she moved from her temple to her nape.  The braid was chunky and laid neatly against her scalp, while the rest rested against her shoulder and neck as she finished it.  She plucked the comb from her hair and ran the teeth through the end of the braid before twisting.  The end result was a neat curl at the end that worked like magic to him keep the entire thing from unraveling.  His jaw had dropped open without him noticing, only clacking closed as heard her giggle.  Her fingers were already braiding the other side as she smiled teasingly up at him in the mirror.  

Cheekbones flushing pink with magic for the second time that evening, Papyrus was thankful there were no windows in this room as he was sure his friend would not appreciate him throwing himself through it to get away from his embarrassment.  “IT’S RUDE TO STARE,” he griped, only flushing more as she smiled more.  “NO, STOP THAT. CEASE!” he commanded, straightening up with a flustered glare as she was practically grinning up at him now.

“Stop what, hmm?” Oh no.  “And what do you mean it’s rude to stare?  Weren’t you staring at me this for the past… ooooh, couple minutes?” Damn it.  

Papyrus had nothing to say in defense, but a mess of words poured from his jaws and stars, maybe he should try throwing himself through that wall there.  It couldn’t be that thick.  He was sure he was practically glowing by now and he should just respond with his normal snark, but his usually brilliant mind was failing him at the moment.  Once again he found himself muffling an embarrassed screech in his palms as a human woman laughed.  Atleast this time, said woman was trying to comfort him and bring him back down to earth with familiar warmth and comfort that was all her.  

[zenonaa]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Dangan Ronpa 3: The End of 希望ヶ峰学園 | The End of Kibougamine Gakuen | End of Hope's Peak High School Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Fukawa Touko/Togami Byakuya Characters: Togami Byakuya, Fukawa Touko Additional Tags: togafukaweek2020, there is one nsfw bit of dialogue right at the end

Summary: Byakuya and Touko go to Iceland for their honeymoon.

Comments: Day 2, traveling and outfits! Ice caves look so pretty ahhh.

***

Barren trees sat in ragged clusters on and around the brown mounds surrounding the gravel car park. In the distance, snow dusted the tops of black mountains overlapping each other, their silhouettes stark against a cloudy backdrop like ink on paper. The chill of crisp air masked any aroma nature may have breathed. Touko rubbed her gloved hands together before returning them to the harness she was meant to be finishing putting on.

In the Icelandic car park, she didn’t have a pen and paper to scribble down all the similes and metaphors that sprouted in her mind’s garden. Condensation puffed out between her parted lips as she stared at the distant mountains, herself small unlike a mountain and human unlike a mountain. Her curious eyes traced over the mountains’ outlines while her hands fidgeted with her partially done up harness.

Next to Touko, her husband, Byakuya, reached over.

“Here, let me do that for you,” he said, and he secured Touko’s harness for her.

A smile glinted on her face. He progressed onto snapping the straps of her helmet into place. Unlike Touko, he had taken his gloves off temporarily to give his fingers more dexterity. Nearby, others also put on their hiking equipment over their outerwear, but she didn’t pay them any more attention. They chatted in languages she didn’t know fluently, such as French, German and Russian.

Not that any of that mattered to her. She was here with her husband. Her husband. On their honeymoon.

“There,” he said, with his hands either side of her head. “It’s on now.”

That just left her crampons to attach to her feet.

“Thank you, Darling,” she replied, beaming up at him.

Byakuya’s hands cradled her cheeks for a few seconds more before he nodded and turned away. She could still feel his touch linger as she watched Byakuya walk over to a white tub by the minibus they all arrived here in. From it, he drew out two ice axes, and then he padded back to her. He passed one to Touko.

The lower shaft was straight while the upper shaft curved slightly. Their tour group’s leader, a round woman with a fluorescent orange helmet and bright blue coat, flourished her axe and said something to the group. After she repeated it in another language, Byakuya translated for Touko.

“Straight shafted axes are ideal for flat planes and moderate slopes. Technical ice axes curve a lot more and are for higher grade slopes. We’re just ice-walking through some caves, so we’ve got axes between those two extremes,” he explained.

“I see,” said Touko with a bob of her head. Her helmet wobbled slightly, and noticing, Byakuya clicked his tongue and adjusted her straps again.

Excitement vibrated through her body, but it came edged with nervousness. Yes, she survived a killing game. Yes, she survived a city where children murdered adults. And yes, she even survived her wedding’s afterparty where Yasuhiro drunkenly yowled into the karaoke machine. But here, she wasn’t confronted with someone to outwit, to outwait. This was nature.

Byakuya took his hands off her helmet, satisfied, and motioned to her feet. She still had yet to put her crampons on completely, just standing in them.

“If you haven’t worn crampons before, try walking in them now rather than wait until we reach the glacier,” he said.

Touko hadn’t worn them before. Never had reason to. Never had anyone to give her reason to before.

“Do you remember how to walk in them?” asked Byakuya.

“I do,” she said, and she bent down to strap the crampons to her boots. 

Prior to the tour, the pair researched ice-walking online to give themselves an advantage, and the tour leader had gone over general things on the ride here that Byakuya translated. Touko inhaled and took a step forward while keeping her legs slightly more apart than usual, like a cowboy in an old western movie. 

She didn’t fall over. Good. Easy. So long as she didn’t shuffle and kept the sharp edges of her crampons away from her faux fur lined leggings, then she would be fine.

“Good,” said Byakuya, observing, having just put on his own crampons. He fixed his glasses into place. “We’re ready.”

Confidence glowed on his face. Byakuya shifted his weight and Touko suspected he had meant to take a step, but he instead lurched and started to tip over. Her heart jolted as she darted forward, ready to catch him.

Thankfully, he wobbled and regained his balance at the last moment so didn’t end up landing on her. He straightened with a pout, shoulders slumping. She sidled up to him and hooked her arm around his elbow.

“I’ll put them on when we get there,” he mumbled. Touko rested her head against his arm.

Soon, the tour leader called them all together, and they set off. She led the group down a gravel path with chocolate brown terrain either side of them. Not snow. Not yet. As they trekked along, admiring the scenery, the tour leader rambled on about miscellaneous facts that Byakuya translated for Touko, such as how glaciers covered ten percent of Iceland. 

After a ten-minute walk, the ground sloped down onto uneven, icy terrain.  Clumps of brittle ice dotted the landscape here and there, mixed in with rocks of various sizes. The layer of ice and snow was rather thin so didn’t blanket the ground completely, reminding Touko of a dark wooden kitchen surface that had sieved flour splattered across it. Anyone yet to put on their crampons did so now, and once the tour leader gave a brief safety talk, they ventured onto the field of ice.

Touko squared her shoulders and marched forward, hearing the ground crack and grind under her feet. Initially, the sound made her waver, but the ground didn’t give way so she pushed on. She stayed close to Byakuya, using her ice pick as a cane despite the fact that even though the ground rose and fell, it wasn’t too cragged yet.

However, it still wasn’t flat. At one point, Touko stumbled on one of the many rocks embedded in the ground and shrieked. Fortunately, Byakuya spun around, catching her before she could fall completely. Touko slumped into his chest, first because of momentum, but then she buried herself in him with relief.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his axe planted in the ground next to him.

A grin spread across her face as she looked up.

“It s-seems I’ve fallen for you,” she quipped.

“We’re married, so I should hope so,” he told her. He peeled Touko off his chest, holding her arms. 

She shivered and scrunched her hands together. When she exhaled, she could see her breath spread its wings and fly. Her eyes followed her breath upward, and she stared at the colourless sky.

“Do you think we’ll see aurora borealis tonight?” she asked.

To be honest, of all the activities to take part in and all the sights to enjoy here, seeing the northern lights ranked at the top of her list. She tried to imagine them now, imagine watercolours bleeding into a night sky, but the clouds absorbed her daydream before she could visualise even a few paint strokes.

“The locals can’t control the weather, but Iceland is one of the best places to see it,” said Byakuya. He let go of her and extracted his axe from the ground. “Still, the trip advisor said to have plenty of other things planned just in case.”

Such as ice-skating, hiking and visiting landmarks. Every night, Touko had stood at their cabin’s window, hoping to see the lights, but every night, she had curled up beside Byakuya without seeing any.

At least she got blessed with the sight of his face beside her every morning. That more than perked her up.

Touko shimmied her shoulders and simpered sweetly. “I don’t know, darling. We could spend two weeks in our cabin in bed and I would be more than happy.”

Byakuya made an inarticulate noise between a grunt and a yelp and turned away. She snickered a little as they set off again. After several paces, though she continued to walk, she gazed at the sky and hoped it could somehow understand the desire gleaming in her eyes that longed to see the northern lights during their trip.

If the sky understood, it didn’t let on.

From a distance, all they had been able to see were small hills, but as they wound through the ice field, they realised crevices ran through the terrain too. Some were thin, black dirt veins engraved in the icy flesh, some dry, some with hissing water that trickled through, ranging in width and depth. Some could accommodate a foot, others full bodies, and the walls either side of these indentions varied in height. Could reach up to an ankle or tower over a person. Then there were the different textures on the walls and mounds. Dusty. Chunky. Smooth.

Touko brushed her gloved fingers across a wall crusted in crumbly snow before moving on, able to see Byakuya a couple of strides ahead. She spotted a hole in the ground nearby and peeked inside. So far, she had noticed a few of them. Some could allow a human to slide down their throats into the stomach, while others were not wide enough to fit more than an adult’s hand into their mouths. 

As for this hole, when she crouched down to inspect it closer, she reckoned a person could slide down on their stomach and perhaps find themselves in one of the ice caves on the other side. Byakuya sauntered back to Touko, who glanced up. He adjusted his glasses, continuing to stand straight next to her.

“Do you think we could fit down there?” she asked, focusing on the hole again. “J-Just the two of us? Such a secluded area... think of what we could get up to down there...!”

She hugged herself and trailed off, laughing under her breath, and knew Byakuya well enough to know without looking up that he wrinkled his nose.

“You mean like... kissing? In a block of ice?” he asked. 

Her smirk grew, and she raised her head. Yep, his nose was wrinkled.

“If you want somewhere private, we have a cabin,” he pointed out. “We don’t need to risk getting trapped in ice.”

“W-We can still imagine, though,” she said. She stood up and leaned her hip against him, then her head against his shoulder. “I-Imagine... we tumble in and have to wait in a small air pocket until we’re rescued... while we’re stranded, we have to keep warm and share oxygen, so we... heheh...”

The ends of her lips climbed as high as they could go. Touko cupped one cheek and shuddered, keeping her other cheek pressed against Byakuya.

“This place is incredibly inspiring. I’m already... feeling a bit warmer,” she said.

“I’m not,” replied Byakuya, fidgeting his scarf with a telltale blush across his cheeks. “So let’s carry on.”

Snow crunched underfoot, and soon something else grabbed their attention. Up ahead, they discovered an ice cave, naturally made, with tunnels that they could walk through. Touko stared, mouth hanging open as they entered. As the tunnel wasn’t particularly long, light intruded and highlighted the lining of its throat. The cave tinged everything in a blue glow. In places, the texture on the walls reminded Touko of honeycombs. Ripples ridged the ceiling, motionless, frozen in time. It made Touko feel like she was walking through the bottom of the ocean.

Byakuya nudged up his glasses, looking around. 

“During the summer, warmer temperatures and sunlight melt the ice at the surface of the glacier,” he told her. “The water drains downward through cracks, sinkholes and moulins, melting the ice at the bottom. This creates the area which we’re walking through now. It will freeze over again when it’s colder, only to happen again. Year to year, the formations change... we’re seeing a formation that will not exist this time next year, or even ever.”

Touko placed a hand over her heart. The tour leader happened to be nearby and stared at them with a polite smile. Byakuya said something to her in English, which Touko assumed was what he just told Touko in Japanese.

“That’s right!” said the tour leader in English, sounding impressed. “It sounds like someone has done their research.”

Much of Touko’s understanding of English was restricted to written form. She glared at the tour leader but said nothing, tugging on Byakuya’s arm and leading him away. The cave was a simple tunnel, and they could see the light at the other end, but Touko and Byakuya approached it casually, in no hurry, drinking in their surroundings. A range of blues inhabited the icy walls. Some areas were speckled black, while others sported clear blues and creases of white.

Not long after they left that cave, they entered another. This one had a lower ceiling, crystallic with icicles hanging down from it. However, though the ceiling consisted of translucent whites and blues, the ground was coal black. Touko fumbled with her camera, stored in her satchel, and took a few photos. Then she turned to Byakuya and snapped one of him.

So handsome.

Her finger pressed the button again.

His sandy blonde hair.

Dreamy blue eyes.

Kissable lips.

He looked as if the Gods themselves had chiseled him from their finest marble.

Touko snapped another photo.

Then another.

And some more.

She giggled dreamily.

Byakuya noticed and gave a small sigh.

“You will end up filling the memory card with just photos of me. Let me take a few,” he said, and she readily handed him the camera. He looked around, his finger on the capture button, then aimed it at her. 

Touko stiffened, but he didn’t take a photograph like she expected. Instead, he positioned himself next to her, holding the camera an arm’s length away from them and pointing it at their faces.

“Are you taking a selfie?” she asked, nervously rotating the handle of her ice axe in her hands.

“Yes,” he said. He wrapped an arm around her, pulling her closer. 

As a child, Touko often avoided being in photographs. Classmates would take them of her to ridicule later. Some people were honest about their cruel intentions, guffawing in her face, but others weren’t upfront about it. Even so, she would hear their muffled laughter, pick out her name buried in whispers. Byakuya, however, played no tricks, and Touko relaxed as he pressed on the camera a few times to capture images of them together, then he checked to make sure he had taken a picture in case he hadn’t pressed hard enough without realising.

“These ones are a bit blurry. Let’s try again,” he said.

After he took another round of photos, they strolled forward, and he occasionally snapped a photo of something nearby. Their footsteps plopped as their boots stamped on puddles of water. 

At the end of the cave was a lip-shaped opening, revealing a dim blue sky past its prime. Touko’s stomach tightened. Not long from now, they would either see the northern lights or not see them.

“This way, Touko,” Byakuya called out, waving his arm. He had slipped ahead. She hurried after him.

They investigated more caves, then an hour later, they returned to the minibus which drove them to their original meet up area. The temperature outside dropped, evening air nipping at their exposed faces, and before they retired to their cabin for the night, Byakuya and Touko stopped by the restaurant where they enjoyed kjötsupa – a traditional lamb meat soup, enriched with herbs and vegetables that balanced the savoury meat with low-key sweetness.

Throughout dinner, Touko’s eyes flickered between her husband’s face and the window that taunted her with a stubbornly black sky. All she could see were stars sprayed across it. No ethereal lights. A tremor in her chest made her feel fuller quicker, but though she ate slowly, she persevered, eating most of it. 

Despite how full she felt, though, the fluttering in her stomach still had room to bat its wings.

By the end of the meal, they had warmed up considerably, and full up after their flavourful, peppery soup, they retreated to their cabin. The wooden plank interior offered warmer hues than the ice caves, brimming with lush browns, and not just the walls but the furniture too.

Byakuya and Touko went into different rooms to disrobe from their outer gear. Touko popped into the bathroom and came out in a pink onesie with a cat-eared hood, gifted by Komaru. Meanwhile, in the bedroom, Byakuya had changed into a set of fleece pajamas, composed of a navy long-sleeved top and checkered dark green bottoms. Hearing the door, he turned toward it, sitting on their bed, and raised his eyebrows but said nothing, observing her quietly as she trod over to the window.

Black sky. Black as the deepest recesses in the ice caves. No aurora. Not yet.

Assuming it would even come. They had one night here after this, and then that would be it. The ice caves had proven to be an enjoyable distraction, but now she couldn’t avoid the fact they hadn’t seen the lights. She heaved a sigh and heard Byakuya join her.

“What if we don’t get to see it?” she asked, clutching the window ledge. “We might not be able to afford to come here again anytime soon...”

Not with the Togami Conglomerate’s forced termination years back. Not after Touko’s parents drained her account dry years back. Not with their teachers’ salaries. Neither would trade in the lives they had now, not for anything, even for a chance to witness the northern lights, but that didn’t mean Touko couldn’t wistfully stare at the sky.

“Don’t get me wrong. Even if we don’t end up seeing it, our honeymoon will still have been wonderful,” said Touko. “I’ve felt like I’ve been on a high the entire time. It’s just... when I think of aurora borealis, s-such a beautiful natural phenomenon... I think of our relationship, and how magical it is. It would have been nice to see it on our honeymoon, like a mint leaf on peach mousse.”

As she peered out of the window, Touko imagined. Imagined herself and Byakuya, holding hands while the sky flared in front of them, when in reality the sky may as well have been a chalkboard.

He didn’t answer right away. She didn’t look at him either, absorbed in thought. Then, Byakuya piped up.

“I think our relationship is more than that,” he said.

Touko tensed and turned to him. His brilliant eyes were fixed on hers.

“What we have together is more than natural or a coincidence,” he explained. “The timing... Our victories, battles, and traumas... Perhaps, what we have together could be described as supernatural because of how perfectly everything lined up, as if we were destined to be together.”

His words blew a gust through Touko that both rejuvenated her and knocked the wind out of her. She breathed in, found herself unable to speak. 

“Like you said, it would have been ideal if we could have witnessed the lights,” said Byakuya. “But being with you... is far greater than any force of nature.”

The back of her eyes felt hot and she nodded, which seemed enough for Byakuya, who took her hand and led her to the bed.

“Why don’t you read to me for a while?” he asked. “I packed some books.”

He showed her a selection of them, and she shuffled through them. Mystery. Mystery. Mystery novel. Then she saw a familiar cover and froze. Stared.

She went, “That’s...”

“... one of yours, yes,” he said. “I believe you published it during our first year at Hope’s Peak? It’s one of your books I haven’t got around to reading yet. I would like you to read that, if you would.”

“Of course!” Touko blurted. 

The two settled on the bed, with Byakuya resting his head on her lap, and she began reading from the first page of the book. It focused on a girl who moved into a boarding school after escaping a cannibalistic cult, though she had never eaten human meat herself, and at the school, she fell in love with a student whose parents had arranged for him to marry someone who he didn’t connect with, didn’t love, who wanted him solely for his fortune.

Touko cringed in places at some of the phrasing. A voice in her head told her how she would write it now. How she would simplify this sentence, or use a synonym with a different connotation. Despite what she considered to be its flaws, Byakuya betrayed nothing, listening contently as she read aloud. As if he didn’t notice them, or even perceive them as flaws.

Initially, she put on a distinct voice for each character, but then stopped, though when she did, Byakuya spoke.

“That’s not the voice you did before,” he told her, so she resumed doing them.

Occasionally, Touko snuck glances at the window, and an unlit sky greeted her each time. Her heart sank a bit whenever this happened, but she refused to let it dampen her spirits, remembering what she had said to him and treasuring what Byakuya had said to her. She didn’t need to see the lights, not when they had their relationship that was infinitely more precious.

It still would have been nice though.

More than nice.

Oh, well.

As the night wore on, she felt herself grow more and more tired, and Byakuya’s eyes crept shut. Touko was tempted to call it a night when she gave the window of their room one last check, and this time, she gasped.

“I think I see something!” she yelled.

In her haste, she nearly dropped her book on Byakuya’s head as she scrambled off the bed. Byakuya sat up, grabbed their camera off the bedside table and crawled off after her. 

A green streak writhed in the sky. He opened the window and began recording it, though he watched it unfiltered too. One moment, the light was shaped like a fishhook, and in the next, it straightened before curling up into a ball and melting into the weaker green hue surrounding it. Seconds after that, the green streak returned, yawning larger, brighter. It danced with the whole sky as its stage, and a faint green hue spread out from around it. As it soared, more vivid streaks of light emerged to perform alongside it.

Gradually, the entire sky became tinted green. Touko held her breath, gripping the window frame tightly. They could still see the night sky through the green shroud, sprinkled with stars. She propped her head against Byakuya’s shoulder. Byakuya shifted. Not to move away though. He wrapped his arm around her middle. Kept his hand on her side furthest from him. Held her.

Then pink light filtered in through the sea of green. It swam in the emerald ocean, twisting and leaping and billowing. The colours mixed together into a milky swirl that couldn’t help but ooze green and flare pink. Touko managed to tear her gaze away for long enough to sneak a glimpse of her husband. Byakuya was still engrossed with the light display, his lips pressed into a frown that wasn’t unhappy, just thoughtful. She turned back to the window.

Eventually, clouds rolled over, and the lights lost their intensity until the pair could barely discern them. They stayed at the window.

Touko wrung her hands together. Spoke first. “T-That was beautiful...”

“It was,” Byakuya agreed just as soberly. 

He removed his arm from around her and gently deposited the camera onto the bed. It made a dull thump, and he picked his phone up off the bedside table. Flicked the screen on.

“Two ante meridiem. It’s quite late,” he noted, and she stirred.

Earlier, when she thought the lights weren’t going to happen, she had been prepared to end the night there on the bed. Nearly fallen asleep too. Now, however, she was full of energy, which meant she could pull off what she had prepared for earlier.

The thought of it energised her further. Electricity scuttled up her body. Burst out of her in a squeak. Touko twitched.

“W-Wait!” she exclaimed, thrashing her hands. “We can’t go to sleep. N-Not yet...!”

Byakuya blinked. She unzipped the front of her onesie and stripped it off, dragging the outfit down to her feet. His breath caught in his throat as she straightened up. He stared.

“Is that my underwear?” he asked, eyeing the black thong.

Touko nodded. It was all she was wearing now. Byakuya pursed his lips and turned his head to one side. Pushed up his glasses.

“I wondered why you were wearing that thing,” he admitted, referring to her onesie. “And why you got changed in the bathroom this time. I mean, that thing isn’t ugly... but...”

“Cat girls can be sexy, right?” she asked him, and she pawed the air with one hand for good measure.

“Yes. No. I mean, only if it’s you,” he said, getting redder and redder. “It’s just... It’s funny you did that, because...”

She wondered which funny he meant. Byakuya unbuttoned his pajama shirt from the top. As more of his chest became exposed, Touko’s mouth cracked open.

“T-That’s...” Touko started, trailing off. He pulled down his pajama trousers. She ogled him. “That’s my underwear...!”

Her red bra and panties, to be precise.

“It seems we had the same idea,” he said, gesturing to himself. “So I assume we also thought up the same thing that happens next?”

Touko whispered in his ear. His eyes widened.

“... I didn’t plan for that much anal, but I’ll take it,” he said, and he pulled her onto the bed, on top of him, and the night carried on with both of them smiling brighter than any lights that had been outside.

[thekytchensynk]

A History (Fictober Prompt 5)

Prompt number: 5

Fanfiction Fandom: Dr. Stone

Rating: T

Warnings: No warnings

Read this story on AO3

Kinro dodges the first thrust. The second. Pivots. Attacks.

Misses.

“Too shallow!” Kohaku’s voice conveys as much irritation and disappointment as her weapon, as she closes in and strikes under his left arm, knocking him a step to the left. He resists the urge to react, and the two step apart instead. “I can’t say it any other way. You need to attack all the way through!”

The sun had dropped below the trees about ten minutes ago, and probably they should be eating dinner (he knows Ginro has already hightailed it back to the village to get his meal), but Kohaku hasn’t called an end, so he’s not going to ask for one. She’s taking the time to train him. He’s going to do everything she asks as part of that.

“Magma’ll be going for blood,” she says as she paces across their little sparring arena, twirling one of her padded weapons with a careless elegance that makes it almost look like a dance. “You can’t do this halfway.”

“I’m not,” he says, with only a small twinge of uneasiness. Ginro had urged him to tell Chrome and Senku about his vision problems, and on some level not doing so does indeed feel like doing things halfway. But at the same time … what were they going to do about it? It would just be making an excuses. Like he was telling them he expected to lose.

No excuses in war.

He can’t make excuses, and he can’t lose. Kohaku is training him because she wants to save Ruri, and he wants to as well -- not for her own sake alone, or for Kohaku’s, but because Magma cannot win again. Because if he were to get the village under his thumb … if he did that…

“Pay attention.”

Kohaku’s not angry -- not even chiding him really. More just calling him back to the moment, to this opponent and this fight. “Yes,” he says, resuming his ready stance. They go again. This time he feels he’s nearly got her, but she dances back to where her form becomes indistinct, where the difference between one step and the next gets lost, and he misses to the right. She lands lightly on his weapon -- how can someone so strong be so relatively light? -- and frowns down at him.

“You can’t beat him like this,” she says, hopping down and patting him on the shoulder before walking away, back toward the village.

She leans on the word “him” as though it were a prophecy. It’s the first time Kinro knows for sure that Kohaku knows.

“It is a great honor to defend the village. Safety is one of the building blocks upon which prosperity is built.”

Kinro, seven years old today, nods enthusiastically. It’s almost word for word the thing his father told him as he was sent off to train. His father had said it like he believed it, and old Topaz said it like he was just getting it over with, but Kinro believes it both times. The monsters from the hundred stories could all be out there. He imagines them sometimes, seeing their figures painted in the smoke of a campfire or the clouds overhead. Monsters that could sneak in and hurt his family and friends.

To learn to stand against such creatures was indeed the best thing one could do.

He does have his doubts though. Stories of Topaz’s history as a fighter are sometimes told around the fire, and everyone raises toasts to him on those evenings, but the man before him doesn’t look like a warrior. He is old, shrunken into his clothing, with eyes that squint at the world. Kinro rarely sees him anymore. His mother says Topaz has been ill, and has been resting to regain his strength, but Kinro thinks if that’s the case, the man needs to rest for a season. When he stands, he leans on his cane and still, can’t hide the tremors in his legs.

Still, his father said he would come here, to this man, to learn to be brave and fight. So he was going to do just that.

“We will begin working today, to help you become the honorable fighter your village needs you to be.” Topaz isn’t looking at Kinro, exactly. His eyes turn in the right general direction, but he doesn’t seem to be seeing. “It will be difficult, but if you obey orders, you will do your village proud.”

“Thank you for teaching me,” Kinro says, as he was instructed before leaving home. Then he waits in silence for the instruction to begin. The waiting makes him feel a little bit sick, and the situation gets worse the longer he stands here wondering just what will happen. He has used sticks and played at fighting with his brother and other village children, imitating the village chief. But the real thing is probably harder. What if he’s terrible? What if he’s weak? What if he goes home to his parents’ disappointed faces -- this child of ours cannot help protect anyone.

“We will start with the basics,” Topaz says, raising his cane with one hand. For a moment, Kinro thinks he intends to fight using that cane as a weapon, before realizing that he is pointing, only pointing. “And I have requested the aid of a powerful pupil. He will be helping me to train the youth of the village. Please convey your thanks to him as well.”

Kinro turns to see who the man meant, and there stands one of the older boys, Magma, with a padded stick over one shoulder and a grin on his face.

“You just need to try to strike through your opponent,” Chrome says as he carefully grinds some stone or another into dust at Senku’s instruction. “Don’t just stop when you think you’ve hit, right?”

Kinro makes a noncommittal noise from where he sits a few feet away, sharpening his spear -- his real spear, not the weapon for the upcoming Village Games. He appreciates that Chrome is trying to be helpful, but in a lot of ways, he may be the last person Kinro wants advice from.

Chrome isn’t much of a fighter, but not having the physical skill to do something doesn’t necessarily mean your observations aren’t sharp. In this case, he’s not saying anything Kinro hasn’t already tried, but he means well.

That isn’t the problem.

Even Kinro knows that the younger man wants badly to be the tournament victor, not for the power or glory that accompanied it, but simply because he wants to protect someone he cares about. Kinro gets that. He’s built his life to this point around protecting people. He is willing to give his life for it. He can’t imagine what would happen if his ability to do so were diminished to the point where it seemed an unattainable dream.

He feels like the advice Chrome gives him is baring something deep and secret in the sorc… the scientist, and he doesn’t want to observe that. Doesn’t want to be responsible for knowing it.

“How close are you getting?” he asks instead.

And Chrome explains. He tries to keep it in terms a non-scientist can understand, but sometimes his excitement gets the better of him and he leaps from the sphere of things Kinro knows and understands and into a world of words that sound like nonsense. But then he catches himself. Reins it back. Back to the clearer concepts.

Senku runs hot and cold, either too complicated from the get go or simplifying things to their broad concepts. Chrome, maybe because they’ve known one another so long, makes an attempt to explain the things they’re doing so Kinro understands. He appreciates it. And tonight, he wants those explanations. The intensity of the explanation carries how intensely Chrome needs them to win, so they can save Ruri.

Kinro decides to focus on that.

“ Are you even trying?”

Yes , Kinro wants to shout. I’m trying. You’re the one who’s not!

But he holds his silence and picks himself up out of the dirt. One of his teeth cut into his lip on that last one. He barely feels it. He’s sure it hurts, but after two weeks of training, everything hurts. This is just one more.

“Being able to set a solid base is the most important thing to know about fighting,” Magma chides, and in someone else’s mouth this might sound like honest instruction. “Your blocks will be weak. Your attacks won’t hurt. Try again.”

So Kinro sets his feet as Magma had shown him that first day, when Topaz listlessly watched them both. But most days since, Topaz has only watched briefly before wandering off to “take care of some things,” or just to nap.

Kinro assumed others would also be training, but it is mostly just the two of them. Magma sometimes speaks contemptuously about Titan, about how he is weak, how he has given up on training and joined his father felling trees. Kinro has watched Titan at work and doesn’t think he looks weak at all. But Magma seems sure, and Titan’s not here, so Kinro guesses he is missing something.

Carbo comes by sometimes to spar with Magma, but it seems to be out of obligation. The matches are always short. Kinro thinks Carbo could probably do better than he does -- he’s much quicker when he’s out fishing on the water than he is in matches with Magma. But it would be wrong to question his elders, even if they’re not much elder, so he keeps quiet. At least when Magma trains with Carbo, he’s not training with Kinro.

But there is no Carbo today, just Kinro who sets his feet as he was shown and raises his practice spear to block, and Magma, who swings with everything he has, and the end result is Kinro in the dirt again.

“What is going on here?”

Topaz’s voice cuts through the shady, wooded area where the two are practicing. He has woken from his nap it seems. And for a moment, Kinro thinks he must have seen that, he must know that Magma isn’t teaching him how to do anything. As he scrambles to his feet in front of the teacher, Magma speaks first.

“I am doing my best, Master Topaz.” Kinro can hear the edge of mockery in Magma’s voice. “But he refuses to even try to follow my instructions. A breeze could knock him over.”

What? Kinro starts to defend himself, to speak up for himself, but Topaz speaks before he has a chance.

“Unacceptable! Try again.”

“Master-”

“You can make statements and requests once I see you trying and not wasting people’s time,” Topaz says firmly, a little angrily. And just like that, there’s nothing Kinro can do. So he sets his feet as he was shown, and waits for the attack.

This one and the next few don’t come anywhere near as hard and fast. The first one knocks him to one knee, but it’s barely a tumble. And he thinks he can understand now what they were talking about with a strong base. It’s not something he could explain, but he can feel it -- the way the first of the attack carries down through his arms and torso and into his legs, and how if we were not braced, it would have sent him sprawling. The next time, he keeps his feet. And the next. And the next.

“So you can do it,” Topaz says after the fifth. “Don’t think you can be lazy when I am not here, child. You will only hurt yourself.”

He’s not really looking. Magma is grinning. So Kinro takes the only dutiful path.

“Yes sir.”

“We have two days.” Kohaku isn’t even breaking a sweat, while Kinro has been left panting by the day’s relentless training. “You have to break this habit. You are running out of time.”

She isn’t wrong, but without some idea on how to do it, they are just words. And he has no idea how to do it. Willpower and determination won’t be enough.

On the bright side, he does think intensive training with her had helped. They’re actually surprisingly evenly matched in a lot of ways. She is just so fast, and he can't keep up -- but he is getting slightly closer. And most of the fighters in the games would look slow in comparison. Especially Magma -- he’s always moved like a bear, ponderous but powerful, terrifyingly powerful.

Kohaku backs off and glances around. He knows without asking that she is looking for his brother, who has shirked training yet again. He always spends at least some time with the two of them, but usually no more than half of the overall training they do. Sometimes Senku finds him and threatens him with work until he returns. Sometimes he slinks away to one of the hiding places that only he knows to “practice by himself.” Kinro doesn't know if he just already thinks he's ready, despite evidence to the contrary, or if he’s already mentally abdicated his role as a fighter, expecting Kohaku and Kinro to do the real fighting.

“Sorry about Ginro,” he says as she scans the treeline.

“His training is not your responsibility,” she replies firmly.

He grunts in answer. Because of course Ginro’s training, his lack of discipline, is because his older brother has not carefully instilled it in him. He has been coddled, as much as people in this village can be. Protected.

Kohaku looks around once more anyway, just in case, then asks over her shoulder, “are you ready if you face him?”

He wonders if her constant travels into the forest when she was younger had led her to see some of the training he’d undergone. She’s never mentioned it, if so. But alone out of everyone, she seems to get that he is both hoping for and dreading a fight against Magma. That it is more than just Magma being the biggest obstacle. That it is personal, for him.

“Are you?” she asks again, curious.

“I will have to be,” is his only answer.

Many members of the village visit Topaz occasionally, making sure he has food and his home is warm and that he has good clothing. But lately there has been someone with him around the clock. Kinro is drifting off to sleep one night when someone comes and asks his mother to come watch over the old man. She goes without argument. By the time he wakes in the morning, she is back. Curious, Kinro asks why she went to the trainer’s home.

“Topaz is a strong man,” his mother says, taking one of his hands in both of hers. She looks tired, her blond hair unkempt from being out for most of the night. “But he is very tired. Our village will soon have to say goodbye to him, and we do not wish to leave him by himself until that time comes. It would be respectful for you to visit him today. To thank him and to say goodbye.”

Frankly, Kinro doesn’t want to. He has been given very little by Topaz. The man has not attended training in months, and even before that, he rarely taught anything -- just barking out a few orders when he was able to make it to a session. Kinro felt sure he couldn’t see enough to actually tell whether or not he was doing things right.

So Kinro doesn’t hate Topaz. He just isn’t grateful to him. The man had clearly once been spry and powerful and an important protector of the village, but he had kept the job of training the village children and then abdicated it to the last fighter he had trained, who used it as a weapon.

It isn’t that Kinro hasn’t learned anything from training with Magma in the last year and a half. He has. It is just mostly in spite of Magma, not because of him. He’s learned to use his quickness as a weapon. He’s learned to angle his spear to deflect some of the power in the older boy’s attacks, to lessen some of the brute strength advantage. He’s learned when to move and when to stand firm. It is an imperfect fighting style born not of training but of experience and pain.

And he’s learned that Magma likes to use training as a way to bully people into submission. To remove them as a threat to whatever he might want to do. To add them to his group, or to keep them out of fighting all together.

Kinro has decided he will do neither. Even if he pays for that every time they train.

“Can you come with me?” he asks.

And she smiles, saying, “Of course. Would you like to go now?” When he nods, she lets his father know they’re going, then takes his hand and they leave the house.

“We should see about your brother joining you,” she adds as they cross the village, before stifling a yawn.

“But he doesn’t know Master Topaz,” Kinro says. He also isn’t sure mischievous Ginro would be the best person to bring to a dying man’s bedside.

“Mmm. No. For training. With Magma now, I guess?”

Kinro stops abruptly enough that his hand pulls from his mother’s. She stops too. Turns. “Kinro?”

“Magma is taking over training?”

She walks back over to him and crouches down. He’s getting taller, and this actually makes her a little bit shorter than he. He’s not sure if she’s just tired and doesn’t want to stand, or if she just wants to look him in the eye as she asks, “Is something wrong?”

He looks into her face. She’s asking. He can tell her. He can let her know. But… if he tells her, she’ll make him stop training with Magma. May make him stop training to be a guard, a protector. And Magma hasn’t been able to batter that desire out of him.

“Will Magma accept Ginro as a student?” he asks. It’s a legitimate question, if not his real worry. He can deal with what Magma throws at him, but his brother is energetic and outgoing and a bit of a crybaby. And Magma will either break him, or else he’ll chase Ginro off, and he'll never get a chance to learn if he’s any good at fighting.

His mother considers the question for a long few seconds. “I suppose we’ll have to see,” she says. “But you can’t worry about that. You just worry about yourself.”

That statement honestly doesn’t make sense to him. Ginro is his little brother. He’s been helping watch over him for years. And nothing in him will let his brother face Magma’s training.

“I could train him,” Kinro says, anxiety pitching his voice up.

His mother smiles fondly. But then the smile fades as she studies his face. She leans in a little closer. “You’re serious about this, huh?” she asks. He nods emphatically. “Is there something wrong with training with Magma? You can tell me.”

He doesn’t say yes. But he doesn’t say no either. And after a little while, she takes his hand and they go say goodbye to Topaz, who looks almost unreal in his bed, still and pale. He’s gone by that evening.

The next two days, his parents speak to the parents of some of the other older children in the village. And they ask him, with forced casualness, if he still wants to keep training with Magma. And he says yes, and no more is said of it. But Ginro stays home, being trained by a combination of his brother and his father.

“You can’t possibly go along with this, Kohaku! Match fixing … it would be a disgrace to the entire bout!”

But even as he says it, he knows the answer. What she wants is to save her sister. If that means getting free wins so she can save her strength, so be it. And he doesn't agree with her, but he gets it. He totally gets it. And it makes him feel a little guilty.

Because everyone else is united in their reasons to fight. And sure, he shares that reason with them. He wants to protect Ruri, for her own sake and Kohaku’s and Chrome’s.

But he has another reason too.

When Kinro is eleven, training starts to happen less regularly. By the time he’s 13, Magma decides training him is “not worth his time” and ends it. Kinro wonders, for a long time after, why exactly that happened.

Magma may be telling the truth. After all, more and more often, their training ends in stalemates. Magma can still put him down with one blow if it’s a clean one. But landing a clean blow is becoming harder and harder for his teacher to manage. He sees the frustration building. It may certainly not be worth it.

But Kinro never stops wondering if it’s something else.

Magma clearly hoped his offer -- lick my boot and join my side rather than fight me -- would be tempting. The history between them, mostly hidden from everyone else in the village, weighed in those words and the taunts that followed.

Kinro hadn’t backed down before. He wasn’t going to do so this time either. Not with everything on the line. And he couldn’t help but notice that Magma was doing everything to put him off his game.

“I’m no longer the fighter you know,” He found himself saying in the face of Magma’s taunts. And as he said it, he realized it was true. Magma was still bigger, but no longer nearly as much so. And he was slow. And he wanted to win only for himself.

And he couldn’t scare Kinro. Not anymore.

[dancewithyoutoday]

OTP Tag Game!

I was tagged by @whaticameherefor, thank you so much my friend!!! <3 I could do these things all day lol

1. Ian x Mickey (Shameless)

2. Damon x Elena (The Vampire Diaries)

3. Brian x Justin (Queer As Folk)

4. Claire x Jamie (Outlander)

5. Clark x Lana (Smallville)

6. Wade x Zoe (Hart Of Dixie)

7. Rae x Finn (My Mad Fat Diary)

8. Seth x Summer (The O.C.)

9. Jane x Lisbon (The Mentalist)

10. Emma x Hook (Once Upon A Time)

1. Do you remember the episode/scene/chapter that you first started shipping 6?

Yes, I do. It was the pilot episode lmao

2. Have you ever read a fanfic about 2?

Nope. I started reading a fic about them a few years ago, but stopped after the first chapter. I guess I didn’t connect to the fanfic versions of them, so I’ve never tried again. Maybe because I felt they were already perfect and canon didn’t need any ‘improvement’? idk.

3. Has a picture of 4 ever been your screen saver/profile picture/tumblr screen saver?

Uhm, once maybe? I can’t remember.

4. If 7 were to suddenly break up today, what would your reaction be?

Well, they actually didn’t end up together in the show, they were only a couple for a very short time, but yeah, even though I was sad about it, I eventually accepted it, because it was the right thing for Rae in that moment.

5. Why is 1 so important?

Because they make me feel things no other couple has ever made me feel. They were two fucked up kids who needed love and understanding, two fucked up kids who fell in love in the darkest place. They are two men who know and understand each other in ways that no one ever could. They never gave up on each other, they could never be apart, their love is so strong it overcame time, distance, heartbreak and even two boyfriends lmao. They complete each other, they’re the actual definition of soulmate and I think no one deserves happiness more than they do. Plus, I kinda feel very very protective of them, I would literally protect them with my life if ever needed. Last but not least, they’re the OTP who made me fell in love with fanfiction. In fact, I only read Gallavich fics and I could never imagine my life without them anymore. 

6. Is 9 a funny ship or a serious ship?

I would say funny, because Patrick would always tease her or try to make her smile, but he was also dealing with the trauma of losing his wife and daughter, so it wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows between the two of them.

7. Out of all the ships listed, which ship has the most chemistry?

Ian x Mickey and Damon x Elena. Hands down. (s1-s5 Delena, at least)

8. Out of all your ships listed, which ship has the strongest bond?

I’m gonna cheat and say Gallavich, Delena and Claire x Jamie. I could never choose just one, because well, Damon was willing to wait for Elena for 60 years and more (and he really did until Elena finally woke up); Claire and Jamie reunited after 20 years and never stopped loving each other, not even for a day; Ian and Mickey’s bond is so strong that literally nothing could tear them apart. So yeah, I’ll go with these three!

9. How many times have you read/watched the 10’s fandom?

I watched OUAT just once. (if I understood the question?)

10. Which ship has lasted the longest?

Uhm, Delena I guess? They became human again and we were shown that they remained together until the day they died.

11. How many times, if ever, has 6 broken up?

They went through a few ups and downs, but the worst break up was in season 2 when Wade cheated on her.

12. If the world was suddenly thrust into a zombie apocalypse, which ship would make it out alive, 2 or 8?

Definitely Damon and Elena, they were supernatural creatures themselves after all, so at least they’d be prepared lol

13. Did 7 ever have to hide their relationship for any reason?

Rae did hide it, for a while. She was too embarrassed to be seen next to Finn, because of all her insecurities and low self-esteem :(

14. Is 4 still together?

Yes, foreverrr!

15. Is 10 canon?

Absolutely, they even got married :’)

16. If all 10 ships were put into a couple’s Hunger Games, which couple would win?

I literally know nothing about Hunger Games, but I’ll go with Delena again.

17. Has anybody ever tried to sabotage 5’s ship?

Let’s just say there were... many external factors lmao. Clark’s initial fear of hurting her, Lana marrying Lex, Clark becoming a jerk when exposed to red kryptonite, and finally... the Beast itself, green kryptonite. I don’t remember precisely how, but Lana finds herself sort of trapped in a suit made of green kryptonite, and that’s obviously the death of her relationship with Clark, since they literally can’t stay near each other and are forced to say goodbye.

Shh, Giulia, it’s fine. It’s been a long time, you’ll get over this.

18. Which ship would you defend to the death and beyond?

Ian and Mickey. I love all the ships I mentioned, but Ian and Mickey are my children, I will always choose them over anyone and anything. Seriously, don’t touch them.

19. Do you spend hours a day going through 3’s tumblr page?

Unfortunately there are very few pages that post about QAF and Brian x Justin nowadays, but the answer is yes, I would.

20. If an evil witch descended from the sky and told you that you had to pick one of the ten ships to break up forever or else she’d break them all forever, which ship would you sink?

Jane and Lisbon, I’M SORRY.

This was so fun, thank you!!! asgshajaj I’ll tag @sickness-health-all-that-shit, @whatyouandihave-makesmefree, @beckyharvey29, @thisfeebleheart, @gallavich-and-millagher, @itwasnttheplanokay. I apologize if you already did it :))

[lightninginabottle0613]

some post-ttlr reflections 🚌💛

typing this from beyond the grave, as you all have killed me/are continuing to kill me with your sweet comments on this epilogue. what are you all doing, why are you all perfect angels. why was my “””epilogue””” the longest goddamn chapter of this story. i have so many questions and not a single answer.

if you are at all interested in some deeply personal ramblings and feelings (tw: depression and mental health and all of that), those are below the cut. i was honestly just looking for a place to dump them all, so i could properly process this whole experience that completely turned my life upside down in a matter of months. but if i learned anything from writing this story, it’s that maybe some people can relate to what i’m feeling! so they’re there - if that’s something that floats your boat.

if not (and you will not offend me, seriously, it’s long lol), then please please please just know one thing - i love every single person who read this story. i can’t believe it’s over and i’m going to miss the fuck out of it, but i’m so happy that i could write something worthy of consumption for a fandom/pairing that is so close to my heart. i sort of felt the whole time like i wished i had waited until it was finished to start posting, instead of updating after i was done each chapter, but looking back - i’m so glad i didn’t. this story was so heavy in so many ways, and every comment and private message made me want to keep writing. so much about this felt like a shared experience and a collaborative effort, even as the author, so i just want to say thank you to anyone who showed it even the slightest amount of attention. i can’t wait to keep writing both for and among such incredible people.

(also, i would be remiss if i didn’t say a special thank u/i love u to @yanak324 and @harrenhollaback. for the emotional support and for gifting me with friendships i never expected when i joined this community. i owe you both more than i can say.)

ok hey! i’ll get right to it - 2019 was the worst year of my life, and i very nearly didn’t survive it.

i’ve struggled with depression for about ten years, to varying degrees. it runs deep in my family, in pretty much every person on my mother’s side, and i didn’t learn that until about four years into my own mental health journey. my entire life, a lot was expected of me - not a super uncommon thing for an eldest child, i think. but as a result of a lot of repression from other people in my family of their own mental illnesses, i was confused by a lot of the heaviness i was feeling, and i thought i needed to handle it the same way, because that was the only example i had.

a lot of my progress was stunted after that, but i did start trying to make some changes when i turned 18. even so, i was doing a lot of the work on my own and in silence, and i still made a lot of decisions based on what i thought i should do, instead of giving myself the space and time to figure out what i actually wanted to do. i think my main focus for so long was just on not feeling sad anymore - because i was still so in the dark about the complexities of depression, and i had no idea how much work it actually takes to undo a lifetime of destructive behaviors and negative thought patterns.

my life was pretty nonstop from 18-24. for six years i dealt with one crisis after another. i was forced to react to all of them in real time, but i wasn’t able to thoroughly process any of them, and it wasn’t until may of 2019 that i realized just how brutal and damaging that pace was. that month was the first time that my life was even remotely calm for the first time in six years, and once my mind had a second to breathe, i realized just how numb it was.

i really, really did not want to be here anymore. i was so far down in the pit (something i’ve been calling it for about five years), that i could barely breathe. i can remember one specific saturday that month where i sat on the floor of my apartment for three hours in silence and didn’t eat a single thing until 6:00 that night. even now as i type this, i’m curbing the urge to call myself dramatic (ha), but i don’t know how else to describe it - other than saying that i quite literally could not function.

as suuuuper dumb and cheesy as this probably sounds, this was all concurrent with the last season of game of thrones and my subsequent discovery of the character of arya (i hadn’t consumed any asoiaf content prior to last year). i was so fascinated by her - i know so many arguments can be made that show!arya was not really her by the end of it, but trust and believe that i have read everything about book!arya that i can get my hands on. i had never seen so much of myself in a character before - both book and show - and i found such a comfort in watching her navigate childhood and deal with trauma and learn how to be vulnerable.

i couldn’t tell you the first fic i found or even how i stumbled across ao3 to begin with. but i can tell you that - not unlike probably anyone reading this, lol - i think i tore through like five stories a day for the entire summer. you know that post that’s like ‘all i did this summer was read fanfiction and cry’ ? hello. LITrully all i did. reading so many different authors’ takes on a character that i connected with so deeply and how she leaned into love/grew from pain/strengthened her convictions was a catharsis i’d never experienced before.

i had a massive upheaval in my personal life toward the end of august that resulted in my living out of a hotel room for five days, and one of those days i blinked and had 6K words of a gendrya fic written. it contained zero of the angst and pain i was feeling, and i still have no idea which deep recess of my brain it came from. it was light and silly, and i had no intention to continue beyond that, honestly. and then the literal first comment i ever got was from someone that said ‘please don’t let this be a one-shot,’ and i suddenly realized i was doing something so harmful (something that’s been a habit of mine for so, so long, but one that fic-writing has forced me to break) - i had found something that i genuinely enjoyed, but i was talking myself out of pursuing it, because my own insecurities were telling me it wouldn’t be worth it.

ttlr was supposed to be similarly light. i’d seen a post on a really long prompt list that was written by someone whose parents actually met in the same way that gendry and arya meet in the story, and i thought it was hilarious and serendipitous and perfect for their canon storyline, which is very much a pseudo-road trip in a way. i wanted arya to have struggles with depression and self-worth, because that’s true to my interpretation of her character, and i knew i wanted to sort of explore her conflicts with catelyn as a bit of a side plot, but nothing could have prepared me for how heavy the story became. the basic gendrya plot remained the same, but the rest of the story strayed so far from the outline i planned out, in the best way.

i really hate to call it self-insertion, because i think that sort of cheapens the messages i started to try to send with each chapter, but almost every non-gendrya detail in the story is something that’s happened to me. 99% of arya’s conversation with catelyn in chapter 10 came from verbatim text messages between my mom and me, that i had to scroll back to in order to reference. i struggled so much with how to characterize ned, because i think he’s sort of difficult to get right since a lot of his canon characterization is learned through memories that other people have of him, but in this story, he is my dad. all of arya’s introspections and bad habits are mine, her conversations with her therapist are mine (adapted accordingly), and her attitude toward romantic love is mine. i do my best to keep a journal, but writing this story all but replaced that for me, for months.

so EVEN AS i slowly started to adjust to what this story was turning into for me personally, absolutely nothing could have prepared me for how it resonated with other people. depression is like a tailored suit. on the outside, it looks like any other suit for any other person, and it has a lot of the same surface-level features. but beyond that, it preys on your specific insecurities and traumas, and no one person’s experience is exactly the same as someone else’s - obviously, because no two people are exactly the same. so when i started getting comments and messages from people saying they felt seen and understood, and that my depiction of mental illness was like a punch in the gut/made them cry/was so true that it was at times hard to read, i knew that there was a reason that my brain wanted me to write this story, beyond my need for my own healing.

one of the best comments i got was from someone who said that in the future, if they ever met someone who said they didn’t understand depression, they were going to show them ttlr. i cried for like half an hour after i read that (like the choking, sobbing kind), because all i ever want to do is educate myself and other people on this really hard stuff, and make people feel like they have the right tools to be empathetic. i know that the story ended on a hopeful note - because there is always hope but it’s also a fiction story (and i would never write an un-hopeful ending for gendrya…miss me with that) - but i also really hoped to convey the idea that she still has work to do.

because i am so far from done, myself. i’m still living in the city i moved to when i thought that all i needed was physical space from my problems, and i’m finally (sort of) at a place where i can take the time i need to figure out where i’m meant to be next. i’m in my last semester of grad school, studying something that i recently learned i hate, because i picked it thinking it was the logical decision, and now it would be stupid to drop out. and i really did have that text conversation with my mother, but that was about nine months ago, and i currently haven’t spoken to her since new year’s day.

i’m also in therapy, and i’m slowly starting to reach back out to some of the people i love, who i’ve shut myself off from for the past eight months. i’m at a job that i kind of hate in a lot of ways, but it also allows me to have one-on-one time with people and help them develop, and that’s super fulfilling. and i have a real hobby now that i previously hadn’t done since before i was a teenager. that’s thanks in large part to arya, but it really comes down to this community of people.

i am fully aware that i’m on the younger side of the people in this fandom, and the last thing i want to do is come off as preachy. but while i have big plans to continue writing for these characters and treating them with the care they deserve, i also do really want to continue to be someone that can make people feel a little bit less alone (through the stories i tell, and beyond that). the entire journey of this story for me was a lesson in how to say what i feel in an unapologetic way, treat even the darkest and saddest parts of myself with the same amount of love that i do the happy parts, and hopefully create a space where people feel like they can do the same thing.

i read something once that said that a member of a family who actively chooses their own healing will go through a period where they become the enemy, because they’ve disrupted the family system. i don’t know that this is true all the time, but i think it’s a really eye-opening way to think about a lot of situations where people find themselves isolated even more for prioritizing their own recovery. it was certainly the case for me, anyway. again, i know that i’m young and i have a lot of life left to live, but (at the risk of sounding ….. dramatic) i have that life to live because i’m making that prioritization. if ttlr, and any other story i write, can serve as the reminder for at least one person that healing is a choice we make and a long road to travel - and based on the comments i’ve gotten, it sounds like it has - then there’s nothing more that i could ask for.

this story is my entire heart and soul. i worried every step of the way about whether i was doing justice to the characters, but i mostly just loved having an outlet for such tough stuff. i’m excited to write more, but i don’t know that anything will ever mean as much to me as this has. so thank you to every person that gave it the time of day (or night lol). writing it genuinely changed my life.

(also as an additional resource, i’m sharing this podcast interview with none other than the hero of winterfell herself. i watched this when it first came out, and i’ve watched it probably 50 times since. if you’ve made it this far in this post - first of all, omg. but also if anything i said struck a chord and you haven’t seen this, it’s a must-watch. she hits the nail on the head perfectly, and she puts so much into words that i was never able to before.)

my messages are always open. i am always free to talk about anything and everything mental health. if you’re struggling, just know that i’m with you and i love you. 💛

[shipping-receiving]

Fictober 2019 Day 22: “We could have a chance.”

Rating: T | Word Count: 3069 Fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones Relationship: Jaime Lannister / Brienne of Tarth Tags: Alternate Universe – Office Notes: In this bit, I swap POVs pretty regularly. Triangle ▼ indicates Jaime's POV, circle ◯ indicates Brienne's. 

Office AU Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5

(read on AO3)

//////

▼

Alright, Jaime, play it cool, Jaime tells himself. He folds his arms and leans back against his car in what he hopes is a natural pose. You have a plan. After dinner, when you’re both alone, ask if this is a date, tuck hair behind ear, let finger linger on cheek, etc. He looks down at himself. Is this pose terrible? It’s terrible. Maybe I shouldn’t fold my arms? He shifts and rests one hand against the side mirror instead. What do I do with the other hand now? He places it on his hip. This is stupid. Oh fuck, I see her.

◯

Stay calm, Brienne, Brienne tells herself as she pauses just inside the main entrance of her apartment building. It’s just dinner. You never said ‘date’, did you? You can still pretend it’s just dinner. She can see Jaime through the glass, standing at his car in what looks like a very uncomfortable position. He needs to stop rolling his sleeves up to his elbows. Wait, no, he should never stop doing that. By the time she steps out of the building, the heat of her blush has already spread throughout her entire body.

▼

She’s here, she’s here. The words are an alarm in Jaime’s head as Brienne walks towards him, and he pulls his hand back from the side mirror with a jerk. She’s wearing the blue blouse he likes, the one she was wearing at the office when he first noticed her eyes, but this evening she’s worn it loose and paired with dark jeans. She’s blushing already; that’s a good sign, right? Okay, Jaime, be smooth.

“Hey,” Jaime says in greeting. Fuck, that wasn’t smooth, that must have been two octaves lower than my regular voice. He clears his throat. “Hey, Brienne.”

◯ 

“Hey,” Brienne replies, trying to get a hold on the tremor in her voice. She absently smooths down her blouse, the one she knows he likes because it brings out her eyes. “Sorry for the late notice.” Why the hells am I speaking like I’m writing an email?

“No—” Jaime scrambles, “Don’t apologise for—I’m happy to—I would have—” and then he just exhales without finishing any one of those sentences.

“Well,” Brienne says, softly and courageously, “I’m glad you could make it.”

“Me too,” Jaime smiles.  

▼

Don’t apologise for asking, was what he meant to say. I’m happy to have dinner with you anytime. I would have dropped everything even if you had given me five minutes notice. Okay, maybe not that last one, that’s probably too much.

He opens the car door on the passenger side and gestures to the seat. “Shall we?”

“Oh! Um, I was thinking we could walk.” Brienne rocks slightly on the balls of her feet. “I know a place about ten minutes from here. Maybe not as fancy as you’re used to—” Oh fuck, does she think I’m too fancy? “I mean, it’s nothing fancy, but it’s good. It’s seafood, if that’s alright with you? I called ahead and booked a table, but we can always cancel it.”

◯ 

Oh fuck, now he thinks I think he’s too fancy. Brienne just wanted to pick somewhere familiar, and safe, and reliable. The food is delicious enough that he’ll remember the experience, but the ambience is also casual enough that it could just be a meal between friends, if that’s where this ends up going.

“Sure. Seafood sounds great.” He closes the door and locks the car. “We can walk. Is it okay if I park here?”

“It should be fine, I think.” Brienne points uselessly in the direction in which she’s already started walking. “It’s this way.”

“Seems like a nice neighbourhood,” Jaime comments, as he catches up.

“Oh, it’s decent. Quiet. A bit of a distance from the office, but the rent is reasonable enough that I can still get a small apartment to myself.”

“That’s nice,” he nods. “Having your own space.”

▼

I hate small talk. I am above small talk.

“How was your day with Margaery?” Jaime asks.

Is this small talk? I’m showing interest in her life; that’s good, right?

“It was good. She’s…” Brienne bites her lip. “We had a good talk.”

Do I want to know what they talked about? Did they talk about me? Is that why she texted me? Jaime opens his mouth and almost asks a question to that effect, but decides against it. I don’t want to know, anyway. Do I?

He opens his mouth again as they stop to wait at a crossing, but before he can think of the right phrasing, Brienne turns to him. “How was your meeting with the client yesterday?”

“What meet—Oh! Um. It was good too. Illuminating.” Gods, has a meeting with a client ever been ‘illuminating’? She’s going to see right through this.

But Brienne simply says, “That’s good.”

Jaime tries his best not to think about elopements. Damn it, Tyrion.  

◯

They cross the road and walk for the next block or so in an uncomfortable silence. Brienne doesn’t know why Jaime is being so quiet. He’s usually the one to get their conversations going. I should have just let him drive, she thinks, though the restaurant is barely two minutes by car from her apartment building.

▼

I’m being too quiet. I’ve clean forgotten how to make conversation. Quick, Jaime, think of something to say.

And so Jaime blurts out the only thing that’s on his mind right now.

“Is this a date?”

▼◯ 

Oh fuck.

◯ 

Brienne stops in the middle of the pavement. If she could have done so by screeching to a halt, she would have. “Oh! Oh gods—”

“I’m so sorry.” Jaime wipes his hand down his face. “I didn’t mean for it to come out quite so… bluntly.”

“No—um—it’s fine. It, it doesn’t have to be a date if you don’t want it to be.” No, Brienne, that suggests you already think it’s a date. “Uh, I mean, do you want it to be a—”

“Yes!” Jaime exclaims before she can complete her question. “… Do you?”

“… Yes. I think I do.” She should probably be making eye contact while saying this, but Brienne is finding the cracks in the concrete beneath her feet particularly fascinating right now.

“Okay,” Jaime responds, and he seems on the verge of laughing with relief. At least, that’s what she can tell while still staring at the pavement. “Good. Great.”

▼

They turn and walk a few more steps, as if everything hadn’t just changed between them. Jaime didn’t tuck her hair behind her ear, or let his finger linger on her cheek while she blushed. But he got an answer, and it was the answer he wanted.

He can’t seem to stop grinning.

Then, he feels a tickle on the edge of his palm. He looks down just in time to see Brienne retract her hand back to her thigh.

“Shut up,” she mumbles.

“I didn’t say a word!” Jaime protests, bringing his eyes up to her face. She’s still refusing to make eye contact. He didn’t think he could grin even wider.

“You were going to.”

“If I was going to, I would have said, ‘Go ahead. I want you to.’”

He can see her shift her gaze from her own feet to his hand again. She grabs it, not gently, but urgently, as if she would have lost all her bravery if she had waited a second longer.

“Shut up,” Brienne mumbles again.

Jaime obeys. He intertwines his fingers with hers.

◯ 

Jaime’s hand is warm. Brienne knows it is warm because it is connected to her own hand. She curls her fingers upwards, matches her fingertips to each of his knuckles. Her thumb strokes the flesh in the curve between his thumb and index finger. His hand feels muscular, how could a hand feel muscular? But of course a hand that is linked to Jaime’s forearm must be—

And then she realises they’ve missed a turn entirely.

“Sorry, we’ll have to turn back. I forgot to take a right back there.” She leads him back in the direction they came from. Because she can do that now. Because she is holding his hand.

“Good,” Jaime replies.

“Good?” Why would that be good?

He lifts their hands slightly. “More time for this.”

Oh.  

▼

The restaurant is small, but cosy. An eclectic assortment of historical illustrations of the Stormlands hang on its walls, alongside other decorative items featuring various marine animals. There’s a remarkably big model of a crab hanging over an empty table in the corner, and Jaime isn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed when they’re directed to a different table.

He trusts Brienne to order her usual—she seems to be pretty friendly with the owners, who look at him approvingly. He finds this to be quite the confidence booster, and sits up a bit straighter in his chair. He can feel his knee touching hers under the table.

“Hey,” Brienne says, after she’s ordered. “How are you with spicy food?”

I’m pathetic. “I can manage.” I’m an idiot.

“They have this amazing homemade hot sauce here. It’s not on the menu, but I always ask for it to go with my shrimp. We can get it on the side as a dip.”

“I’m game.” I’m also an idiot, but I already knew that part.

Three shrimps-dipped-in-hot-sauce in, Jaime is already sweating.

“I thought you said you could manage!” Brienne laughs, as she hands him a paper napkin.

“I lied,” he confesses, dabbing at his nose.

“Why would you do that?”

“I don’t know.” Fuck this hot sauce to all seven hells and back. “To impress you, I guess.”

Brienne blushes as she moves the bowl of sauce towards her side of the table. “You don’t need to do that, Jaime.”

“Isn’t that what people do on first dates?” he says, from behind the napkin.

“I guess so.” Brienne gives him a rare smirk as she dips her entire shrimp into the sauce and pops it in her mouth. She’s superhuman. But I think I already knew that part, too.

“My plan backfired, anyway.” Not that it was an actual plan as opposed to a stumble headfirst into hubris. Or rather, stupidity.

“I don’t know,” Brienne says, in the direction of the hot sauce. “You made an effort. It’s endearing in its own way.”

Jaime would be pleased by that if he wasn’t otherwise occupied with chugging his glass of iced water, and motioning to the server for a refill.

◯ 

The owner of the restaurant offers a sort of conspiratorial smile to Brienne while Jaime takes his credit card out to pay for the meal. She’d be more comfortable going dutch, to be frank, except they’d had enough arguments over the past four weekends about who would pay for entrance fees and sandwiches and ferry tickets and so forth. Jaime almost always won, on the basis that she was doing him a favour in the first place by showing him around.

As the little machine spits out Jaime’s receipt, Brienne remembers Jaime physically blocking her from handing cash over to the bewildered woman at the art museum’s ticketing counter. And how she found that he had slipped money into her pocket at some point during their time on Tarth, though she had deliberately arrived at the ferry terminal early so she could buy their tickets for them both. She wonders if she should feel offended. She bites back a smile instead.

They walk back to her apartment building, hand in hand. They don’t speak much again, but the silence is something pleasant this time. As if a weight has lifted, and yet also settled between them both. She reaches her other hand over and wraps it around his forearm. Gods, it feels even better than it looks. How is that even possible?

They reach his car, linger there, hands still glued together. Ask him, Brienne. Just ask. What’s the worst that could happen?

“Do you—do you want to come up? Margaery brought wine this afternoon but we didn’t get around to it. If you’d like some.”

“Oh! Uh—”

And then Brienne realises how that sounds. Oh gods, I didn’t mean to imply— “I don’t mean—” Fuck, does he think I’m— “I haven’t even—” Nope, he doesn’t need to know that— “I just mean, it’s nearby, and the only thing around here that’s open late is this one pub and that can get really noisy—we could go sit in the park, I suppose, but it’s pretty dark right now and it’s a bit of a detour—”

“No, I, I would love to go up—I mean—to, to talk. Or whatever.”

Or whatever.

▼

And, it’s awkward again.

Brienne is sitting next to him on her couch, both her hands in her lap, and she’s so stiff that he’s reminded of the way she sits at her desk at the office. He lets his eyes wander around her apartment while they sit in silence. Everything is simple and functional, save a framed picture on a bookshelf of someone he assumes is her father. But it feels warm nonetheless. Maybe it feels warm because Brienne is in it. Because it’s an extension of her. He thinks, for one of the few times in his life, that he is in a space that feels like a home.

Their two glasses of wine sit on her coffee table, untouched.

“Brienne—” he starts, but at the same time five words come out of her mouth in a rush:

“I’ve never kissed anyone before.”

◯ 

Brienne had been thinking about it the whole way from his car to her couch. It seemed to her like that was where this night was headed, and she just couldn’t stop thinking of those five words. They echoed in her brain as she poured them two glasses of wine, and set them down on the coffee table.

But I didn’t have to say it, did I?

“Shit. I didn’t mean to—” She brings her hands up to her face, as if she could contain the burning of her skin with her palms.

Then, she feels Jaime’s hand wrap around her wrist, guide her hands down.

“Okay,” he whispers, though there’s no one around to overhear his words. It’s just the two of them, on her couch. This—this is the entire known universe. “Thank you for telling me.”

And then he shifts toward her. Their thighs are two parallel lines, defying all mathematical logic by meeting at every single point. One of Jaime’s hands winds around her waist, towards her lower back. The other is moving up to caress her cheek. Brienne can’t tear her eyes away from his lips, which are moving in closer and closer and—

▼

“Ow! Fuck!”

Jaime’s brain is reverberating in his skull. Okay, so maybe this doesn’t hurt as bad as that one time him and Addam decided to headbutt each other for fun (it wasn’t fun, and they were more than old enough to know that it wouldn’t have been). But when you’re expecting lips to meet instead of foreheads—

“Oh gods, I’m so sorry Jaime.”

“It’s fine,” he says, as he rubs his brow with his fingers. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay. I’m sorry. Do you need ice, or something?” He feels her tender touch on his forehead, something selfless, though it must have been equally painful for her.

“No, I’m fine, really.” Jaime opens his eyes and looks through the mess of all of their fingers. Her blue eyes are glistening in the warm glow of the lamp standing next to her couch. “Oh hells, Brienne, don’t cry.”

“I’m not!” she insists. And then a tear runs down her cheek. “Well, I wasn’t going to until you said that!”

He wipes away one tear, and another. “If you don’t want to—if you’re not ready—we don’t have to.”

“I want to,” she says. It sounds to Jaime like fear and desire in the same breath. “It’s just—I’m nervous because I really want to, and I’ve never done it, and I don’t want you to think—”

◯

Words don’t exist.

Jaime is kissing her and words don’t exist.

What are words? There is only the feeling of his lips on hers, his hand around her neck, his hand that she already knows is warm because her own hand has held it, his other hand on her cheek. There is only her own fingers in his hair, tracing the ridges of his scalp, down to the back of his neck, daring to slip beneath his collar, and Brienne finds perhaps that she has no need for oxygen ever again.

When Jaime breaks from her, all the words come rushing back into her brain, and with that, all her thoughts, her fears. “How was that?” she can’t help but ask.

Jaime just smiles at her, and doesn’t answer. Perhaps words stopped existing for him too. After a while, he asks, “How was that for you?”

“I… I liked it.” It sounds trivial, when she puts it like that. But she can’t think of anything else to say. She just knows she doesn’t want to kiss anyone else but Jaime. Ever. But maybe that’s something she should keep to herself, for now.

“I liked it too,” Jaime echoes, still smiling at her. “Do you want to—we could keep—”

“Please,” she hears herself say. Please.

As Jaime leans towards her again—leans over her, more like; she must have reclined onto her cushions at some point in that period of wordlessness—Brienne suddenly feels compelled to voice a confession. To put something into words.

“Jaime,” she whispers up to him. “I—I never thought I would have a chance at—at any of this.” A chance at dates, and kisses—and whatever comes after, eventually. A chance at love, she dares to think, even if she won’t say that word quite yet, and won’t for a while longer.

“I could say the same to you,” he breathes.

“Really?” How could that be possible?

“Really,” Jaime says, with a quiet conviction, a singular truth. He tucks her hair behind her ear, and lets his fingers linger on her cheek. “But we could have a chance, don’t you think?”

This time, Brienne doesn’t reply. She doesn’t put it into words.

Words—words don’t exist. Not for the rest of this night.

[mdelpin]

Gratsu Bingo 2019 Prompt: Play AO3 | FF.Net

Natsu Smiles

Summary: Gray was relieved when Natsu confesses that he's begun writing fanfiction as a way to help him not miss Gray so much while he's away at college. But as months go by and Natsu's smile begins to dim, Gray fears he might not be able to save Natsu from himself.

Trigger Warning: In later chapters, there will be mentions of cutting, and there will be talk of suicide. This chapter, however, is pure fluff.

Chapter 1

“Hey Babe,” Gray spoke into his phone, excited to finally get to talk to Natsu for the first time since he’d left for college. It had been a long week, full of orientations and the beginning of his training schedule.

“Gray!”

Gray could almost touch the excitement in Natsu’s voice, and he immediately became homesick. He could picture the way Natsu’s eyes lit up when he smiled, and it made him ache to touch him. They’d never been apart this long since they’d started dating a few years earlier.

“The one and only, I finally got a break to myself, and I couldn’t wait to hear your voice,” Gray gushed sounding like a lovelorn idiot and not caring one bit, “What have you been up to while I was gone?”

There was a pause and then a nervous chuckle, “Promise you won’t laugh?”

“No can do, but now I’m really curious, you been thinking about me?” Gray asked.

“Yeah, I miss you,” Natsu’s voice was sad, but he continued, “Do you remember Lucy?”

“Yeah sure, the blonde.”

“Mhm, well she suggested I try writing as a way to get my mind off you for a bit, so I did.”

“Writing, huh? That’s cool, what did you write about?”

“Remember that anime I was really into? I wrote a fanfiction about it, and I posted it online.”

“Fanfiction? I leave for a week, and you turn into a girl,” Gray teased, but he was secretly glad. He’d been worried that without him there to force Natsu to go out and socialize sometimes he’d just sit home and mope about him being gone. Writing sounded like a good thing.

“Shut up, guys can write fanfiction. A few people liked it, and they commented on it, it was kinda cool. They liked something I wrote, can you believe it?”

“Of course I can, you’ve always had an awesome imagination. Can I read it?”

“Sure, I posted it on fanfiction.net, my username is firedragon777. Anyway, tell me everything!”

So Gray did, he told him about Lyon, his roommate, who was also there on a hockey scholarship. He told him about the grueling practice schedule, and the terrible food, and what his room looked like but mostly he told him how much he missed him, and how he couldn’t wait to see him the first break he got. They hung up ten minutes later, feeling happy, but also frustrated at not being able to see each other.

Gray logged on to fanfiction.net and looked for Natsu’s story. He thought it was good, but what he loved the most was being able to hear Natsu’s voice in the words. He grinned and left a ridiculously sappy comment that would probably embarrass the hell out of Natsu when he read it and went to bed with thoughts of his lover floating through his tired brain.

xxx

School started almost before he was ready, and it was much harder than he’d expected. The added pressure of having to keep his GPA up while having to adhere to his team’s practice schedule kept him in constant stress. He wished Natsu were there with him, he always slept better with him in the bed.

They emailed back and forth, but their schedules didn’t mesh up for long phone conversations very often. Today had been a particularly grueling day for Gray, and he needed to hear Natsu’s voice, so he forced himself to take a break between practice and dinner and call him.

“Hey Babe, Is this a bad time?” Gray greeted as soon as the call was picked up.

“Hi, No, I was just looking up some stuff online,” Natsu said, sounding a bit distracted.

“Resorting to porn already?” Gray teased, knowing porn made Natsu uncomfortable.

“Gods no, that stuff is gross. I’ve been talking to a few other writers, and we’ve been thinking of starting a writing group on Tumblr, maybe Discord.”

“I have no idea what any of those are.”

“Me either, that’s why I’m looking into them. Discord sounds interesting. It’s like a chat thing for gamers, but it has video calling. Maybe you can get it too, and we can at least see each other from time to time.”

“That actually sounds like a great idea, I’d love to see you right about now. I’ll check it out once I get back to my room.”

“Rough day?”

“Yeah, any day without you is rough.”

“That was pretty smooth.”

Gray chuckled, “I have my moments. So the writing thing is still good?”

“Yeah, I’ve published a few other things.”

“Oh, man, I didn’t know. I’ll check them out later.”

“You can subscribe to me, then you’ll get emails whenever I post anything.”

“Okay. Damn, I have to go eat dinner before the dining hall closes for the night. I love you.”

“I love you too, bye!”

Gray hurried to eat, looking up Discord on his phone while he sat at the table. He decided to install it on his laptop when he got back to his room. He really wanted to see Natsu.

xxx

“Can you see me?” Natsu asked once he saw Gray’s image come up on the screen. He waved excitedly.

“Wow you weren’t kidding, he really does have pink hair.”

“Natsu, this is Lyon, my idiot roommate. Lyon, this is my boyfriend, Natsu. Now go away so I can enjoy seeing him for the first time in a month.”

With a wave Lyon left the room, closing the door behind him.

“Wow, his hair is really white,” Natsu couldn’t help but say.

“You know that’s ridiculous coming from you, right?” Gray rolled his eyes and just stared at his screen. “You’re looking good babe, wearing a bit more clothes than I was hoping for. I always picture you naked when we talk.”

Natsu laughed, “I bet you do, Zeref always leaves the fucking thermostat too cold, and he bitches if I move it.”

“He still working nights?

Natsu nodded, and Gray just wanted to reach out and touch him, what he wouldn’t give to be able to somehow go through the screen and just magically appear at Natsu’s house.

“You look tired, Princess,” Natsu noted, observing the dark rings around the other’s eyes.

“Yeah, they’ve been running us ragged. We have our first game soon. What about you? How’s school going?”

“It’s fine, nothing too hard yet. I’ve been working on the writing group. We have a blog, and I’m playing around, trying to learn how to create a website. We’ve been talking about organizing events too.”

“No offense babe, but that sounds like a lot of work. I thought you were in this for fun.”

“It is, and I am, but you know me, I like learning new things. It’s a little stressful though, there are a few people in there already, and they don’t all get along.”

“Natsu, don’t go in all crazy like you always do? If it gets to be too much just let go, okay?”

“It’ll be fine, you worry too much. Anyway, show me your room,” Natsu changed the subject, and Gray let him. He walked him around the room, showing him where he lived.

“I can’t wait for you to come here next year, we can get a little apartment off-campus, it’ll be awesome! I’ve already started asking which are the best buildings.”

“That does sound nice, I miss you sneaking in here to sleep while Zeref is at work.”

“We didn’t always sleep,” Gray reminded him with a wolfish grin.

“No, we didn’t,” Natsu smiled and held his hand up to the screen, and even though it was girly and he felt dumb, Gray did it back.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

To be continued...

A/N: I'm gonna be honest with you, I had no plans to write any more new stories for the Bingo but something happened last night and I just had to get some stuff out. So this was born late last night while not being able to sleep and stressed out beyond measure as to whether a friend would wake up again or not.

This story has nothing to do with anything ftlgbtales related (or any of my other blogs). This is more drawing on my limited experience in fandom and how it can tear you apart if you let it.

It will be in Gray's POV, mostly because I'm trying to understand how my husband might have felt when I first joined the Fairy Tail fandom. Think of it as my penance for doing that to him. The man is a saint.

I have not decided on the ending yet and I have no idea how many chapters it will be. I had originally meant to do a one-shot but this is where I left it 4AM and when I was rereading this morning I could not bear to spoil it with anything bad. Can't vouch the other chapters will be as fluffy.

[connan-l]

Game Evening

Fandom: Rose Guns Days Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationship: Rose Haibara & Stella Maiougi & Meryl Tanashi Summary: Rose, Stella and Meryl come back late at the Maiougis’ apartment after a long day, and decide to kill time by playing a simple game…

Content Warning: This should be obvious given the story and characters but, there are mentions of prostitution, and some crude conversations about sex/sex jokes. Nothing really explicit though.

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Link on Archive of Our Own

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Notes: This is just a short story I wrote on impulse when I discovered that there was a Rose Guns Days section on AO3 but got saddened by how empty it was. The main lady trio is great and it was the easiest relationship to write about for me!

I have to precise that I read RGD only once and it was… something like three years ago, thus my memories of the VN are a bit blurry. So I’m sorry if there are some details I missed or that I don’t really have the characters exactly right.

This takes place before Season 1, shortly after Rose became the madam.

Also, I have no idea if truth or dare was a thing that existed during 1930s Japan, but you know, whatever.

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The first thing Rose did after entering the apartment was to collapse into the sofa, her long, beautiful pink hair scattering all around her like a sumptuous veil. Her body was numb, her mind dazed, her eyelids heavy. If she stayed like this for a few more minutes, she would probably fell asleep. Never had she felt so tired after a day of work. A mischievous giggle from behind her managed to drag her back to reality though.

“Being the madam is not easy, huh?” She heard Meryl say in a teasing voice.

“Leave her alone, will you?” Stella added. “She worked hard today, she deserves her rest.”

“I wasn’t trying to be mean!”

Rose sighed, her mind unable to bring itself to keep up with her friends’ familiar bickering. Both Stella and Meryl had the night off today — something pretty rare — but Rose had spent the day running around because of all the work she had to take care of. It has only been a couple of months since she’d taken the title of the madam of Primavera, and she already felt overwhelmed. Thankfully,  all the ladies of the night had been exceedingly supportive of her so far — even Amanda seemed not utterly disapproving of her choices — and of course, Richard had been by her side to help her at every steps. He had a business meeting tonight, to which Rose had wanted to accompany him, but he had told her he and Cyrus would take care of everything, so she needn’t worry. Stella was supposed to be the one to go home to babysit Yuuji tonight, so both Meryl and Rose had chosen to stay with her.

“Anyway, I’m going to make some tea,” Stella said. “Or do you want something else?”

“Nah, tea’s good,” the blonde woman replied. “Right, Rose?”

“Hmm…”

Stella exited the room, and Meryl crashed into the armchair next to Rose — who was still motionless, her face sunk into the cushion. From afar, she’d look almost dead.

“C’mon, Rose,” Meryl said, before starting to poke at her with her finger. “You can’t fall asleep here. At least make the effort to go to a bed.”

“Hmmm…”

“Roooose…”

“Hmmmmm…”

Meryl sighed and rolled her eyes… then an impish smirk stretched her lips. She stood up, slowly advanced towards her friend like a cat, trying to make the less noise possible (not that Rose would have heard her given the catatonic state she was in)… and then she jumped on her.

“Take that! Goozy, goozy, goozy!”

“Ah— W-Wait, what are—”

Rose squeaked, but Meryl didn’t let her have the time to react that she was already straddling her and tickling her. The madam tried to resist, but despite being a really petite woman, Meryl was very physically strong, so she ended up having no other choice than to explode in laughers as the other kept attacking her.

“Hey, be quiet a little!” Stella scolded them while entering the room, a tray full of scalding tea in her hands. “Yuuji’s sleeping just next room!”

She had an uncharacteristic stern face and motherly tone — the one she took whenever her baby nephew was concerned. Stella wasn’t as overprotective of their little boy as Richard, but she would still definitely bare her fangs at anyone who would try to cause troubles to the child.

Meryl moved away from Rose and smiled awkwardly with an apologetic expression on her face, while the other guilty one instantly whispered a soft, full-of-remorse “I’m so sorry” — and as always with Rose when she looked at her with those big, innocent clear blue eyes, it was impossible for Stella to stay angry at her any more longer than that.

“It’s fine,” she said, before putting the tray on the small table in front of them. “But please be careful. Yuuji may be adorable most of the time, but if you wake him up, then he becomes a true little demon. It’s a nightmare to get him back to sleep afterwards.”

“Right, sorry,” Meryl said. “I really don’t wanna deal with a crying baby tonight.”

“Then learn how to be quiet.”

“Sheesh, I said I was sorry! Plus I wasn’t the only one making noise, Rose was super loud too!”

“Y-You’re putting the blame on me?” Rose exclaimed.

Meryl shrugged. “Well, at least now you’re awake.”

“Ahh, whatever,” Stella intervened, rolling her eyes. “Drink your tea before it gets cold.”

She sat next to Rose all while talking, while the other two women grabbed their cups and silently started to sip the hot beverage. Stella’s tea was always very refined and delicate, just in her image. Rose took another gulp of the drink, its sweet flagrance tickling her nostrils, and then she let out a long yawn. Stella smiled gently at her.

“You’re going to go to sleep right after, you, right?” She said softly in an affectionate tone, while putting one of her friend’s pink hair behind her ear. But to her surprise, Rose shook her head.

“No, I think I’ll be fine. I prefer to stay up with you and wait for Richard.”

“You sure?” Meryl insisted. “You can go snooze off while Stella and I take care of everything. We know you’re exhausted. No need to play tough with us, Rose.”

“I-I’m not playing tough, I’m really fine,” she argued. “You truly did wake me up earlier. Furthermore…”

Rose looked down on her laps, her gaze falling into the dark, auburn liquid in her cup of tea.

“I am the madam now… so…”

That was the only sentence she said, no further explanation. Meryl and Stella looked at each others, a clear look of concern they both shared for their friend. But neither of them spoke up about it. Instead, Stella just sighed.

“So what do you want to do in the meantime?” She said. “Play a game or something?”

As soon as she pronounced those words, Rose’s blue eyes lit up like a child’s. All of her sleepiness from a while ago seemed to instantly disappear, so maybe what she had just said hadn’t been a complete lie. “Oh yes! What a good idea. I just have the perfect thing!”

“What?”

Just as the two other ladies of the night exchanged a surprised look, Rose grabbed her purse and began to ransack it. After a few long seconds, she finally took a small box out of it, as a triumphant smile spread on her round face. “There it is!”

“What… What is that?” Stella questioned.

“You proposed we play a game together, right?”

“Well, uh, not really…”

“Well, I have a nice game idea! Let’s play truth or dare.”

“Truth or dare?” Meryl repeated. “Oh yeah. I used to play that when I was a kid.”

Rose flashed an impish smile at her two friends, which made her look at least ten years younger, then opened the box. Inside was a bunch of scattered pieces of paper, with seemingly handwriting scribbled on it.

“Claudia gave these to me this morning, as a gift,” Rose explained. “She said it’s a game she and the other ladies made together.”

Her two friends narrowed their eyes at this, the exact same suspicious expression placarded on their faces.

“What?” Rose asked.

“Well, it’s just,” Meryl started. “You know…”

“Don’t you think Claudia and the others made this as a new way to pick on you?” Stella finished for her.

Rose had always been really beloved amongst the ladies of Primavera, and everyone cherished her as a colleague and a sister. Her natural kindness and sincerity was a big part of it, but she also had a strange charisma that instantly attracted others to her. And now that she was the madam, it was even doubly so. However, she was still Rose, and she tended to often be a little bit… on the naïve and innocent side. Which meant that, while the other women were quite fond of her, they still often loved to tease her. Nothing too mean, of course, just enough to have a good laugh out of her, and Rose was just so easy to tease. Meryl and Stella sometimes took part of those little good-natured pranks themselves. Rose had never seemed to take offence at their habits of gently making fun of her, but she always ended up falling for it.

“Now, don’t be like that,” Rose said. “Claudia even said that she and the others played it quite a few times before. It sounds fun, really. So? What do you think?”

Meryl and Stella exchanged a dubious look. “Fine, I don’t care either way,” the latter said, shrugging.

“Sure? Why not,” Meryl added. “It’s not like we have anything better to do anyway.”

Rose’s smile widened. “Let’s start with the first question, then! So… ‘What’s the—’”

But then she suddenly cut herself short, her enthusiasm vanishing and her cheeks getting redder and redder. Stella and Meryl exchanged an interrogative glance, then stared at their boss expectedly.

“So?” Meryl pressed her. “What’s the question? Come on, we’re waiting.”

“That… That is…”

Rose fidgeted, her discomfort clearly increasing, but she finally managed to blurt out in a very small, trembling voice: “‘What’s… what’s the size… of your… penis…’”

The other two women blinked at her in silence for a moment. And then, finally, they both burst out in laughers.

“I knew you were going to react like that!” Rose exclaimed, halfway between embarrassed and angry.

“Oh my God! That’s a good one!” Meryl blurted out between two chuckles.

“Yeah, they definitely got you fine, huh!” Stella added while wiping the corner of her eye.

“Stop laughing now! Geez!”

“So? We’re waiting, Rose!” Meryl replied. “What’s your size?”

“Ooooh, I bet it’s huge!” Stella said.

“True, true! Rose just has those big balls! I’m sure her meat is even bigger than any of the regulars at Primavera!”

“The clients would be so ashamed if they were to see hers!”

“That’s enough!”

Rose screamed, now as red as a tomato, before throwing at them a few pillows which directly crashed into the women’s faces, but that didn’t stop them from laughing with all of their souls.

“Well, if it’s like that, let’s take the next one!” Rose continued, fumbling among the pieces of paper. “It’s your turn now, Stella! Truth or dare?”

“Hmmm… Truth!”

“All right… er, so… ‘Who in this room you’d like to have sex with—’ Wh-What on earth are those questions?” Rose shouted.

Meanwhile, Stella and Meryl exchanged a look, and stared at their pink-haired, blue-eyed, too-innocent-for-her-own-good friend from head to toes, before replying in the same voice:

“Rose.”

The concerned lady gasped, her cheeks the same color as her dress and hair. “Wh-What?”

“I mean, that’s kinda obvious, isn’t it?” Meryl said. “You’re pretty and cute, and the only other choice I have is her, so really.”

Stella snorted. “Hmph, that’s what I was gonna say. I’d rather die than sleep with you.”

“Hey, I’m glad we’re on an agreement for once!”

“N-Now, now, no need to fight… It’s your turn now, Meryl.”

“Truth.”

“All right, then…” Rose looked at the question, then lightly rolled her eyes, which told the two of them that it was yet again going to be an inappropriate one. “‘What’s the biggest age difference you’ve had between yourself and a sexual partner?’”

Stella chuckled while she was drinking her tea, and she had to put the cup of tea away from her mouth to not spill it over.

“Ohh, that I know!” She exclaimed.

“Ugh, did you really need to remind me of this?” Meryl said.

“I-I’m not the one who choose the questions! If you have a problem, go complain to Claudia and the others!”

“Ah, fine,” Meryl replied while crossing her arms, a clear annoyed look on her face while Stella still struggled to contains her giggles. “It was around two years ago, I think. Some old dude showed up at the brothel. A really old dude. And he was… probably around seventy.”

“Stop lying! He was way into his eighties!” Stella added. “And you never know the best thing about it. When he got into the room with Meryl, he couldn’t even get up his—”

“All right, it’s okay! I’ve heard enough,” Rose quickly cut her off. “S-So, um, anyway, it’s my turn now, so… ‘Do you sleep with a stuffed animal?’ Oh, that’s actually a pretty normal question this time.”

“Huh. So? Do you?’” Meryl asked.

Rose frowned. “What? No, I don’t.”

Meryl and Stella exchanged a glance. “You don’t?”

“Of course not! I’m not a child! Why would you even think that?”

“Well, I had just pinned you has that kind of person,” Stella replied.

“Well, I’m not!”

“I bet you did sleep with a plush as a kid, though!” Meryl argued.

“W-Well…” Rose hesitated, her cheeks slightly. “Yeah… A pink rabbit. B-But I don’t even know where it is anymore! And that’s normal, every kids does that, right?”

“I didn’t,” Meryl answered, almost proudly.

“Well, if you have troubles sleeping tonight, Rose, Yuuji has tone of rabbit plushies, if you want!”

“Oh, shut up!” A red Rose yelled back at her two chuckling friends. “It’s your turn now Stella, so let’s see if you’re gonna keep laughing for long… ‘Take a shot of vodka.’”

There was a long, awkward silence following this.

“No!” Meryl and Rose exclaimed at the same time.

“But… that’s the rule—”

“It’s just a game!” Meryl said. “There’s no reason to do everything it says at the letter!”

“R-Right, you can just, uh, take a shot of your tea. That’s perfect.”

“We’re supposed to look after Yuuji, right? We really can’t deal with a drunk Stella Maiougi right now!”

Stella stared at both of her friends, then let out a heavy, defeated sigh all while grabbing her cup of tea. “Fine,” she grumbled, and Rose was pretty sure she looked… almost annoyed? Did Stella actually enjoy drinking? Or maybe she just had fun getting on everyone’s nerves when she was drunk? Both possibilities were probable.

“A-All right, your turn, Meryl!” She exclaimed, avid to switch the topic before Stella change her mind.

“Right! Uh, uh, truth!”

“Er… ‘What do you appreciate more — love or money?’”

“Money,” both Stella and Meryl answered at the same time, without even an ounce of hesitation.

“Wh-What, really?” Rose exclaimed.

“You’re talking to a bunch of prostitutes, Rose,” Meryl replied. “What did you expect?”

“Actually, she’s technically a prostitute too,” Stella added. “So wait. Does that mean you prefer love, Rose?”

The concerned blushed. “O-Of course I do! That should be obvious.”

Meryl and Stella exchanged a smile, which was halfway between amused and endeared — like something two big sisters looking after their youngest innocent sibling would have.

“Of course, Rose’s always the romantic one,” Stella commented.

“Ahh, it must be nice,” Meryl added, sighing.

“Don’t act as if I’m a kid,” Rose replied, annoyed. “We’re all about the same age.”

Then she paused, her expression more pensive.

“You don’t think love is important?” She finally asked.

“I don’t have anything against it,” Stella clarified. “But having money, food and a roof on top of my head are the most important things to me.”

“Yep,” Meryl agreed. “I already have everything I need, honestly. A good job that pay well, great friends. Love is just a complication in my life that I don’t need right now.”

Their respective answers made sense, given both of their personalities and past life experiences… but for some reason, a part of Rose still felt… a bit saddened by this. Did that make her naïve after all?

Her feelings must have shown on her face, because right after Stella added:

“That’s only for us, though! For you, it can be different. Don’t worry, I’m sure one day you’ll find love. I want to be the one to walk you to the altar, actually!”

“Ooh, me too. Though we’ll be there to make sure the guy you chooses treat you with the respect you deserves.”

“For sure! Otherwise we’ll kick his ass.”

“Oh, we’ll do far worse than that. If he ever hurt Rose, dude can say good bye to his tail!”

Both women started cackling like witches, and Rose smiled awkwardly.

“I… I’m starting to feel sorry for my hypothetic future husband…”

“Anyway, it’s your turn, Rose!” Stella said, while grabbing the box this time and picking one of the papers. “Would you rather be smart or pretty?” She read out loud.

Meryl let out a snort, and Rose cocked an eyebrow. “Um… Smart, I think?”

Stella giggled. “What a silly question. Why would I choose? I’m already both.”

“Ohh, really now,” Meryl commented. “Are you certain about that?”

“I am way smarter and prettier than you, at least, that’s for sure.”

“Wh-What did you just say?”

“Aaall right, next question! S-Stella, it’s your turn! Truth or—”

“Truth.” Stella sighed, and while she still took the time to throw a glare in Meryl’s direction, she turned around towards Rose, who proceeded to read the question out loud.

“So… ‘If you had a time machine, to which time period would you go?’”

“Huh? Uh…”

Suddenly, Stella’s face became pensive, then… slightly nostalgic.

“I…”

She looked at Rose and Meryl, seemingly hesitant to answer. And then, strangely enough, she looked over towards Yuuji’s room, where the door was half-closed. There was no sound coming out of it, suggesting the boy was still profoundly asleep.

“Stella?” Meryl asked, a bit of concern in her voice.

“Ah, sorry, I…” She sighed. “I think if I could do that, I would… go back before the war. Before…” She swallowed. “Before my parents and sister’s deaths.”

Rose and Meryl’s expressions changed to a more somber one, and the ambiance in the room became a lot drearier. Stella’s purple eyes, usually bright with grace and malice, were now dark and focused on her laps, as if she couldn’t bring herself to look at anyone while speaking.

“I’d like for us to be together again as a family like before, even just once. Just the five of us… And especially… I wish Yuuji could meet his actual parents…”

She fell quiet, her words echoing and hanging in the room, while none of them dared to disturb the heavy silence that had taken place. Finally, Stella was the one to cut through the awkward atmosphere, chuckling softly and smiling at her friends.

“Ahh, sorry about that! I didn’t mean to make everyone feel gloomy, hehe.”

“No, it’s fine,” Rose murmured, and she reached forward to gently take Stella’s hand in hers. “We’re not gloomy.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” Meryl replied sharply. “There’s nothing wrong about reminiscing about the past from time to time. It’s okay.”

The other two stared at her with wide eyes, and Meryl puffed out her cheeks. “What? Is that such an odd thing for me to say?”

Stella blinked, and she and Rose exchanged a smile. “No, not at all,” the former replied.

Meryl sighed and rolled her eyes, before leaning over on the table to grab a piece of paper. “Anyway! Better to change the subject before one of you starts crying.”

“As if you’re not the one who cries the most easily out of the three of us,” Stella commented.

“Shut up! So, uh, it’s my turn now. Dare! Uhh… ‘Kiss your closest neighbor on the cheek.’ Oh, okay, that one is cute. Come here, Rose!”

“Hey, wait! It says your closest neighbor. Stella’s closer to you than me!”

“What? She’s closer to me from what, a millimeter? C’mon!”

Rose arched an eyebrow and grinned. “That’s what the rules says,” she simply replied.

“Ugh… since when did you become cocky like that?”

“Becoming the madam really did a wonder on her, huh,” Stella remarked.

“The point is that I’m right,” Rose replied. “So. If you have to kiss someone, you kiss Stella.”

Stella and Meryl both looked at each other defiantly — the expressions on their faces clearly telling that they’d rather kill each other than kiss each other. But the two of them also knew better than to try arguing with the madam of Primavera. Rose may be a sweetheart most of the time, but she was a hardened, hella stubborn sweetheart. So, slowly, Stella moved towards her blonde-haired colleague, leaned towards her, and pressed a brief, soft kiss on her round cheek. Then she immediately pulled apart, and crossed her arms — which Meryl mimicked.

“Happy, now?” Stella asked begrudgingly.

Rose giggled. “Yes, very.”

“Fine, well, it’s your turn now,” Meryl quickly added.

“Oh, right! Uh, truth! So, let’s see… ‘Where do you want to be right now?’”

Rose stared at the piece of paper for a moment in silence. For some reason, this question gave her a pause, and she felt as if her mind had blanked out. It wasn’t a hard question, though. She’d always liked the idea of traveling. Across the country, of course — going to Kyoto, or Sapporo, or Nagoya. Since she was a child, she’d always wished to visit Greece too – her father’s hometown, which she had only heard about from the few tales he had told her. There were a lot of places where she would love to be, a lot of people she’d love to be at the side of… But none of these answers seemed right to her now.

“Rose?” Stella called out quietly.

“Ah, uh…”

“Where I’d want to be, huh?” Meryl repeated. “Personally, I’d really love to have some vacations at the beach. Just spending my days lying on the sand and listening to the ocean…”

“Oh yes, vacations like that would be nice,” Stella added, followed by a heavy sigh. “If only we had enough money for that.”

“What about you, Rose?”

“I…”

Rose looked up at the two women in front of her, and smiled softly.

“I want to be here.”

Both Stella and Meryl stared blankly at her. “What?”

“I’m fine with where I am right now. I really don’t want to be anywhere else. Sure, it may be a pretty difficult life at times, but… I love this town, and this country, and all the people who live here. I love you two, and Richard, and Wayne, and all the ladies of Primavera. And… I would exchange it for nothing in the world.”

For some long seconds, a silence took place in the room — which made Rose anxious. Surely her answer wasn’t that weird, was it? But then, all of a sudden, the other two began to laugh.

“Wh-What is it?” Rose exclaimed. “Did I say something that funny?”

“No, no, that’s not it!” Meryl replied. “We’re not laughing at you. It’s just…”

“That’s such a Rose thing to say,” Stella continued. “Really, here we were, fantasizing about vacations at the beach, and you answer this kind of mushy tirade!”

“I-I didn’t mean to diminish your wishes,” Rose replied. “I mean, I think it’d be nice to have some vacations too…!”

“Nah, it’s cool, we get it,” Meryl said. “Actually… I think I agree with you. Vacations sure would be great, but… at the end of the day, I’m fine where I am right now. It may not be an ideal life, but it’s mine and I like it nonetheless.”

Stella didn’t say anything, but the wide smile on her face was more than enough to tell she shared those thoughts too. Meryl giggled again, and then she ruffled Rose’s hair in that big sisterly kind of way she often had towards the women of Primavera. Stella got closer to their madam before affectionately resting her head on her shoulder, and Meryl, sitting on the other side, imitated her.

The three of them stayed snuggled together like that for a quiet, peaceful moment.

Like a way to prove themselves that they were, indeed, all of them happy to be here right now.

Like a quiet prayer that their lives would continue as such, with all its ups and downs — but that, either way, they would always have each other’s backs.

[thechildoflightning]

Ch1- Seasonal Equivalent (August)

Title: Calendrical Consequences (Masterpost)

Fandom: Sander Sides

Pairings: Logicality, Eventual LAMP/CALM

Chapter Title: Seasonal Equivalent (August) - Chapter One

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Summary: Virgil moves in with the three people he eventually learned to call friends. And good friends at that. It seems to be a good start to his Sophomore year of college. Really, what could go wrong?

Warnings: Scars, Nightmares, PTSD, Hate Crimes (statistic mention) -if needed- message me for more details-

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Seasonal Equivalent (August) - Chapter One

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August 11, 2019

-

Virgil huffed and placed the heavy box on the floor.

“I swear your arm probably isn’t even broken,” he complained loudly, specifically using the tone he reserved for whining about Roman.

Roman just smirked from where he was sitting on the couch. The couch that they had moved into the apartment but had yet to place in the right spot.

“I mean it is broken, but I do get the cast off next week,” Roman pointed out as he kicked his shoes off. His golden skin shone in the light and was even more tan than usual after the bright summer months.

“And you couldn’t of just waited another week to move in?” Virgil complained loudly as he brushed a hand through his curls.

Roman shrugged before hopping off the couch to open the box Virgil had hauled up.

Virgil didn’t really mind helping Roman move, it was just a long, sweaty process. Especially since he was wearing a long sleeve shirt in the heat. At least he had forgone his usual jacket.

“You did look pretty funny trying to come up the stairs with that thing,” Roman remarked, as he opened the box, “I thought you would take the elevator.”

Virgil stared at him for a second before dropping onto the carpet and sprawling across it.

“There’s an elevator?” he asked, staring up at the ceiling with his eyes wide. Trixie walked over and sniffed at him, before pawing at him and wagging her tail.

“Of course there’s an elevator. You thought Patton was going to live in an apartment with just stairs?”

Virgil tilted his head as he thought about the question.

“Good point,” he muttered, “but then why did Logan and I have to carry the couch up the stairs?”

“Virgil, it’s a couch, it didn’t fit in the elevator.”

Virgil just rolled over and groaned into the floor. The floor that was probably pretty disgusting, but whatever, he was too miserable to complain. Trixie just continued to nudge at him playfully.

He grinned a bit at the action, inwardly laughing as she showed more of her playfulness now that she was off duty. He turned to make a face at her and her tail thumped against the carpet as she crouched down.

“Trixie, be a good girl and fetch the movies please?” Roman asked. Virgil turned to his back at the comment, looking at his roommate.

Trixie sat up and looked at Roman. She thumped her tail and cocked her head.

“The movies Trix,” he said, gesturing to the giant pile.

The dog walked over to him and gave him a few kisses. In response, Roman pet her as Virgil sat up.

“Virgil, your dog isn’t as well trained as you said she was,” Roman told him, even a he continued to shower Trixie with attention and love.

Virgil scoffed, and sat fully up, folding his legs underneath him.

“Yes she is,” he insisted, “She just doesn’t know what your asking. Watch.”

Virgil turned to Trixie.

“Trixie, Watch Me,” he called.

The dogs attention immediately turned to him and her tail stilled. Her focus was immediately on Virgil, ignoring all other distractions around her, waiting for his commands.

“Clean Up,” he called.

Trixie looked at the floor, sniffing before selecting one of the movies. She then trotted toward Virgil and released the disc when he held out his hand for it.

“All Done,” Virgil told her.

The seriousness that she had exhibited just moments before dropped and she flopped to her side to beg for belly rubs.

Virgil held up the case in triumph as his other hand dropped to give her the desired pets. Roman was staring at the two of them.

“That’s still so cool. Okay Trix-”

“You are not using my dog to pick up your mess,” Virgil said, cutting him off. Roman groaned and stared at the pile. Virgil just threw the movie at him. Roman yelped when it made contact and immediately began to rub the location as if it had been some great wound instead of a slight tap.

“What are you two doing?” A voice from behind them said suddenly.

Virgil jumped a bit, hand going to his chest as he whipped his head around to face the intruder.

“Sorry,” Logan apologize, stepping more into the room. Patton was right behind him, leaning on his cane.

Virgil just waved Logan’s apology off as his heart steadied in rhythm.

“We’re uh, unpacking?” Roman offered. Logan just snorted, taking in the scene in front of him.

Both Roman and Virgil were on the floor, neither moving or being productive.

Trixie was also looking decidedly lazy, spread out on her side on the floor, belly showing and vest off. Patton walked over to give her some belly rubs, his hands easily finding her favorite spots and setting her tail off on a wagging spree once more.

Logan, on the other hand, turned to stare at the mess of movies on the floor, especially the case that looked slightly slobbered on. He just shook his head at the two of them. Virgil could only hope it was found exasperation.

“Virgil can you and Roman move the couch to where it should go? I just need to bring up one more box,” Logan requested.

“Can’t,” Roman said waving his arm with the cast to remind the other.

Logan sighed, “Alright,” he agreed before turning back to Virgil, “Virgil, just wait, when I come back up we can move-”

“I can do it,” Patton piped up from where he was still petting Trixie.

“Patton, you mentioned that you were quite a bit of pain today. It’s no problem, just give me a minute.”

Patton paused in his petting, and stood up, wincing as he used his cane for assistance. He was wearing overalls over a light colored shirt today, contrasting his deep oak skin.

“No really, it’s fine,” he insisted.

Logan hesitated, but nodded, before retreating to grab the last of the things.

At his exit, Virgil himself stood, both him and Patton walking over to the couch. They counted to three before lifting it and slowly carried it to sit in a more centered spot of the living room. It wasn’t perfect and they would probably have to move it again once they got more settled, but at least it was in the general area of where it was supposed to be, as well as being out of the way.

Once they were done, Roman immediately flopped onto it. He laid down with a sigh, only moving his feet to allow Patton to join him. Virgil frowned at the action.

“Uh no, Roman you did nothing, get up.”

Roman pretended to snore, ignoring Virgil. Virgil growled softly and reached over to push him off the couch. He shoved hard and Roman barely managed to grab on in time to avoid a painful collision with the ground. Virgil shot him a glare and he scooted off, relinquishing the seat. Virgil flopped onto it and sighed happily as Roman crawled over to the chair next to the couch.

“You could’ve just taken the chair,” Roman pouted.

“It’s lumpy,” Virgil said with a smirk.

“Personally, I chair-ish the opportunity to sit on it,” Patton quipped.

Both of them groaned just as Logan rejoined them.

“Puns?” Logan asked.

“Furniture ones,” Virgil said, twisting to look at him.

“Please no. I don’t want to be apartment this,” Logan said with a sigh.

“Couldn’t of said it bedder myshelf,” Roman pitched in.

They all turned to look at Virgil expectantly.

The lanky boy sighed and shrugged.

“We moved,” he offered.

“That’s not a pun,” Logan pointed out.

“I know.”

“You’re gonna make Patton sad,” Roman told him.

Virgil looked over at his friend, who was giving him a pouty grin. He clasped his eyes together and made his eyes wider.

“I’ll let you know I’m invincible to puppy dog eyes, I have to resist Trixie’s on the daily,” he reminded them. They all sighed.

“We’ll get you eventually,” Patton promised.

“Sure you will,” Virgil dismissed.

~~~

August 18, 2019

-

“YO! Everyone up! It’s the last day of summer vacation and I’m not letting any of you waste it!” Roman shouted.

Virgil jerked awake at the yell before groaning and slamming a pillow over his head. While Roman’s shouting had been muffled by the wall, it had still been way too loud.

“You have ten minutes!” he warned.

Fuck. He should get out of bed. Roman would follow through with whatever more convincing methods he had thought of if Virgil refused. He shuddered to think about the numerous incidents before. He liked to believe that he had learned his lesson.

Twelve and a half minutes later and they all sat at the table, some looking more awake than others. Meaning, Roman was fully aware and the rest were half asleep.

Logan had his headphones on and was fiddling with his watch, not touching the pancakes Roman had prepared as a courtesy. Virgil on the other hand, was eating them, but each bite was vicious as he stabbed at the pancakes. Roman frowned at said pancakes, seemingly concerned. Good. Virgil had written Roman’s name in syrup on the pancakes before cutting into them with vengeance. Finally, Patton, whose head was propped up by one hand and drooling slightly onto his food.

“Good morning everyone,” Roman greeted cheerfully, pulling his gaze away from Virgil’s pancakes.

Patton shot up from where he had started to doze off.

“Roman,” he cheered, “I’m ready for this pan-tastic day,” he said, gesturing to the pancakes.

Virgil and Logan continued to sit in silence

“Surly Temple, Microsoft Nerd, you with us?”

Virgil just glared, but Logan gave a nod and nudged one of the corners of his headphones off his ear. Roman just shrugged, seemingly satisfied enough.

“Good,” he clapped his hands together, “We’re going to campus. They’re putting on a game thing, and we’re entered as a team.”

“Seriously,” Virgil groaned, “You couldn’t, uh I dunno, ask us, first? You just assumed we would want to do it? Who gave you the right to choose for us?” Virgil bit out.

Roman leaned back and blinked. Patton and Logan both turned to look at their angry roommate. The roommate who immediately realized what he had done.

“Shit, sorry Roman. It actually doesn’t sound bad, I just didn’t sleep well.”

Which was the truth. Virgil never slept well in the first place, and last night he had some sort of nightmare he couldn’t quite remember the contents of. All he knew was that he woke up shivering and near tears with Trixie on his chest before drifting off again.

“Oh. Okay. Well, you don’t have to do it,” Roman replied, tone meek.

“No, no, I want to,” Virgil confirmed, “I just- I’m a dick. Thanks for setting this up. I just don’t like surprises, they make me anxious.”

“Right, no more surprises in the future.”

“Thanks.”

“So, what is this ‘game’ thing?” Logan asked.

Roman shrugged.

“I don’t really know, we’ll find out! But we head out in,” Roman checked the clock, “fifteen minutes, so be ready to go.”

The three roommates stared at him.

“What?” Roman said frowning.

“You couldn’t have told us earlier?” Virgil yelped, before all three of them darted off to get ready. Oh well, might as well get into the school scramble a day early.

-

“I thought you said you signed us up?” Virgil asked when they reached the line for sign-ins.

He was looking decidedly out of place in his thick hoodie. Almost everyone around them wore summer clothing, from t-shirts to sports bras to even less. But whatever, being hot was better than showing off his scars. He had barely become comfortable going without long sleeves in the presence of his roommates as is. And he still refused to wear shorts around them regularly.

“I did,” Roman confirmed.

“The sign says groups of five to eight,” Virgil said, pointing at one of the many large signs up front.

“Yep,” he agreed

“There’s four of us.”

“Trixie is our fifth.”

Logan and Patton snorted as Virgil gaped.

“What?” he asked.

Roman shrugged, “It said nothing about being human, just that whoever was entering had to have valid ID and be affiliated with the school.”

Logan hummed and added, “Ah, I see, technically, Trixie should qualify. She has a school ID. And Trixie is technically affiliated with the school so,” Logan just shrugged and Roman grinned.

“True!” Patton perked up, “This is going to be great! We get the best team member!”

Patton shot an excited grin at the dog. Trixie just ignored him, keeping her attention on Virgil.

“You do realize that while Trixie does have an ID, that doesn’t mean I have to carry it with me? It’s illegal to ask me to provide proof of her being a service dog. They can only ask if she is one, and what tasks and function she performs” Virgil commented drily.

“Yes Negative Nancy, we know. Now did you bring her ID or not?” Roman asked.

“You told me to bring my ID. I keep her’s with mine.”

Of course Virgil carried it. He may not need it, but what if he did.

“Yes!” Patton said, jumping up in excitement.

Logan offered a small grin as well.

“Trixie girl get ready for a long day,” Virgil warned.

-

The games were pretty cheesy, but super hyped up, and even though the group got out in the sixth round- stupid fucking egg walk- they enjoyed the time they got to participate.

“Okay but Lo, how are you that good at cornhole? Patton asked as they made their way back.

Logan shrugged.

“My sister was obsessed with it in eighth grade.”

“But Patton, the better question, you and Virgil with spikeball?” Roman asked, shock coloring his words.

Patton blushed at the praise.

“Anxiety and PTSD equals either super fast reflexes or no reflexes. Fight, flight, or freeze. You just got lucky today,” Virgil explained with a half shrug.

“I personally enjoyed when we played tug-of-war,” Logan commented with a slight smirk.

The other three broke out in giggles.

“When Trixie just yanked as hard as she could-”

“And the other team fell over-”

“Beautiful.”

~~~

August 27, 2019

-

“Ugh,” Virgil muttered as he walked into the apartment, kicking his shoes off. He immediately went to the couch and flopped onto it, groaning into a pillow.

“Virgil, all you alright?” called a voice from behind him.

Virgil just groaned louder but provided the voice belonging to Logan a thumbs up.

“Long day?” Logan asked.

Virgil finally sat up and turned to look at his friend.

“Yeah, you could say that,” Virgil agreed.

“What happened.”

“I have a fifteen page report due.”

“And have you started?”

“I mean yes,” Virgil hedged.

Logan provided nothing in response and continued to look at a point near Virgil’s chin.

“But I’ve only written two pages,” he admitted.

Logan just stared at him and shook his head slowly. Great the disappointed face.

“C’mon, let’s go,” Logan said, gesturing to the door.

“Uh, what?” Virgil asked, brain way too tired to make whatever connection it was supposed to be making.

“Well Patton’s at the library until late. Roman has play practice. That leaves the two of us. And considering you have a fifteen page paper due and I have nothing, it only makes sense for me to help you.”

“You don’t have to help me,” was Virgil’s automatic response. He would never let anyone make even the tiniest of sacrifices for him. It was a bit of an issue.

“Virgil, I don’t mind,” Logan insisted.

Virgil hesitated for a moment, but the anxiety of not finishing the paper beat out the anxiety of accepting help.

“Okay,” Virgil agreed. But then, “And not that I don’t appreciate your help, because I do, please help me, but why are we leaving the apartment?”

“To get pastries,” Logan said simply.

“To get-” Virgil repeated, before snapping out of it, “What, why?”

“Well, you don’t drink coffee.”

Virgil shuttered at the thought. And he thought his anxiety was bad as is. Mix in caffeine? Yeah, that was a definite no.

“So pastries instead. It was just what came to mind.”

Virgil shrugged and stood.

“Okay,” he agreed, walking towards the door and grabbing Trixie’s leash, “Let’s go.”

-

“I took a similar course last year,” Logan commented as they sat down to start, now with pastries, “It was interesting.”

“Yeah, religion is fascinating. When it’s not kicking my ass.”

“Hmm,” Logan agreed before pulling out his computer. Virgil sighed but did the same, pulling up the document that was much too short.

“Are you sure you want to help?” Virgil asked for what had to be the billionth time.

Logan had said yes, but what if he didn’t really mean it? What if Virgil was doing something that was making him agree without even knowing he was doing it? Could he be somehow manipulating Logan into doing something he didn’t want to? Logan had to have better things to do, why was he helping him?

“Oh, it’s no problem. Again, it’s interesting.”

“Okay, you’ll need a Bible- Shit I only have one,” he realized.

“No worries, I have one as well,” Logan said as he stood.

“You’re religious?” Virgil asked, looking up at his roommate with a frown, “I thought you were atheist?”

“Oh, no,” Logan answered with a shake of his head before leaving the room without another word.

“But-” Virgil said softly then just sighed. He would wait until Logan came back to ask his questions.

Logan, of course, reappeared a minute later with a Bible in hand. The exact version they were using for his class as well.

“Oh, did you have it for your class last year?” Virgil asked. Logan had said he had taken the class, so it would certainly make sense if he had the book still.

“What?” Logan said with a frown.

“The Bible,” Virgil clarified, gesturing at the object.

Logan looked down at it with a small frown, studying the front of it.

“Oh no,” he explained, eyes still latched to the cover, “I got it last year when I learned that Roman was Muslim.”

“Uh, Logan, it’s a Bible,” Virgil said carefully. After all, Virgil knew Logan was an atheist, but it was unlike the man to get such a significant fact mixed up.

“Yes.”

“Roman is Muslim.”

“Yes.”

Yeah, there was no more dodging this.

“Well, the Islamic holy book is the Qur’an.”

“I know. I also purchased a copy of the Qur’an. As well as the Torah, even though it should, theoretically, be the same as the Old Testament from the Bible,” Logan was quick to answer.

“Why?” Virgil asked.

“Why are they the same?”

“No, why did you buy all three of those.”

“Oh, well Judaism, Islam, and Christianity all revolve around a shared belief in a common deity. I thought that if Roman and I were going to be friends, I could at least educate myself on his religion and the religions that surrounded it.

“In addition, you are Jewish, even if you don’t really practice the religion itself.

“I haven’t actually read any of them all the way through, but the parts I have have been enlightening. Not that I would say I am religious, even after reading the texts. I still consider myself an atheist. I merely found them interesting.”

Virgil could only stare a bit in response. Logan had done that for Roman? Sure, Virgil had done some google searches and looked up a few keywords and phrasing to understand his friend better and not be a complete ass on accident.

He’d also looked a bit into the amount of hate crimes committed against Muslim Americans, which had been quite high and quite disturbing. He may or may not have had nightmares about the fact that together he and Roman fit into the top three groups most likely to have hate crimes committed against them in the United States. Turns out being Jewish or Muslim was bad enough. Add being gay to being Jewish or Muslim and it got a lot worse.

And Logan- who had never been religious himself- had gone out of his way to read and study three incredibly hard texts that held no value to him besides the fact that his friends found them of some importance.

“You’re a really good friend, you know that Logan?”

Virgil’s voice was soft but true and Logan blushed and adjusted his glasses.

“I- thank you Virgil. Now the paper?”

“Yes, right,” Virgil muttered, refocusing on his computer. They had a lot of work to do.

[jaroslavlewis]

The Same Old You: The Flight Back

PREVIOUS CHAPTER

Title: The Same Old You

Chapter 2: The Flight Back

Author: Jaroslav Lewis

Fandom: Detective Conan

Pairing: ShinRan with slight KazuHei

Summary: Time has passed for them to believe that they have changed only for them to realize that some things haven't. Some things just don't.

Chapter Summary: Turns out his trip back to Japan did not only involve revisiting old places but old memories as well.

Disclaimer: I don't own Detective Conan and any of Gosho Aoyama's characters. I simply borrow them when I'm bored.

New York, Sunday, 9:00pm

Shinichi places the last neatly folded shirt inside his luggage. It fits perfectly and completes the whole set of his things to bring when he flies back to Japan for Hattori's wedding. He takes one last look and checks. He finds a decent amount of casual shirts, formal button up shirts, jackets, pants, underwear and toiletries and then he nods to himself. This should be good enough to last his whole trip. He zips the trolley bag and then places it near his dresser. He smiles nervously. He is all set. After ten years, he is going back. He is going home, even for a short while.

He hops onto his bed and pulls the warm comforter up to his shoulders. He closes his eyes but he finds out that he is not sleepy enough to doze off just yet. It is still too early, but he contemplates since he is going to fly very early tomorrow. So he closes his eyes again and he gives it a few minutes.

But instead of drifting into dreamland his thoughts travel elsewhere, back to Japan, back to her. The thought sinks in finally. He is flying back home and he is going to see her soon, at the wedding or maybe even before that. Then his eyes shoot open. He is awake more than ever and then he grabs his phone on his night stand.

He decides to browse through it, maybe go on social media again or play a video game. Then an idea escapes his mind.

'I should probably message her…' He thinks to himself as he clicks on the messenger icon and on her name.

He begins to type,

Oi Ran. I'm coming home tomorrow.

Then he shakes his head and deletes it. The message seems too plain, although it does sound like him. But he figures that it shouldn't be how he should approach her especially since it has been a long time since they have spoken to each other.

He pauses, staring at the blinking line, waiting for him to type. He is unable to think of anything. So, he back tracks their old messages he finds out that their last message dates back to five years ago. He does not even remember what they were talking about back then. He back tracks even more and he notices how their conversations went from really long ones to just simple small talk and then to just hi's and hello's until soon they no longer bothered talking to each other. He feels his heart ache against his chest and then he asks himself, 'How could we have ended this way?'

Tokyo, Ten Years Ago

"No more secrets?" She asked. Her eyes searched for assurance as she cupped his cheek with her free, left hand since her fractured right arm was restrained in a cast. He closed his eyes and placed his hand over hers that is holding his cheek. He breathed a sigh of comfort as he leaned onto her touch. Suddenly, he felt warm. His whole body hurt with the injuries but her warm touch miraculously made him feel better, gave him relief.

Her eyes darted to the evident bruises on his cheek, the wound on his cut lip. She took a soft intake of breath as her eyes watered. She bit her lower lip to restrict a sob from coming out of her mouth. She tried to refrain from shedding any more tears only to fail afterwards when he opened his eyes and met hers.

Cerulean eyes looked alarmed with worry as he lifted his hand to wipe away her tears. His pair of sapphires met her amethysts. His delicate fingers brushed through the bruises and few cuts on her face. His heart ached at the sight of her hurting.

"No more secrets. I promise." He assured her as he nodded and gave her a soft smile. He scooched closer to her to get more comfortable as he sat next to her on her hospital bed. He carefully wrapped his arms around her, remembering to avoid holding her too tightly since she still suffered from a number of injuries.

He planted a soft kiss on the top of her head and inhaled her soft scent. He lightly pulled away to gaze at her again. Despite the cuts and bruises on her face, she still looked so beautiful.

Then he leaned in to press a soft kiss on her forehead and then another on her cheek where she was bruised and cut. He lightly pulled away only to lean closer to her at an angle where his lips were positioned just in front of hers. With just barely a millimeter between them the two of them shared each other's breath and then he closed the distance and kissed her so softly. It was chaste and barely lasted a few seconds but it was enough to drive both of them crazy, enough for him to lean in again for more after pulling away so shortly.

So he kissed her again, but this time with a little more boldness than the previous one. Butterflies did somersaults in her stomach as she felt his lips brush against hers in passionate but gentle way.

At the back of his head he noted that it was their first kiss, something he had dreamed of ever since he gained awareness of his feelings towards her. He thought to himself, that the place, the hospital room was probably the most unromantic place to share a kiss but at that moment, it just felt right and it didn't matter where it happened. The only thing that mattered was that they were finally together. No more secrets.

Osaka, Monday, 8:00 PM

It is their first night in Osaka, a week before the big wedding happens. Ran with Sonoko and Sera took an early flight to the city to spend more time with the couple and to plan Kazuha's bachelorette party. Now, they sit at the back of Heiji's car with him driving and Kazuha sitting at the passenger's seat. The couple is kind enough to offer them a ride to their hotel after picking them up from the airport and having dinner together.

"Heiji, don't forget we're gonna meet our parents tomorrow for the final fitting of their attires for the ceremony, okay?" Kazuha reminds her fiancé who remains focused on the wheel.

"What? I thought that wasn't until the day after tomorrow." Heiji reacts while keeping his eyes on the road. Kazuha rolls her eyes.

"It's tomorrow at 12 noon." Kazuha responds and Heiji's eyes widen in shock. His expression suddenly becomes conflicted.

"But I'm supposed to pick up Kudo at the airport that time!" Heiji reasons out. Ran's ears ring at the sound of her ex-boyfriend's surname. Sonoko side eyes at her friend knowingly, while Sera smirks, shaking her head.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" Heiji whines, eliciting a scowl from his fiancée. She looks at him with an annoyed, bewildered expression.

"Excuse me? I told you so many times. I even listed our whole wedding preparation schedule on the calendar of our apartment!" Kazuha retorts. Heiji makes a face and shakes his head. It doesn't take much for Ran, Sonoko and Sera to predict that such little issue will lead to the couple bickering. Typical Heiji and Kazuha.

"Well, I can't just ditch Kudo so suddenly. I promised him!" Heiji says, worriedly. Kazuha scratches her head in a frustrated manner.

"Well you can't just ditch our parents as well." She points out. "Kudo-kun will understand. Besides, he's a grown man. He can handle himself."

"Yeah, but it's his first time in Japan after ten years." Heiji sighs. "I'm thinking, he'd at least want someone to be there for him when he arrives and I'm guessing he'd need some help with his luggage too…"

Ran finds herself unconsciously nodding, agreeing with Heiji. Sonoko lightly nudges at her with her elbow and gives her a suggestive look. Ran in turn looks at her questioningly and then shakes her head.

"Well this wouldn't have happened if you took time to pay attention to our wedding prep schedule!" Kazuha scolds. The other three remain silent, awkwardly listening to the couple's fight escalating. Ran clenches her skirt with her fist, silently praying that the little misunderstanding won't lead to another Heiji and Kazuha shouting fest like most of their fights do. She also considers an idea at the back of her head but she doesn't say anything.

"You just never listen to me, Heiji…"

"Ahou!" Heiji's tone raises. Ran flinches at the sound of his voice.

"Ano sa…" Ran begins out of impulse causing Kazuha to turn to her and Heiji to look at her through rearview mirror. She feels her heart pound rapidly through her chest. She bites her lips shyly, at the back of her head she considers the thought that she'll probably regret even suggesting it to them but she also thinks that she doesn't have any choice anyway. "If you guys want, I can go and pick him up in place of Hattori-kun…"

"That's actually-

"…a great idea!" Heiji exclaims.

"…insane!" Kazuha reacts.

Kazuha glares questioningly at Heiji who shrugs at her while he continues to drive.

"Ran-chan, are you sure you're gonna be okay with that?" Kazuha asks worriedly.

Ran opens her mouth to respond but Heiji immediately counters bluntly, "Sure it is! She and Kudo are fine. Besides, it has already been a decade. Ne, Nee-chan?"

'A decade… It's already been that long huh?' Ran thinks to herself, all of a sudden her mouth becomes dry. Realization comes to her. What is she supposed to say to him once they see each other? Suddenly she wishes to undo the events earlier, thinking to herself that she shouldn't have meddled with the couple. But it is too late now…

"Ahou!" Kazuha shouts at Heiji as she hits him violently on the shoulder, causing him to flinch.

"Kazuha-chan, it's okay." Ran assures the bride to be who turns to her with a hesitant look on her face. "I mean, Hattori-kun is right and Shinichi and I are okay. I swear. Besides, we're gonna see each other either way, at your wedding, right?"

"Well then I guess, if it's no trouble for you, then okay…" Kazuha sighs in surrender. She turns at Heiji, giving him another glare. Silence starts to fill the air so suddenly. Ran gazes at her window as her thoughts drift somewhere else.

Tokyo, Ten Years Ago

She had her fears.

She was aware of the dangers and death threats that his duty came with. She was used to the environment of the crime-solving industry. It did not bother her much because she knew how to defend herself. She was perfectly fine…

Until it happened.

She was put to a situation where she had no control of. She couldn't do anything to save him. She couldn't even defend herself. She was powerless against the syndicate. Both of them were. She almost watched him die right before her eyes.

Since then, she could never get the dark, tortured image of him off of her head. Even after the incident, it still haunted her. She had nightmares about it and every time, she was faced with such image in her dreams, she couldn't do anything.

She blamed herself. Maybe if she had been more careful, maybe if she had been stern enough to stop him from following the suspicious men in black, maybe if she had been more inquisitive and stuck to her gut-feeling about Conan's identity, maybe if she cornered him with her deduction and forced him to confess, then maybe she could've done something to protect him.

He always assured her that she was never at fault but deep down in her heart she still felt like she is responsible for what happened. So, she swore to herself she'd never make the same mistake again.

When things got back to normal, she and Shinichi had an agreement that they'd always know each other's whereabouts. It wasn't because Ran didn't trust him. She merely wanted to monitor his safety and Shinichi wanted the same for Ran so he agreed without second thought.

Ran was not a demanding girlfriend. Neither was she in anyway possessive. In fact, she was very considerate with his schedule. All she wanted was assurance that he wouldn't run into such trouble again and that if he does, she would be able to do something about it in any way she can.

Shinichi was more than willing to give her what she wants. He knew her fears and he understood. He loved her and he wanted to make it up to her. So he complied very well.

He always informed her if he had soccer practice, or if he had to go out with Nakamichi and the boys and most especially if he was needed for a case. He made sure to always text her that he got home safely after his agenda. Ran did the same. Shinichi knew her schedule, if she had Karate training after class or if she had to go out with Sonoko and the girls.

They had no problems.

Until a certain incident happened.

Ran had Karate training. Shinichi ran off to solve another case. Like always, they gave each other a heads up. Ran went home by herself. It was no biggie. She'd just have to patiently wait for Shinichi to call or text her once he got home.

So patiently she waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Until hours passed and there was still no phone call, not even a message. It was already midnight. If Shinichi had to extend his hours with the police, he'd tell her but he didn't call. It started to worry her, but she didn't give in to panic just yet. She messaged him via text and via social media and she waited again. Maybe he was busy.

So she stayed up late to wait again, but still no sign of him. She decided to call but his mobile could not be reached.

Suddenly the scenario felt so oddly familiar and then she was scared again. What if he was unconscious somewhere where no one could find him? What if they took all his means to contact for emergencies? What if he is hurt? Or worse… What if he's…

As mindless as it may seem, Ran rushed to find him. She didn't have much of a strategy. All she knew right then was that Plan A: she'd go to his house to see if he is home and if he still isn't, Plan B: she'd go on all night looking for him until she finds him. It was insane and irrational but it is what she did.

So she showed up at his door-step, in her sleepwear and a sweater, panic-stricken and frantically ringing his doorbell while she silently prayed for him to answer. Her eyes stung with tears threatening to fall with every ring that he didn't go out to open the gate to his house.

It took about 8 rings for him to show up with a confused look on his face, still in his uniform and with his hair sticking in different directions.

"Ran, what in the world? What are you…" He didn't get to finish his question as he opened his gate to let her in. He stared at her shaking form. She was shivering not just from the cold and her lack of warm clothing but also because of something else...

He placed his hands on her shoulders. His eyes looked concerned as he looked into her terrified ones. His heart ached. It was the most vulnerable he has seen of her. Ran was a strong woman and it was one thing to see her cry but another to see her so distraught and so frightened.

"You didn't call!" She sobbed. It wasn't an accusation but merely a statement of the reason why she was in panic. "I thought something happened to you! I…"

His arms wrapped around her instantly, taking her into a warm, tight and protective embrace. She continued to shake and shiver against his body. He felt like a total idiot for forgetting and a huge jerk for making her worry. He was supposed to call her soon, but the investigation was too long. His phone died. When he got home he was so tired that he fell asleep on the couch and forgot to tell her he was safe.

"Thank God, you're okay…" She cried with relief. And his heart ached a million times than it already did. How in the world did he deserve such a kind-hearted, loving woman like her? How could he be such an asshole for making her cry again?

"I'm sorry…" He breathed against her ear as he stroked her back, comforting her. "God, I'm so sorry, Ran…"

Tears soaked the jacket of his Teitan Highschool uniform. He felt her shake her head against his shoulder.

"I panicked. I over reacted. I'm so sorry…" She apologized, still sobbing. Suddenly she felt awfully embarrassed and pathetic.

"Shhh…" He hushed before pressing his lips on her forehead. "I should have called you. It wasn't your fault. I'm sorry I made you worry…"

She lightly pulled away to look up at him. She nodded in response and gave him a small smile. At this point, her sobbing has already subsided but her eyes were still watery with tears. She hair was disheveled from all the running she had just done.

He let out a relieved sigh as he ran his fingers through her hair and tucked any stray hair behind her ear. He ran his thumb through her tear-stained cheeks. No more words came out of his mouth for he had no idea what he should do to make her feel better.

New York, Monday, 6:00 AM

Shinichi presents his ticket and passport to the stewardess before boarding the plane. After a brief inspection of his passes, he is able to enter his flight bringing with him his extra hand-carried backpack where all of his valuables are contained. He walks through the aisle while placing his passport and other documents securely inside his backpack. He finds his designated seat by the window. He places his backpack in the compartment, bringing only his smart phone and earphones with him as he sits down comfortably on his seat.

He looks out the window as he waits for the plane to take off. He puts on his earphones but he doesn't listen to any music, instead he quietly observes the dim view of the airport ramp outside. The sun hasn't even risen just yet. He thinks about Japan, how the sun has probably long set there, given the evident time difference. He sits back to relax since he did not get much sleep last night. In about fifteen hours, he'll be back in Japan. It is gonna be a long flight.

Tokyo, Ten Years Ago

He still had guilt in his heart.

It was hard for him to get rid of, not after she got involved in the syndicate case and endangered her life because of him. He thought the guilt would slowly fade away as time passed, but it didn't especially after he saw her one night, shivering in fright, her expression, panic stricken as she embraced him.

Shinichi knew about her fears and he had fears of his own as well. It was the reason why he agreed to their arrangement, why he promised that for the second time around, there would be no secrets between them. It wasn't just a matter of trust. It was more of a safety precaution for both of them especially after the trauma that the case caused.

He confidently thought he could easily comply to it, but there was one night that he wasn't able to and it resulted to triggering her trauma, driving her to run miles away from home to his house to check on him, just to check if he was safe, if he was still alive.

So once again, Shinichi hated himself. He promised he wouldn't make her cry anymore. He told himself that he would make it up to her, that he would protect her this time, in his second life, their second life together but he failed again.

Still, despite all that she forgave him endlessly. So, he worked hard to prove and make sure that forgiving him was not a pointless decision for her, that he really did deserve it, that he deserved her…

Needless to say, he worked too hard that slowly he began to lose himself for her even when she didn't ask him to…

He never noticed it until then.

It happened after soccer practice, just about a few weeks since he decided to come back to the team to help them win the interschool soccer tournament.

It was a simple prank, done by his teammates. But he was not having any of it. It was a serious matter to him but they did not understand how such simple joke could easily tick him off.

"Give me back my phone." Shinichi demanded in a calm but serious manner when he found his phone missing from his gym bag. Being a detective, and knowing his peers so well, he didn't need any evidence other than commonsense to deduce that they were on to something. He had his hands inside the pocket of his shorts as he stood casually and hid his hands balling into fists so hard that his nails created crescents on his palms.

"Come on, Kudo. We didn't take your phone!" A group of boys his age teased, snickering with obvious intent as they sat on the bench of the boys' locker room.

"I'm not playing around with you guys. Give me back my phone." Shinichi repeated in a serious tone but the boys all laughed.

"Jeez, Kudo. Get a grip will you!" One of his teammates that had 'Akamine' written on his jersey said as he took a red phone from his gym bag ready to hand it over to Shinichi who reaches for it with an annoyed look on his face.

Just then, his phone started to ring. Ran's name and picture flashed on the screen. Shinichi's phone is snatched away once again before he could even get it back from Akamine.

"Ah, Mouri-chan's on time as always! As usual, the missus never misses." Akamine commented jokingly. Shinichi growled in frustration as he lunged after Akamine to reach for his phone but his teammate tossed it to another.

"Oi! Akamine! Give it back! I have to take the call." Shinichi shouted but the guys just kept on playing pranks on him.

"Why do you look so scared, Kudo? Are you afraid she'll kick you in the ass, thinking you're cheating on her because you missed her calls?" Akamine teased, triggering Shinichi's anger even more.

"Damn, Kudo. You really are whipped! Looks like your girl is THAT possessive…" One of his teammates commented. "Jeez. Women. This is why I'm not getting a girl friend."

Ran's worried face flashed before Shinichi's eyes. Suddenly it was all he could think about. His pulse beat harder against his ears, muting the sound of his teammates' boisterous laughter. And then, Shinichi lost it.

Shinichi punched Akamine in the face.

The laughing abruptly stopped. The ringing in his ears faded but his phone's ringing does not.

"What the fuck's wrong with you?" Akamine cursed. Shinichi angrily pulled him by the collar, and pushed him to the lockers with immense strength. He raised another arm, ready give the guy another punch in the face when his team mates interfered.

"Kudo! We were just joking around!" One of them said.

"Look, we're sorry okay?" Another apologized, bringing him his phone.

Shinichi let out a huff of breath, calming his nerves. His grip on Akamine gradually loosened. This time, it was Akamine who was furious.

"I asked nicely." Shinichi explained as he took his phone, gripping it tightly on his hand and lifted his gym bag with the other.

"Coach is gonna suspend you from the team." Akamine warned threateningly.

"I don't care." Shinichi answered with a deadpanned expression as he proceeded to leave. "I quit."

With that, he walked out of the locker room, leaving his teammates shocked.

Shinichi sped up to the hallway with his ringing phone. He took a few breaths to calm himself down so that Ran wouldn't suspect anything.

"Hey, Ran. I'm sorry it took a while for me to answer…" He apologized as soon as he answered the phone.

"Gomene. Are you still at practice? I just called to tell you that mine just ended." Ran replied with a sweet tone. Shinichi suddenly felt his anger subside. He smiled to himself upon hearing the sound of her voice.

"It's okay. Our practice just ended as well. I'm on my way to meet you…" He said, making his way to the school gym where Ran and her team usually held their matches.

Osaka,Tuesday, 8am

Ran is up very early despite barely getting any sleep last night. She sits by the vanity mirror of the hotel room which she shares with Sonoko and Sera. Sonoko stirs in her sleep while Sera continues to snore.

Ran quietly does her morning skincare routine in her bathrobe, her wet hair still in a towel since she just got out of the shower. She starts to put on a little bit of concealer under her eyes to hide the little bit of bags she gained under her eyes for staying up late last night, over thinking. Sonoko sits up to watch her, yawning loudly as she stretches her arms.

"Ah, look at you being all excited to see the ex-husband…" Sonoko teases. Ran's face immediately heats up in embarrassment.

"Sonoko!" Ran whines as she puts on a little powder to set her face, then a little bit of blush to add color to her cheeks and then some mascara on her eyelashes which were already so long. Sonoko hops off of her bed to approach her friend. She grabs a chair so she could sit next to Ran in front of the vanity. Ran consciously reaches for a lipstick in her makeup bag. She looks at Sonoko who still has her eyes on her. Ran feels shy. She always gets nervous when people watch her get ready.

"Not that." Sonoko says as Ran uncaps a red-orange lipstick. "Use the nude one. It's better with your all-natural kind of look."

Ran nods and reaches for a different lipstick. She uncaps it and applies it delicately over her lips. She purses her lips together to even the color out.

"Perfect." Sonoko comments while holding her two thumbs up. "You already picked an outfit?"

"Yeah." Ran replies taking a loose, fluffy hoodie and denim shorts from her luggage. Sonoko shakes her head disapprovingly.

"No way you're gonna see him in that." Sonoko says. Ran's eyes widen.

"Why not? It's cute and besides, I'm not trying to impress him or anything. Also, it's just the airport so I should just look casual." Ran explains defensively. Sonoko rolls her eyes.

"Yeah right. You're seeing your ex okay? Put on something nicer. Still casual but show stopping, you know what I mean?" Sonoko proceeds to rummage through Ran's luggage. Ran observes curiously, cocking her head to the side. It takes only a few seconds for Sonoko to fix up a good fashion combo for her. She hands her a mustard yellow crop top and dark skinny jeans.

"You look hot in this. Put this on."Sonoko commands her. Ran looks at the outfit hesitantly. "Just do it! It accentuates your boobs and your fine ass."

"Sonoko! It's too revealing!" Ran whines.

"So what? You got some goods to show. Flaunt it!" Sonoko encourages, pushing her to the bathroom to change. "Just shut up put it on!"

Ran is left with no choice but to obey her friend. So she changes into Sonoko's recommendation outfit. In a few seconds she is out and ready. Sonoko squeals in delight upon seeing her come out of the bathroom in the crop top and skinny jeans.

Indeed, Sonoko knows best. Ran clearly looks so fine in the outfit for it hugged her curves pretty well.

"Okay, it's still very early. We have time to do your hair!" Sonoko exclaims, pulling Ran back to the chair by the vanity. She unveils Ran's wet hair and grabs a hair blower and a hair iron. She plugs the hair blower and starts to dry Ran's damp hair with it.

Ran sits in a very well-behaved manner. Sonoko meets her eyes in the mirror, smiling at her friend who returns her smile with a soft, nervous one.

"By the time we're done, you're gonna totally knock Shinichi's socks off." Sonoko comments. Ran rolls her eyes and laughs. "You know, I'm honestly kind of still opposed to this whole Shinichi thing."

Ran looks at Sonoko questioningly through the mirror.

"You're the one who suggested this whole Shinichi thing. Besides, we're only friends now, Sonoko…" Ran clarifies with a hint of defensiveness that Sonoko takes note of.

"Yeah right. Friends who are to awkward to hit each other up after a break up." Sonoko slams her. Ran stays quiet, clearly affected by Sonoko's response. "I honestly think you could do better though. Clearly, there are a lot more guys better for you than that nerd. I don't know what you see in him. He's Shinichi. But anyway, it's obvious that you're crazy about him, still are and always have been. It's like he's your measure of standard for guys or something. It's weird but I guess that's love…"

Ran wants to deny what Sonoko had just said. But she knows there is no point in it. Her best friend could read her easily. They've known each other all their lives.

"Well, it's different with him. He was a big part of my life. He was my friend first before he became my first love…" Ran says fondly. Sonoko furrows her eyebrows, thinking hard as she continues to do Ran's hair.

"Until now, I still don't get why you guys had to break up. You guys were supposed to be end game." Sonoko comments with a disappointed sigh.

"We had to grow at some point…" Ran replies with a sad smile on her face, reminiscing a lonely memory in her head that she never forgot so easily. "Even if it meant that we had to do it separately…"

Tokyo, Ten Years Ago

Ran wasn't the type to eavesdrop but the mention of her boyfriend's name in some strangers' conversation intrigued her. She stood by the lockers and she was just packing up when she heard the sound of two girls' voices echoing through the almost empty and very spacious girls' locker and shower room.

She noted that they were members of the cheerleading squad of Teitan High, given that they were talking about dance routines and of the upcoming cheering performance they'd have to do on the Japan Interschool Soccer Tournament.

And soon enough, her boyfriend's name was brought into their little conversation.

"Ugh. What's the point in cheering if we're not gonna win anyway?" One of the girls said. She had a shrilly, whiny voice that sounded quite annoying.

"Don't say that!" Another hushed. Compared to the first girl, her voice was less shrilly and sounded more mature. "The soccer team is working really hard despite Kudo-sempai's absence."

Ran's ears perked up at the sudden statement.

'Shinichi? But didn't he just got back on the team?' She thought to herself, confused.

"Why did Kudo-sempai have to withdraw from the team anyway? Is it because of his detective duties again? Guess he's really that big in the industry now huh?" Shrilly asked.

"I guess. But from what I've heard it's not about that this time." Less-shrilly replied. "Rumour has it, it was because of his girlfriend!"

"Mouri-sempai? No way!" Shrilly let out a loud gasp. Ran found herself doing the same thing. Suddenly, she is even more interested to listen. She was confused especially when she had no idea at all about Shinichi's withdrawal from the team.

"I don't know much but some are saying she's pretty possessive." Less shrilly commented. "Not so surprised. She has the vibe."

Ran clenched her fists furiously. She had the sudden urge to smash a locker into a reduced tin can.

"Well, you can't blame her though. With Kudo-sempai walking around looking like a snack, you'd definitely build fences around him if you were his girlfriend." Shrilly giggled. Ran rolled her eyes as she took out more things from her locker, resisting the urge to slam it very loudly.

"True, but there should be a certain limit to it. At this rate, she's just being a hindrance to him." Less-shrilly said. "If you ask me, Kudo-sempai should be with someone up his ally. He's practically a celebrity now but he's going low-key just because he doesn't want to leave Mouri-sempai in the dark. Let's face it, she's too… ordinary..."

"Wow. You're too harsh." Shrilly hissed.

"Just pure facts, darling. The syndicate case should be a good example. Kudo-sempai spearheaded the capture of the members and Mouri-sempai? Wasn't she just a mere casualty?"

The girls were completely irrelevant to Ran but their words pierced through her heart like knives. She wasn't able to notice the tears that fell down from her eyes as she was listening. She sniffled a sob as she closed the door of her locker, in a surprisingly quiet way. She holds on to it for support as she felt her knees going weak. She covered her mouth to avoid making any noise as she cried.

She didn't want to back down on the judgmental girls and become the loser but for some reason, they seemed so spot-on right.

Everything came back to Ran in an instant.

She remembered how back in middle school, Shinichi was supposed to fly to Los Angeles with his parents but he didn't because he couldn't leave her. Then when he got involved in the Black Organization case, he didn't tell her about the situation because he didn't want to get her in danger. And even then, despite going through so much trouble already, he still found a way to protect her. He became Conan for her in Shinichi's absence…

And lately, he had been ditching cases ever since her embarrassing, outburst. She didn't give it much point but since it has finally come to light, she finally realized that all the phone calls he claimed to be "not important" were probably from Megure-keibu but because he wanted to be with her and he didn't want her to worry, he'd immediately shut them all off for her.

So stupidly she believed in his words not because she trusted them to be true but because it gave her relief. Because it saved her from worrying. But clearly, he was giving up a lot of things of her and he was willing to do so even if it meant giving up his own passion just so he could be with her…

Then it hit her. Shinichi always came through for her. He'd always tell her how selfless and kind she was to forgive him after everything he has done. But the truth is, what she did was probably nothing compared to everything that he has done for her.

So, maybe they were right after all. Maybe she didn't deserve him. Maybe he was better off with someone else…

Tokyo, Tuesday, 11am

Shinichi is on board another plane, riding a connecting flight from Tokyo to Osaka after a fourteen-hour flight from New York. But unlike on the previous flight where he completely dosed off, he is wide awake on this one. His neck, aching from the long flight and how he positioned his head when he slept a while ago.

'Only one hour…' He thinks to himself. His palms start to sweat as he feels both excitement and nervousness rush through his veins.

He assumes the possibility that she could have already been there. Knowing Ran, and judging by her comment on the proposal announcement last time, he suspects that she could have already booked an early flight. Besides, she is the maid of honor and it is expected that she is to help Kazuha with the last-minute preparations. Also taking in consideration that Ran is supposed to plan the bride's bachelorette party the same way he is expected to plan the groom's since he is the best man.

So, he makes a bet with himself, that there is a 90 percent chance that Ran's already in Osaka most likely with Sonoko and Sera since they are all-out supportive friends. But he wonders, would she be with Hattori at the airport? He shakes his head no.

There's no way. It would probably be too awkward.

Tokyo, Ten Years Ago

Shinichi is taken aback by the sudden confrontation. He was shocked when Ran dragged him all the way to a particular bench in their school yard to talk privately. She wasn't mad but she did bombard him with questions about his sudden withdrawal from Teitan High's soccer team. Shinichi never planned to hide it from her. He was merely looking for the perfect timing to do so. But alas, rumors about him spread easily like wild fire and though Shinichi never really cared to explain himself to others, he knew it is his responsibility to clarify things with her.

What surprised Shinichi more is that the sudden news affected Ran in more ways than he could ever think of suddenly, it wasn't just about soccer anymore. It was…

Everything.

"Why are you doing this?" She asked, tears started to brim at the corner of her eyes. Shinichi cupped Ran's face in his hands. He looked at her earnestly. He only had one answer in his head.

"Because I love you and I promised to make it up to you, didn't I?" He said sincerely. She shook her head furiously.

"At what expense? You're giving up so much for me…" She sobbed. "You're losing yourself because of me."

Shinichi shook his head in denial. He was stunned. He never knew she had such thoughts in her head. Of course, that wasn't the case. Not to him.

"I just don't want to be the reason for these tears, Ran." He spoke, lifting his hand to wipe away her tears.

"And I don't want to be the reason why you're holding back from doing the things you love…" She said as she looked into his cerulean eyes that she loved so much. "Shinichi, you know it too right? You and I, we both haven't healed since…"

She took his hand in hers and held it tightly as he stared at her with so much sadness in his eyes. He knew what was bound to happen he saw it in her eyes, he felt it when she held him.

"We can't be this broken together…" She said. "We have to heal on our own terms. Separately."

Shinichi wasn't able to speak. He let out a deep breath and looked down. Suddenly his throat went dry. He didn't want it to end in such way but he knew she was right. They would only keep on hurting each other. And as much as he hated it, as much as his heart broke at the thought, his mind told him that it was the right thing to do.

"Is this what you really want?" He asked giving her another chance to take it back even when he knew very well that she wouldn't. She was a woman of word.

"It's not about what we want. It's about what we both need." She replied, letting go of his hands. Shinichi suddenly felt a melancholic coldness surround him at the absence of her touch.

"I just can't believe this is happening…" He cleared his throat and took a deep breath, restraining himself as soon as he felt his face heat up and his eyes becoming heavy with the threat of tears forming. His heart broke and he felt it in his chest. He looked up, to avoid the tears from falling. He wasn't the type to cry and he is not bound to do it in front of her. "I just love you so much, you know…"

He reached up to cup her face. He savored the moment, knowing that it probably would be the last time.

"And I love you too." She said, fighting the urge to cry again. "I'm sorry…"

"I'm sorry too." He told her, pulling her for one last embrace.

Osaka,Tuesday, 12nn

Shinichi is walking through Kansai International Airport while pushing his luggage cart. His feet are still heavy and his neck still hurt from the long flight. He whips his phone out of his pocket to send Hattori a message but it starts ringing. Heiji's name flashes on his screen and he answers immediately.

"Oi, Hattori! I'm here." Shinichi says upon answering.

"And I'm not." Heiji says chuckling nervously. Shinichi's eyebrows furrow in confusion. "I can't make it today, groom duties."

"What?" Shinichi asks, his tone raises in slight frustration but he doesn't get mad because he understands. He just wasn't expecting Hattori to bail on him.

"But doncha' worry. I sent a proxy. I'm betting 100 percent that you'll be more thrilled to see her than me." Heiji snickers over the phone.

"What?" Shinichi asks again as he continues to walk by the arrivals area in search of Hattori, thinking he's merely playing jokes on him.

"Well, gotta go! Bye!" Heiji responds, hanging up. Shinichi is even more confused than he was earilier.

"Oi, Hattori-

He is cut off by the beeping sound on his phone. His eyes search the sea of fetchers in the area until he sees a familiar face among them.

His eyes meet hers for the first time in ten years. She smiles at him and he stops on his tracks, suddenly his feet feels heavier than it did when he got out of the plane.

Tokyo, Ten Years Ago

He dropped all of his bags to give her a proper hug. He held her tightly in his arms, drowning himself in her soft scent that he loved so much. For a moment, he didn't care if it was not proper for him to hold her in such way. So what if she isn't his anymore?

"You take care there okay?" She breathed against his ear as she ran her delicate fingers through his hair.

"You too." He responded as he ran his hand down her back, stroking it comfortingly. Such touch sent shivers running down her spine.

He soon pulled away after a few seconds. The coldness in the air surrounded him upon the absence of her warmth.

"So I guess this is it… LA, huh?" He said, casually putting his hands in his pockets.

"You'll do great." She assured him with a sincere smile. Her eyes shined, almost like she was bound to cry but she doesn't.

"Well, I'm going now… You'll be okay?" He asked, concerned and hopelessly wishing she'd stop him but she gave him a nod instead.

"Have a safe trip." She said, watching him with a heavy heart as he took his bags.

"Good bye, Ran."

"Good bye, Shinichi."

He lingered for a moment, staring at her amethyst orbs, her beautiful face, memorizing her every feature, taking it all in so that it would remain tattooed in his memory. Unknown to him, she did the same, looking at his gorgeous pair of sapphires and his sharp features. Suddenly she felt an urge to cry, but she held it in.

I don't want to be the reason for your tears…

His words rang in her ears.

And then it was time to leave.

I don't want to be the reason why you're holding back.

He kept her words in his head. He gave her one last smile which she returned and then he turned away, walking further and further until he disappeared from her sight.

And when he was gone, she broke down and cry in the middle of the airport for everyone to see.

Unknown to her, he did the same, but on the plane by the window.

Osaka,Tuesday, 12nn

Shinichi remains frozen in his state. He doesn't know how to approach her but his heart is filled with so much happiness. Suddenly it is like he is seventeen again.

"Welcome back, Shinichi…" She says, making him snap out of his thoughts, bringing him back to Earth with the sound of her voice, saying his name as she approaches him. He looks at her beautiful presence. She looks a little bit more mature than the last time he saw her. Her curves are now more defined as clearly shown in her tight outfit of crop top and skinny jeans. She is wearing light make up that accentuates her already beautiful features.

He wonders if she is doing it on purpose but he shrugs the thought away so quickly. He realizes that he probably looks like crap standing next to her. He gives himself a mental kick on the ass. Suddenly he regrets not wearing something better than his plain shirt and jacket. He wishes he took the time to brush his hair since it is sticking in different directions, not to mention that his cowlick is up and unrulier than ever.

But unknown to him, she is secretly admiring his presence as well. She notices his defined, sharper features. He is taller now than when she last saw him. She notes that she looks smaller in her sneakers, standing next to his tall frame, not to mention that his built is now more toned than before. He looks manlier now, with his sharper jawline but his awkward smile made him look more boyish, as though his seventeen-year-old self is peaking through beneath his matured look.

"It's great to be back." He says. They maintain a distance of a meter between each other. "It's nice to see you again, Ran…"

He awkwardly spreads his arms and motions closer to her. It doesn't take too much for her to understand that he is approaching her for a hug. She doesn't deprive him. She meets his distance and wraps her arms around him. Goosebumps creep to his skin as she rests her head on his chest while he leans close to her shoulder. They both drown themselves on each other's scent. She feels him wrap his arms around her waist. His skin brushes against her skin exposed by the crop top. Shivers run through her spine. Even after ten years, the warmth still feels so familiar.

It is hard for them to pull away.

AN: So here it is! I hope y'all like it. It turned out to be a pretty long chapter. I hope I covered everything regarding the break up. If you guys still have questions, feel free to approach me. I don't bite. LOL. This will most likely be the last chapter with inter-cutting scenes since Shinichi is now back in Japan. Yey! Wasn't expecting this to take long to write, but I found it difficult to write the break up scene, tbh. Hope it wasn't OOC.

Anyway, tell me what you guys think. I'll try to update faster but I will most likely update once a week depending on my work schedule and on how long the chapter will take. My goal is to give two updates a week but I'm thinking that's gonna be too far-fetched for me. But we'll see. ;)

~J

Fanfiction.net link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13195514/2/The-Same-Old-You AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17626277/chapters/41749793

NEXT CHAPTER

[cruelangelstheses]

alistair theirin, cat-sitter

fandom: dragon age rating: G characters: alistair, zevran, isabela, merrill, morrigan words: 3k additional tags: modern au, fluff, humor description: alistair ends up cat-sitting ser pounce-a-lot for the weekend. everything is fine, except that he knows nothing about cats—and to make matters worse, he’s pretty sure ser pounce-a-lot hates him. a/n: i’m back lmao i’ll be done reposting these soon. this was written for @compulsive-elfrootpicker for a wintersend exchange! their warden reina cousland is mentioned briefly so that’s who that is :-)

read it on ao3

—

This is not what Alistair had expected when Reina asked him to take care of a cat for the weekend.

It’s not even Reina’s cat; it’s Reina’s friend’s cat—Anders is the guy’s name, if Alistair remembers correctly. Apparently, Reina had agreed to watch Ser Pounce-a-Lot for the weekend while Anders was away, before realizing at the last minute that she was also going away for the weekend. Cue a panicked phone call late Thursday evening in which Reina asked Alistair to be the substitute cat-sitter, and Alistair agreed despite knowing next to nothing about cats. “Surely they can’t be that much different from dogs,” he’d assured himself. It should be fine, right? Right?

Wrong.

It’s only been about ten minutes since Reina dropped off Ser Pounce-a-Lot at Alistair’s apartment. In that time, Pounce has shredded Alistair’s curtains, knocked over several cups, and pissed on the kitchen floor despite knowing full well how to use the litter box, which Alistair had placed right near the back door to the balcony. Granted, it could be worse—at least the cups are all plastic and didn’t break, and at least Pounce didn’t piss on the carpet, and Alistair has been meaning to get some new curtains anyway—but still.

“What do you want from me?” Alistair asks the cat, who is standing on top of the kitchen table and swishing his tail back and forth. He’s just finished cleaning everything up, but there are bound to be plenty more messes at this rate.

Ser Pounce-a-Lot meows, but Alistair doesn’t speak cat, so he has no idea what that means. “It was a rhetorical question,” he says. Pounce hisses and uses his hind paws to slide his collar off of his neck. Alistair sighs.

It’s only Friday afternoon. Reina won’t be back to pick up the cat until Sunday evening. Clearly Alistair isn’t going to survive until then without some help, so he does the only thing he can think of to do: he calls Zevran.

Zevran Arainai is not usually the first person Alistair calls in the event of an emergency. That would be Wynne—she’s a sensible woman who has lived a lot longer than Alistair, and she’s very good at being “the adult” in any given situation. Alas, she’s apparently busy all weekend—if she’d been available, Reina would’ve asked her to watch Ser Pounce-a-Lot instead of Alistair.

The second person Alistair calls in the event of an emergency is Reina, but obviously that won’t do any good in this case. The third person would be Leliana, but she’s visiting family in Orlais; thus, by default, Zevran is the next person on his list, because Sten and Morrigan both scare him, and he trusts Oghren with a cat even less than he trusts himself.

Alistair’s conversations with Zevran normally take place over text when not in person, but this is an emergency, and he’s not going to risk being left on read when there’s a cat loose in his apartment who seems bent on giving him the headache of a lifetime. Luckily, Zevran picks up on the third ring. “Hello? Alistair?”

“Zevran!” Alistair says, breathing a sigh of relief. “Look, I know you probably have plans this evening, but I’m having a bit of an emergency and I need you to come over as soon as you can.”

“An emergency?” Zevran repeats. He sounds like he’s not sure whether to be concerned or amused. “What sort of emergency are we talking about? Do I need to call an ambulance?”

Alistair snorts. “Zevran, if I needed to call an ambulance, I would’ve called it before I called you.”

“Alright, fair enough,” Zevran replies. “Just let me put my pants back on, and then Isabela and I will be right over.”

“You—what?” Alistair says, but it’s too late; Zevran has already hung up.

Alistair shakes his head and turns back to the kitchen table—except Ser Pounce-a-Lot is not where Alistair last saw him. “Ser Pounce-a-Lot?” he calls, looking back and forth between the table and the counters. “Pouncey?”

It’s no use. Ser Pounce-a-Lot is nowhere in the kitchen—Alistair figures that out pretty quickly just by checking the cabinets and the pantry. The cat is gone, and he clearly doesn’t bow to Alistair, so it’s unlikely that he’ll return just at the sound of his name. “Blast it,” Alistair mutters. This day is just getting worse and worse by the second.

Alistair heads into the living room, checking behind and under furniture and even lifting up the couch cushions, to no avail. Beginning to grow desperate, he runs to the bathroom, searching under the sink and behind the shower curtain and even in the (closed) toilet, just in case Pounce somehow lifted up the lid and crawled inside. Nothing.

Alistair is in the process of tearing his bedroom apart when he hears Zevran’s voice singsonging, “Alistair! Oh, Alistair!”

“Yes!” Alistair calls as he digs through his closet. “I’m back here!”

A few seconds later, Alistair hears two pairs of footsteps behind him in the messy room. He glances over his shoulder to find Zevran and his friend-with-benefits, Isabela, both staring at him with their eyebrows raised in confusion. “What is the emergency?” Zevran asks coolly.

Alistair turns around to face them, running a hand through his hair. “Okay, so Reina agreed to watch some guy’s cat for the weekend, but then she realized that she was also going away for the weekend, so she pawned the cat off on me to babysit. Except the cat is a monster who hates me and I don’t know how to take care of it, and also since I called you I have discovered that the monster-cat has gone missing.”

“Wait,” Isabela says, holding a hand up. “Whose cat is it again?”

Now it’s Alistair’s turn to raise an eyebrow in confusion. “Err...I’m not quite sure why that matters, but I think his name’s Anders?”

Isabela gasps and claps a hand over her mouth. “I knew it! You’re watching Ser Pounce-a-Lot!”

Alistair shrugs helplessly. “Well, I was. How do you even know this guy?”

“I met him through a mutual friend,” Isabela says. “He gets around, it seems, despite the fact that he’s kind of a hermit.”

Zevran, meanwhile, is typing something in his phone, a half-smirk on his face. Alistair narrows his eyes. “What are you doing?”

“I am adding this to my list of ridiculous reasons Alistair has called me,” Zevran replies with a laugh. “Do not worry, my friend. We shall find this Ser Pounce-a-Lot in no time.”

“You have a list?” Alistair says, before shaking his head. “You know what? Never mind. We have more important issues here. Number one being that I’ve had the cat for less than half an hour and I’ve already lost him. I checked the whole apartment, every hiding place I could think of, and I haven’t found anything.”

“Hmm. You never know,” Zevran says thoughtfully as he puts his phone back in his pocket. “Cats can be very quick and sneaky. Maybe he keeps moving to different hiding spots like a game of tag.”

“A game of hide-and-seek tag,” Isabela adds. “If we split up, we might be able to find him.”

“Yes. Good idea,” Alistair agrees, so with that, Zevran and Isabela rush out of the bedroom to search other areas of the apartment.

Alistair investigates every part of the bedroom and bathroom multiple times, with no success. When the three reconvene in the living room after a solid ten minutes, he can tell by his friends’ expressions that they didn’t find the cat, either.

“I don’t get it,” Alistair says. “I didn’t leave the front door open or anything. How did he get out?”

At that, Zevran awkwardly gestures toward the kitchen. “Alistair, I have a question,” he says slowly. “Was that window always open?”

Oh, no. Alistair nearly sprints into the kitchen, his eyes resting on an open window right above the kitchen counter. He’d opened it earlier in the daytime because it got hot in the apartment and he’d needed some air. Now the spring breeze blowing peacefully through the window seems to mock him.

Alistair rests his elbows on the counter and then buries his head in his hands, groaning and swearing under his breath. “Maker, I’m so stupid.”

“Well, Isabela knows the fellow who owns the cat,” Zevran says reassuringly, doing his best to remain optimistic about the whole situation. “That will probably come in handy.”

Isabela laughs nervously. “Um, actually, it might not.”

That is not what Alistair wanted to hear. “What? Why not?”

Isabela crosses her arms. “He loves that cat. If he even suspected that something bad happened to it, he’d probably—I don’t know—magic us to death.”

Zevran snorts. “I believe the phrase you are looking for is ‘kill us with fire,’ my dear.”

“Wait,” Alistair says, an automatic reaction. “Anders is a mage?”

“Oh. Yeah,” Isabela says nonchalantly. “Why?”

Alistair shakes his head and reminds himself that it’s not relevant. “Oh. No reason, I guess. I used to be a templar. Well, I left before I could actually take my vows, but I have all the abilities.”

Isabela’s eyes widen, as if she’s just suddenly put two and two together. “Are you serious?”

“Err...yes?” Alistair says, eyeing her with confusion. “What about it?”

“I think Anders somehow teaches his cats to like mages and dislike templars,” Isabela explains. “Or maybe they just learn the behavior by being around him. At any rate, they seem to be able to...sense that sort of thing.” She shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t know a whole lot about magic and such.” Then she smirks a little, her eyes twinkling playfully. “But that would explain why Ser Pounce disliked you so much.”

Zevran practically cackles. “Oh, the thought of a cat shredding your curtains because you’re a templar!” he crows.

“I was a templar,” Alistair corrects. “But if the cat likes mages and dislikes templars...do you think he may have wandered off to a mage’s house?”

A lightbulb seems to appear over Isabela’s head. “That’s it!” she exclaims. “I know where to look for him. There’s a mage girl who lives just down the street, and he can’t have gone too far.”

Zevran snatches a bag of cat treats off the kitchen table, probably to entice Pounce to come back. “Well, what are we waiting for?” he says, shaking the bag. “Let’s go cat-hunting!”

With that, the three all rush out the door. They don’t bother with the elevator (since Alistair lives on the third floor of his apartment building); Alistair practically leaps down the stairs, Zevran slides down the railing, and Isabela sprints faster than Alistair thought was possible in knee-high boots. They probably look strange running through the lobby and bursting through the front doors. Isabela leads them across the parking lot and onto the sidewalk, heading in the direction of the downtown area.

Any thoughts about how it might have been faster to take the car vanish when Alistair sees the bumper-to-bumper traffic. It’s late afternoon on a Friday; it would’ve taken them ten minutes just to get out of the parking lot. Besides, they’re pedestrians, so they have the right-of-way at every crosswalk.

It’s not long before they arrive at a quaint little white townhouse with a rocking chair and several potted plants on the porch. Isabela bangs on the door several times, yelling, “Merrill!”

A few moments later, the door opens, revealing a small elven girl with black hair and tattoos on her face. “Isabela!” she says cheerfully, sounding pleasantly surprised. “What brings you here? And who are they?” She gestures toward Alistair and Zevran.

“Some friends,” Isabela replies quickly. “Listen—did you happen to see an orange tabby cat recently? Like, within the past forty-five minutes or so?”

Merrill’s eyes light up. “Yes, actually! A cat that looked just like that came scratching at the door maybe fifteen minutes ago. I gave him some pieces of cucumber and he sat with me on the porch for a little, but then he left.”

“He left?” Alistair repeats in a panic.

“Merrill,” Isabela says slowly, “that was Ser Pounce-a-Lot. Anders’s cat.”

Merrill covers her mouth with her hand. Clearly she knows Anders, too. “Ohhh,” she says, her cheeks flushing pink. “I knew he looked familiar. But he wasn’t wearing his collar, so I wasn’t sure.”

Alistair mentally smacks himself, remembering the way Pounce had removed his own collar with ease. Alistair hadn’t bothered to put it back on him.

“Oh, Merrill,” Isabela says with a sigh, but there’s not a trace of malice in her voice (in fact, Alistair thinks he might actually hear a bit of endearment).

“The last I saw him,” Merrill adds, “he was headed down toward Korcari Street. Fast, too.” She giggles a little. “He was a cat on a mission. As if he had somewhere very important to be.”

Alistair and Zevran exchange glances. They only know one mage who lives on Korcari Street. “Morrigan!” they say in unison.

Alistair throws his hands up in the air. “She hates animals!” he yelps. “She’ll kill him! Skin him alive, eat him for dinner, then use his bones as kindling!”

Upon hearing this, Isabela grimaces and says, “Well, we’d better be going, Merrill. Got a cat to save and all that. Bye!”

Without another word, she turns around and leaps down the steps, Zevran following her. Alistair shoots Merrill a glance and says, “Thanks.” Then he turns around and runs after Isabela and Zevran.

“Oh! Um, no problem?” Merrill says from behind him. Isabela will have a lot of explaining to do later, it seems.

As they rush to Korcari Street (earning strange looks from passersby as they shove their way through crowds and cross streets when they’re not supposed to), Zevran says, “I have to say, Isabela, I am surprised.”

“Surprised about what?” Isabela asks, raising an eyebrow.

“You always go on about how selfish you are,” Zevran says smugly, “yet here you are, helping Alistair with his cat predicament without expecting anything in return.”

“Oh, come on,” Isabela replies defensively. “I’m only doing this because I don’t want Anders to kill me. That’s all.”

“Hmm,” Zevran says, clearly unconvinced. “From what I’ve gathered, Anders still thinks that Reina is the one taking care of the cat. If anything were to happen to him, it would be on her head, and maybe Alistair’s. Not yours.”

“I—well, I just had to make sure that—shut up.” Her cheeks turn pink, and Zevran laughs.

This time, when they reach Morrigan’s townhouse, Alistair is the one who pounds his fists on the door and shouts, “Morrigan!”

“She may not answer to you,” Zevran says. “Let me try.” Taking a deep breath, he cups his hands around his mouth and calls, “Morrigan! O magical temptress, I beseech thee!”

The sound of the front door slamming open stops Zevran from continuing his speech. “What?” Morrigan snaps, looking even grumpier and more terrifying than usual. “First a cat, and now this.”

“A cat!” Zevran exclaims. “That is what we’re here for!”

“Please tell me it’s still alive,” Alistair adds.

As if on cue, an orange tabby cat appears from behind Morrigan, rubbing himself against her legs and purring. Morrigan rolls her eyes and lightly pushes him away with her foot. “Shoo,” she says with a scowl.

“Pouncey!” Alistair cheers, a wave of relief washing over him at the sight of Ser Pounce-a-Lot all in one piece.

Morrigan raises an eyebrow, probably at the name. “I was not aware you had a cat, Alistair.”

“Oh, I don’t,” Alistair says quickly. “He’s not mine. I’m just...cat-sitting. Except apparently this cat really likes mages and really doesn’t like templars.”

Morrigan snorts. “Explains why he thought I would be a good person to visit.”

“Why did you even let him in, if you hate animals so much?” Zevran asks.

“I didn’t,” Morrigan says. “I opened my door to see what all the scratching was about, and he ran inside before I could stop him.”

“Well, uh, we’ll take him off your hands,” Alistair says, crouching down to pick up Ser Pounce-a-Lot. Pounce hisses and doesn’t move from Morrigan’s side.

“Go,” Morrigan tells him, sounding exasperated. “I have other things to deal with. This man will not harm you.”

Pounce meows at her. Alistair thinks the cat almost sounds unsure.

“He is an ex-templar,” Morrigan continues with another roll of her eyes. “He never actually took his vows. Now go.”

Alistair holds back his laughter at the sight of Morrigan trying to reason with a cat. Ser Pounce-a-Lot trots out the door, but instead of heading toward Alistair, he stops at Isabela’s feet.

Isabela laughs a little. “It’s because he knows me,” she says. Then, to Ser Pounce-a-Lot, she adds, “Fine. I’ll carry you, you spoiled little furball.”

Ser Pounce-a-Lot meows approvingly as Isabela picks him up. “Well, err...sorry for bothering you,” Alistair says awkwardly to Morrigan. She glares at him, but—if he isn’t seeing things—he swears that her eyes betray something akin to amusement beneath the irritation and hostility.

“Try not to do it again,” Morrigan says with a hint of a smirk.

Alistair sticks his tongue out at her. Behind him, Zevran snickers.

They take their time walking back to Alistair’s apartment. “So,” Alistair says slowly, “we found Ser Pounce-a-Lot, but something tells me he’s going to keep making trouble.”

Zevran raises an eyebrow. “Is this your way of asking us if we would like to sleep over? I graciously accept.”

Alistair can feel his cheeks heating up. “Well, I mean, if you want—”

Zevran holds up his index finger and presses it lightly against Alistair’s lips. “Nonsense. I will not abandon my good friend Alistair in his time of need. I assume you have no objections, Isabela?”

After a short pause, Isabela, still carrying Ser Pounce-a-Lot, says, “None. But I reserve the right to leave whenever I want.”

“But of course,” Zevran says. “It has been decided. Ser Pounce-a-Lot will not stand a chance against us!”

Alistair smiles and shakes his head. It’s going to be a long and interesting weekend for sure.

[thehelleniclunarwitch]

His Darkest Obsession:04

Pairing: Edward Nygma x Reader

Fandom: Gotham, Batman, DC

Warning: Language, Violence, Mental Abuse

One     Two     Three  

Bruce and Selina watched you nervously pace back and forth in Bruce’s study. Selina glanced over at Bruce.

“What do we do?” Selina mouthed.Bruce only shrugged he wasn’t sure if he should say something or let you take your time.

“Y/n, what’s wrong?” Selina finally broke the silence.

You turned towards your friends.

“I don’t think it’s a secret admirer I have. I think it’s a stalker,” You told them.

“Why do you say that?” Bruce asked.

“The boys at school get me in trouble that same night they’re murdered. My backpack gets stolen and the man, who I didn’t even get a look at, by the way, shows up at the police station with my bag in tow, and now this whole thing Cal it only makes sense,” You said.

“What thing with Cal?” Bruce asked.

“Remember he was that officer that was in that really bad car accident,” Selina pointed out.

“Why would he have anything to do with your stalker?” Bruce asked.

You looked over at Selina and she gave you a look. You let out a long sigh.

“Cal and I were kind of seeing each other,” You admitted.

“You were dating an adult?” Bruce asked.

“Okay, you’re acting like I’m some child. I’m seventeen, eighteen in three months, plus Cal is only twenty-one,” You explained.

“Yeah, Bruce it’s not like Y/n is dating a forty-year-old,” Selina added.

“And, Jim, your brother, who is a police detective is okay with that?” Bruce asked.

“He knows and somewhat approves. I mean the dude is a cop, so Jim has his eyes on him at all times,” You replied.

“Okay, so say we go with this that your admirer is actually you’re stalker what do we do?” Selina asked.

“We need to try and figure out who it could possibly be,” Bruce said.

“Well, we know it’s not anybody at school. Nobody wants to date the sister of a police detective,” You pointed out.

“True, but we can’t rule anybody out. If we think it’s a stalker they could be trying to use you to get to Jim,” Selina said.

“I’ll ask around the school and see what I can manage to get out of them,” Bruce said.

“Does Cal have any idea who would have cut his brakes?” Selina asked.

You shook your head.

“Unfortunately, no,” You replied.

“How is he doing?” Bruce asked.

“Thankfully, nothing major, just a broken an arm and some cuts and bruises,” You answered.

Your phone chirped.

“I gotta go. I’m meeting Jim at the station before we go up to see Cal,” You said.

“Don’t worry Y/n we’re going to figure this out,” Bruce said.

You hugged your friends before excusing yourself. When you were gone Selina turned to Bruce.

“Who could be doing this to her? What do they have to gain by taking it out on her?” Selina asked.

“I don’t know Selina but we’re going to find out who it is and bring them to justice,” Bruce growled as he bunched his fist.

“Come on, come on, please,” You begged as you bounced up and down next to your brother.

Jim sighed.

“Jim, I never ever ask for anything,” You pleaded.

“What’s the princess begging for now?” Harvey asked as he came to sit on the desk next to you.

“Mr. Johnson who lives on the floor below has a litter of puppies up for adoption,” You began.

“Oh come on Jim, you gotta get the kid a puppy,” Harvey said.

Jim glared at Harvey. “You can stay out of it,”

“Jim, I get good grades, I play a sport, I do my own chores, I have a part-time job. I am the definition of a responsible teen,” You explained to him.

Jim looked over at you. You and Harvey gave him the most sorrowful puppy dog eyes. He sighed.

“You will be the one who will need to train him, pay for all of his vet dates, and everything else,” Jim said.

You cheered as Harvey high fived you.

“Okay, let me go finish up some paperwork and then we’ll get out of here,” Jim said.

Jim and Harvey went their separate ways. You slid off the desk to head to Lee’s office. You hadn’t seen her so you weren’t even sure if she was still at work. When you got to her office the door was closed, you knocked once before entering. Lee was nowhere to be seen. Sighing, you turned to head back to the main part of the station. Gasping, you gently pushed Edward away from you.

“You scared the shit out of me,” You hissed.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Edward apologized.

“Jeez, Eddie, you really need to wear a bell or something,” You teased.

Edward only smiled.

“I haven’t seen you around the station lately,” Edward pointed out.

“Yeah, between school and soccer, I’ve been pretty busy,” You replied.

“And also the visits to the hospital right?” Edward asked.

Your furrowed your eyebrows. “How did you know about the hospital trips?”

“Silly girl, Jim mentioned to me how the two of you have been spending a lot of time at the hospital with Mr. O’Brian,” Edward explained.

“Oh, right, well Eddie, how have you been?” You asked.

“Still heartbroken, they can’t find Kristen,” Eddie said.

“I hope that they can find her. You two had just started dating, right?” You asked.

Edward nodded slowly. “Yeah, I still think her ex had something to do with it,”

“What? God that’s awful, I hope he didn’t do anything to her,” You said.

“Probably just ran away together,” Edward said.

You looked up at him. “Why would Krissy just run away without saying anything? That seems so unlike her,”

“How would you know what she’s like?” Edward snapped.

You nervously took a step away from him.

“I just mean, from the little bit we talked, I couldn’t see Kristen taking off like that, that’s all,” You explained.

Edward could see how uncomfortable you were.

“My apologies, I didn’t mean to snap, I,” But Edward was cut off.

“Hey, there you are, we better go see Cal before we pick up the pup,” Jim said.

You nodded.

“Bye Mr. Nygma,” You said before running over to join your brother.

Edward wanted to shout at you to call him Edward, but he knew he had scared you. The way you flinched away from him really ticked him off. He didn’t want you to be afraid of him. He wanted you to love him. Edward was going to have to slow down and rethink a few things. Maybe he was rushing things with you because he wanted you so badly, but it was obvious that you weren’t there yet.

With Cal O’Brian still in the picture, Edward knew that he didn’t have a chance with you. Edward couldn't fathom on why you would want to be with Cal anyway, but he’d take a few steps back and maybe up his gift game. You hadn’t put the clues together yet, which was okay, that gave Edward more time to woo you.

Smiling, Ed turned on his heels and stormed away as another brilliant idea popped up in his head. He just knew the perfect gift for you!

After a trip to the hospital, you and Jim returned home. You stopped by Mr. Johnson’s place so you could put your name down for a pup. It would still be another two weeks before the puppies would be ready. You couldn’t wait to have one of them as your own. Ever since moving to Gotham you had wanted a pet so you were very pleased that Jim had finally broken down. You were going to have to get Harvey a thank you gift because you knew that he had been working on your brother about easing up on you and letting you get a pet.

Jim had just unlocked the penthouse door when his phone rang. You took the bag of take-out food so Jim could answer his phone.

“What’s up Harvey?” Jim asked.

He looked at you.

“Yeah, no worries, I’ll be back in a few,” Jim said.

You sighed.

“You really have to go?” You asked him.

“Sorry, kiddo, duty calls,” Jim said.

“Okay, I’ll save you some orange chicken,” You said.

Jim kissed your cheek before hurrying back down the stairs. You pushed open the door entering the penthouse you were greeted by Barbara. She sat on the long couch with a glass of wine in her hands.

“Where’s your brother?” She asked coldly.

“Harvey called, he had to go back to the station,” You answered.

Barbara watched as you placed the bag of Chinese food on the table. When you lifted your other bag, Barbara quickly stood.

“Why did you two stop at the pet store?” Barbara demanded to know.

“Jim is letting me adopt one of Mr. Johnson’s puppies,” You told her.

Barbara stormed over to you, snatched the bag out of your hand before going through it.

“I cannot believe your brother is letting you adopt a dog,” She growled.

“I am more than responsible,” You began.

Barbara slapped you. “I don’t care if you’re responsible or not! I’ve been asking for a year to get a pet, but Jim always said no because we’re too busy, but of course when his precious little sister wants something she gets it,”

You held your stinging cheek.

“God take up your problems with my brother with my brother,” You snarled.

Barbara slapped your other cheek. You recovered and straighten your back. As Barbara stared at her hand in the realization of what she had done she quickly looked up at you.

“Oh, Y/n, I’m so sorry,” Barbara began to apologize but you ran away from her.

“Y/n!” Barbara shouted.

As you ran to the front door you snatched up your backpack on the way out. Barbara was still shouting at you as she ran after you. You ran all the way down the stairs and out of the apartment building. You hurried off to the side in case Barbara came looking for you she wouldn’t be able to see you.

With shaky hands, you pulled your phone out of your backpack. Bruce would already be in bed and you couldn’t call Jim at work, and who the hell knows if Selina would even answer or if she’d have minutes on her phone. Knowing that you couldn’t go back into that apartment without Jim you only had one last person to call.

Putting the phone up to your ear you waited impatiently for him to answer.

“Y/n?” He answered on the final ring.

You held back the urge to cry.

“Eddie, can you come get me?” You asked.

This was his chance.

“Where are you?” Edward asked.

“On the side of the apartment building currently hiding from Barbara,” You told him.

“Stay there, I’m coming for you,” Edward said before hanging up.

Pulling your jacket a little closer you leaned up against the building. Ten minutes went by when a familiar car pulled up to the curb. As you moved to round the corner, Edward jumped out of his car and hurried over to you. As the two of you neared each other he grabbed your face. You knew that your cheeks were still red from when she slapped you as your cheeks were still stinging.

“Did she do this to you?” Edward demanded to know.

You slowly nodded.

“I’ll go talk to her,” Edward hissed.

As he turned to leave you grabbed his arm.

“Please don’t,” You pleaded with him.

Edward watched a few tears slip down your cheeks. He pulled you in close before leading you over to his car. Once you were tucked away safely in his car, Edward looked up to the floor your penthouse was located and right then and there he swore his vengeance against Barbara Kean. His lip curled up in disgust. Nobody would ever hurt you again, Edward swore to burn down all of Gotham to keep you safe.

If only you had known that you just sealed your fate with the devil himself.

[rreader]

can you please do a part 2 to the chef!jaime x tyrell!reader au? i loved it!

pairing: chef!jaime lannister x tyrell!readerfandom: got ; asoiafwarnings: modern!au ; implied smut genre: crack ; slight smut 

previous: x

summary: after dating jaime for several months, you decide to invite your family over for a nice and peaceful dinner (but then again, when was dinner with olenna tyrell ever really nice and peaceful?)

a/n: aaaah, omg this was SO SO SO much fun to write! honestly, tyrell!reader might be one of my fav things ever, just bc I feel like olenna would be the queen of sass. (also, I decided not to write the smut scene, just because I wanted this to be really light and fun)

“Stopstressing yourself out, it’s stressing me out,” you looked up fromyour laptop to your boyfriend, who was cussing under his breath forthe fifth time in two minutes, because of a dish that – in hisweird mind – still wasn’t perfect, even though it tasted likeabsolute heaven to you.

“It’snot good enough!”

Yourolled your eyes and tried to read through the document your boss hadsent you once again.

Youreally didn’t know why he was making such a big deal out of it. Yourgrandmother, father and siblings were coming over for dinner tonight.It wasn’t an important dinner, you weren’t announcing an engagement,wedding or pregnancy, or something like that. But now, that Jaime andyou were officially dating, you felt like it was the right time toinvite the closest members of the family over for dinner and get to know Jaime as something other than ‘the hot chef’ (according to Margaery).

Jaime,obviously, made a big fuss about it, muttering something like afive-course meal.

Youhad told him that he didn’t have to overdo it, that you could evencook yourself, you used to do it all the time, anyways. But heinsisted on it. He wanted to impress your family once more, this timeeven more desperately than the last time, since he wanted to showthem that he was good enough for you.

“Thisisn’t going to work,” he threw the kitchen towel on the counter,both of his hands resting against the kitchen counter and his headhanging low.

Yousighed and closed your laptop, getting up from the stool and walkingaround the isle to hug him from behind, pressing a soft kiss in thecrock of his neck.

“Stoppressuring yourself so much.”

“Thisis your family we’re talking about!”

“Exactly,”you let your hands slide to his waist and softly turned him around, sothat he was looking at you, “They’re just happy that I’ve finallyfound someone that makes me happy. That’s all that matters to them.Hell, I’m sure that my brother would be the first to say yes totakeaway, if..-”

“We’renot ordering any food.”

“WhatI’m trying to say..-” you put your hands on his cheeks and lookeddeeply into his eyes, “Is that they’ll love whatever you make. Itdoesn’t have to be the fanciest thing ever. You could literally makemac and cheese and it would taste like heaven. I can attest to that.”

Hesighed and closed his eyes for a moment, letting his forehead fallagainst yours.

Jaimewas used to pressure, but this was new to him. He knew that he wantedto spend the rest of his life with you, so naturally, he wanted toimpress your family and make them understand, that he was not onlythe right man for you, but could take care of you as well. That theydidn’t have to worry about you anymore (which, according to yourbrother, they had).

“Youneed to relax, babe,” you let your fingernails scrape against hisbeard stubble, loving the feeling against your fingertips.

Asmall smile tugged on his mouth and he cocked his head to the side,not quite touching your lips yet, but close enough to feel your hot breath against his mouth.

“Whatdid you have in mind?”

“Hmm,”you let your hands drop to his sweatpants and pulled on them once,grinning against his lips, “I’ll let you guess.”

Hesquatted down, only so much that he could pick you up. You instantlywrapped your legs around him, but stopped him when he was about towalk out of the kitchen.

“Let’sdo it here,” you giggled.

“What?!No, absolutely not, this is my work space.”

“Justthink about it,” you let your lips ghost over his, “Every timeyou’ll be in here for the next couple of weeks, you’ll think of this.You’ll think of me on this counter, you in between my legs, making mescream your name,” you whispered the last part into his ear andgrinded up against him.

Helet out a low moan and even though he still wasn’t sure about it, hecouldn’t help but do exactly what you suggested. You have always had thiseffect on him, right from the beginning.

                                                  laterthat night

Youwelcomed your family with open arms, hugging them one by one, beforetaking off their coats and walking them into the living room, whereJaime was already waiting with a big smile. He shook hands with allof them, your grandmother last.

“Jaime,my boy! It’s so good to see you! How are you? Is she driving you nutsyet?”

“Grandmother!”you scolded.

ButJaime only laughed and shook his head, “I’m afraid it’s the otherway around.”

“Ah,don’t say something like that. My granddaughter is a stubborn one,I’ve raised her to be one, after all.”

Youlet out a frustrated sigh, your sister rubbing her hand up and down your back.You decided to show them around the apartment, since this was thefirst time they had seen the one you and Jaime had moved in to a coupleof weeks ago.

Youentered the kitchen last and smiled.

“Andthat’s where Jaime spends most of his time.”

“It’shuge,” your brother exclaimed, eyes wide and mouth agape, “Imagineme having a room like that full of video games.”

“Sothat you could spend even less time outside?” Margaery asked andyou couldn’t help but laugh at your siblings bickering. Some things never change.

Yourgrandmother sniffed and both Jaime and you smiled.

“Jaimehas prepared a five-course meal, grandmother!”

“Ididn’t know what you guys wanted, so I decided to make a bit ofeverything,” your father started laughing and rubbed his belly withanticipation. He had always enjoyed food. 

“You’vehad sex in here today, didn’t you?”

“Grandmother!”all three of you yelled, your father’s smile fading and Jaime’s eyeswidening so much, that you could have sworn they would drop out of hiseye sockets at any second.

“Youcan still smell it.. go on, smell it!” she hit Loras’ arm.

“Ican’t smell a thing, grandmother!” he rubbed his arm and scrunched up his nose. He didn’t WANT to smell it, either.

“Ah,yes, that’s because you don’t have anyone to have sex with, I forgot,” your grandmotherwalked out of the kitchen like that conversation didn’t just happen,“Anyways.. would anyone be kind enough to get me some wine?”

Lorasstared after her in disbelief, your father didn’t know whether heshould hit Jaime for sleeping with you (which he knew was onlynatural, but still) or simply leave the room. He decided for thelatter. Margaery couldn’t contain her laughter anymore, once both ofthem were out of the room.

“She’sright, you know?” she looked at your brother, who quickly hit herwith his slipper.

“Atleast one person in this family is getting some then, but guess what,it’s not you either!”

“Youlittle piece of shit,” and then began the slipper war.

Yousighed and shook your head.

Jaimewalked over to you and leaned against the counter, crossing his armsin front of his chest.

“Idon’t know what should concern me more.. the fact that yourgrandmother can smell when someone has had sex, or the fact that yoursiblings are older than you, but act like they’re ten.”

“Andyou were worried about what to cook,” you snorted and then laughed,kissing his cheek quickly.

[eggoreviews]

My 10 Most Wanted Smash Ultimate Characters

Like a lot of people, I am very excited for the new Smash game and I reverted to a child when E3 came around and we finally got Ridley. I'm relatively new to the whole fighting game thing (I only bought a copy of Smash 4 last year as my first Smash game so kill me I guess) and that's probably going to show in this obligatory want list but here are my ten picks for if I could haphazardly choose who's getting to punch Mario this time around. By the way, this list is in priority order so my number 1 pick is who I want the most!

P.S I know we're only getting a few more characters if any so obviously not all ten are going to make it in. In fact, chances are none of them will. But I can dream, okay?

10. Captain Toad

I mean, look at this little guy! You can't tell me you don't want to play as him (I only just got a switch and the upcoming Captain Toad game is admittedly where my excitement is right now). While I guess I agree that the Mario series is a bit over-presented in Smash Bros, the fact that a version of Toad is finally getting his own game seems like high time that Toad became more than Peach's punching bag. His moveset would be probably be simple enough, considering how central he is during his game on the Wii U, so I guess they could just import a similar moveset over to Smash. Honestly, I know very little about Captain Toad, apart from the fact that he’s cute and likely to be in it. A Toadette palette swap/echo fighter definitely wouldn’t go amiss either.

9. Spyro

This one seems a bit less likely, but I’m aware that Nintendo and Activision are on good terms (see my number 5 pick) and it’s possible we might see the new Spyro remaster make its way onto the Switch in future, which definitely increases his chances. I don’t have a hell of an attachment to Spyro as I only played one game (very briefly), but he’s on this list generally because he looks cool and I feel like he’s an iconic third party staple that is born to be a smash addition. Again, his moveset could be ripped right from his games, his final smash could be something fire related because, you know, he’s a dragon. Before we continue, I’m fully aware that the vast majority of this list is third party and it’s definitely not realistic that we’ll get any of these characters at all. But hey, the further you get down on this list, the more you’ll understand that realism isn’t really what I was going for on this list.

8. Sora (Kingdom Hearts)

Again, fully aware that KH3 hasn’t been confirmed for Switch. But Kingdom Hearts II was a pretty big part of my childhood back in the PS2 days, so I feel like Sora’s spot on the list is more a favour to my inner child. Plus, Kingdom Hearts is a product of the same team as Final Fantasy and Cloud got in, so hey anything can happen! What makes Sora especially unlikely in my mind is that he’d basically function like any of the Fire Emblem characters (which we really do not need any more of), except with a key. Still though, cool laser final smash with the keyblade? With Donald and Goofy? Okay maybe not that, I imagine that’d be a nightmare to sort out in terms of rights.

7. Lara Croft (Tomb Raider)

If Snake deserves to be slotted back in, I feel like Lara Croft fits perfectly in the roster at this point. The inclusion of Lara would be a huge selling point for the game considering how iconic she is and, much like most of my other picks, probably wouldn’t have a particularly complicated moveset. Maybe a mixture between the bow she has pictured above and short range knife could make her an extremely balanced character, akin to Link. This would be a very exciting third party reveal if it happened.

6. Black Mage (Final Fantasy)

Here’s my wildcard pick. Arguably the most unlikely in my list bar one (you’ll see), this one made it into my top 10 because of the fact that this little guy has also made its way into several games I played in my childhood; the Chocobo Tales game I had for the DS as well as (again) Kingdom Hearts II. I’m not at all familiar with the Final Fantasy franchise, in fact I’ve only really heard of Cloud and Sephiroth (who was very nearly considered for this list) because of their appearances in Kingdom Hearts. And another thing, I have very little idea what his moveset would be but I figured no one was really talking about this little dude and if none of my wanted characters are likely to make it in, might as well make ‘em weird.

5. Crash Bandicoot

Here we go. The one that almost everyone wants. The Crash N Sane Trilogy is coming to Switch and, as I mentioned, Activision are pretty pally with Nintendo right now so this is looking more likely than ever. Admittedly, the only Crash game I ever played was Crash of the Titans on the PS2, which I loved to bits at the time. So while my experience with Crash was likely not the same as everyone else’s, he’s another character with a moveset already implemented and I’d say he’s probably the most likely out of the third party big bois.

4. Shovel Knight

He’s an indie sensation on multiple platforms. He’s a unique and interesting character with a great moveset potential. He even has his own frickin amiibo, this guy was born for a smash inclusion. With Bomberman’s absence, I think that Smash Ultimate is missing a genuinely popular new indie contender. I think that Shovel Knight more than covers this ground, and I reckon Sakurai knows it too. If anyone on this list is getting added, it’ll probably be Shovel Knight and that’s very exciting.

3. Waluigi

Okay, okay, I know. Let the memes die, right? But just hear me out on this one. I’m a Waluigi stan, I won’t lie to you, I’m not proud of it but I love this weird purple egg and that’s just the way the world works. I’ve heard a theory, one that you’ve likely heard too, that suggests (loosely) that Waluigi is still in with a chance of a Smash addition:

They spent a whole lot of time during that E3 presentation specifically highlighting the fact that Waluigi is an assist trophy, even using him as an example for the fact that trophies can be K.O’d now to really drive home the fact that you ain’t getting your purple meme content this time around

During the whole of E3, including all the Treehouse gameplay and the Invitational, there has been no sighting of Waluigi in the game. Obviously, could just be because it’s a demo and we know not everything has been added yet. But still, them leaving out the most heavily focused assist trophy? Seems fishy to me (BTW, I got this info from Alpharad the youtuber, so check out his channel for a better explained version of this)

Daisy was announced. DAISY was announced. I’m not saying Daisy is a bad addition, but there is a lot less hype around her. The fact that Waluigi was explicitly deconfirmed and Daisy ended up as one of only two new E3 character announcements? Doesn’t add up. Could literally just be because it was really easy to include her as an echo fighter compared to giving Waluigi a whole new character, but you know. I love me a conspiracy theory.

So there you have it. I’m holding out a tiny bit of hope that all of this is setting up the biggest gaming bamboozle in history. But come on, they’re bringing everyone back, either way we’ve got to be happy. (Sidenote: I’ve heard people are harassing Sakurai over Twitter because of this. That’s horrible and immature. Pls stop thanks)

2. Sans

Yeah, I know. Told you realism was going out the window. I have decided to dutifully ignore how massively toxic the Undertale fandom is and hope that Sakurai sees the potential of including a character from this still amazing game. An Undertale switch port is rumoured and I’m pretty damn sure Toby Fox would be onboard for Undertale appearing in Smash, but I know this is basically impossible. What would his moveset be? How would he be animated? It’s cool, Sans is punching Yoshi and Bayonetta in my dreams.

I’m a WatchMojo stan so, before I vomit my number 1 pick on you, here’s a few hONORABLE MENTIONS:

King K. Rool (Donkey Kong)

Linkle (Legend of Zelda)

Banjo Kazooie

Cuphead (Again, impossible I know)

1. Rayman

Considering how iconic this guy is and how close Ubisoft and Nintendo are now (Mario x Rabbids anyone?), it looks as if it’s time for Rayman. On top of that, Rayman had a trophy presence in Smash 4, so we know Sakurai has considered him. His moveset makes itself so he would be a brilliant third party add and, considering that Rayman Legends is one of my all time favourite games, there’s no contest here as to who’s top of my list.

Well, there you have it. Feel free to crap all over me anonymously about my lack of knowledge/differing opinions. Or, if you like, send me your wants/predictions for character adds and we can have a cool lil discussion about it because we now have six months to wait so we have to fill the time with something.

Maybe next time I’ll do wanted echo fighters. We’ll see. Have a good one!